It's only positive now

This is my old friend John Sandeman having lunch with me at the Annandale North Hotel. 

John and I met first when he was Design Director of all of Fairfax Australia and I was a journalist at Radio 2WS, but we really got to know each other over ten years of bible reading in a Tuesday lunchtime bible study group with other Sydney Morning Herald, Sun Herald and Financial Review people on the 26th floor of the Fairfax Building in Darling Park. 

I remember I was on long service leave, and was walking around the pedestrian mall in Alice Springs in late 2008, when John rang me to tell me he’d been retrenched from Fairfax. 

When I was back in Sydney, we had lunch here at the Annandale North Hotel, and I asked him ‘What are you going to do?’ 

He looked me in the eye and whispered quietly, ‘I think I am going to start a national Christian newspaper.’

If anyone else had said that, one might have laughed.

But Peter Christopher, who was at the time chief of staff of the Sydney Morning Herald, had told me that, ‘John has taught me more about newspapers than any other person.’

So I said, ‘Wow.  Tell me more…’

John started to speak of an initial newspaper offering, but a vision of quickly evolving into a web based site and stories distributed by social media promotion. 

14 years later it sounds so obvious.  But back then it was visionary and ground breaking. 

A few months later, the Eternity Christian newspaper was born. 

Eternity was produced on John’s kitchen table.  John used part of his Fairfax redundancy money to finance the initial print run.  John wrote almost every article.   John borrowed a desk from our church office, and in the first 12 months would sometimes meet potential advertisers in our church meeting rooms.  The budget was so lean at the start that rather than hire a PO Box, they used our Church’s PO Box 373 Annandale address. Now 14 years later we sometimes receive review copies of new Christian books that have come to us by some out of date publishing company mailing list. 

Independent media is a struggle.  And it’s been a hard season for mainstream publications, let alone those operating in the Christian niche.  A few years later John sold Eternity to Bible Society. He remained editor.  Eternity went from being the nimble independent to part of a bigger machine. 

This month the Bible Society have changed direction.  If Eternity keeps going, which it probably will, it won’t be a news breaking entity, but (while John didn’t say this) my impression from looking at the latest issue is that it’s future is as more of a Bible Society PR vehicle with positive longer features on bible translation for remote parts of Australia. I am for those kind of stories.  I’d just prefer a genuine news vehicle which also has stories that aren’t PR driven. 

Things come in seasons.  14 years is a pretty good one. Not many people stay in a job that long.  John has run fast as the editor of a national newspaper for 14 years staying across a daily cycle. 

For that he deserves kudos and thanks. 

Sometimes I thought the old Eternity was great. Sometimes I would ring John to give praise. Sometimes it really annoyed me. Sometimes I would ring to say ‘What are you doing?’ 

But I think the church in Australia was better because of it. Media voices offering reporting, critique and sometimes endorsement, even from a semi independent position, even when I didn’t agree, help make us better.  Without that scrutiny, we inevitably grow complacent, sloppy, inefficient and indulgent. 

So I feel disappointed in the Bible Society’s change in direction. And more than a little concerned about the gap in the media market. Now that there’s no really even vaguely independent Christian media with any kind of resources (apart from denominational PR publications), to talk about the great things that are happening, and to do any type of reporting on what is going on to glorify Christ Jesus in this massive wonderful mixed up diverse family of God’s people across Australia. 

John and I had lunch today to mark the end of Eternity in it’s current format.  And we choose the Annandale North to give an appropriate bookend to that 2008 lunch.

So what happened today when we were lunch at the Annandale North Hotel, and I asked him ‘What are you going to do next?’ 

I asked John exactly the same question at lunch today that I asked 14 years ago.

He looked me in the eye and whispered … (No that’s his story to tell. I’ll leave it for him to share in his time).

- Dominic Steele