Pounding the Typewriter
A week after the Moyes arrived in Ararat Chris Fisher, the journalist from the Ararat Advertiser, called hoping to dredge up something interesting to write about. It was hard to find newsworthy material in a small country town and sometimes the best he could do was attend the courts. There he might hear the local magistrate fine a young man for speeding and comment:
“There are too many reckless drivers in our community these days. This is the second case I have had this week.”
Then the young journalist wrote a story that headlined in the next day’s paper as “Epidemic of speeding,” says Magistrate. The front page contained a full spread of interviews with townspeople about the recklessness of young drivers speeding through Ararat streets and the dire results that were sure to follow—so he averted the news famine for another day. But when Chris came to see whether he could make something newsworthy out of Gordon’s arrival in their small town, he struck gold.
“First of all,” he said settling onto the ex fowl-roost sofa and getting out his pencil and notepad, “why did you come here? Why would anyone come from the city to this one-horse place?”
“Well, you see…” Gordon explained about his desire to study in America and how the assassination of President Kennedy had affected him personally. “When the American Consulate went into terrorist alert they somehow lost our visas and as a result the ship on which we’d booked to leave Sydney sailed off without us.
“We were left with nothing,” he paused dramatically in his tale. “No car, no home, no job, no money, no possessions.”
“I see you’ve got a Jaguar now,” Chris sounded a little envious and Gordon laughed.
“Well, I guess not everyone has a stepfather who runs a car- wrecking business. He has loaned us that big blue Mark 8. He put it together using parts he salvaged from wrecked Jaguars.”
The two young men chatted together for quite awhile and then Chris thanked Gordon for his time, took photographs of the family, and went on his way.
On the following day Gordon was amazed to see that their story had made the front page of the local newspaper—and the second page—and the third page. Chris had spun that story out into a whole series of articles under the heading “Missed Boat to U S A. Pastor for Ararat.”
Gordon discovered himself described as a “Brilliant Churches of Christ Minister, Pastor Gordon K. Moyes, B A, has taken up an appointment in Ararat for twelve months, before sailing to America to start on four years of theological studies which are planned to lead toward a Doctorate.
“An authority on the decline of churches in Melbourne’s inner circles, Pastor Moyes is only in Ararat because arrangements for his USA trip were not completed in time for the university year.”
On and on the story ran. Chris developed a great theory on Gordon’s expertise in pastoring to the slums. Then he wrote a paragraph on Gordon’s post-graduate studies, and another on the his dreams and plans.
On the next page there was a major feature about the blue Jaguar with an opening paragraph that began, “It is not every Pastor who has a father with a Jaguar works.” The old car wrecker’s yard had suddenly been transformed into a `Jaguar works.’ Joe Vial would have been proud.
While Gordon and Beverley were overwhelmed with embarrassment about the fulsomeness of the articles, they admitted that most of the facts were true but they had been expressed in a way which greatly exaggerated their significance.
In the following weeks and months the real meaning of the saying “The Power of the Press,” came home to Gordon when people he had never met telephoned or sent him invitations to speak at various functions. Overnight he had become almost a celebrity.
Impressed by what newspaper publicity could accomplish even in a country town, Gordon began to study journalistic methods. He bought copies of the leading Melbourne newspapers and examined them closely. He counted the words in a sentence and the sentences in a paragraph. He noted the value and number of words in a heading or sub-heading.
He was no stranger to writing. During his first year at Bible College he had begun writing for church publications. His efforts met with instant success but they were an entirely different type from this heady style of journalism. For the religious publications he had chosen a Biblical or spiritual topic, explained its background and logically worked toward a conclusion that stressed the subject’s importance.
Now he discovered that journalists began with the important event and followed along with added details. Their sentences were shorter and more terse. Their `padding’ came at the end of the news release instead of at the beginning and so could easily be discarded if space became a problem.
Delighted with the success of his first stories about the Moyes, Chris came around again and again seeking follow-up stories or previews of plans. Gordon was happy to oblige and thus began his romance with the press.
