Of course, I was not alone. Throughout that time, an ever-changing team of reporters and photographers played a critical role in that curation.
Was it successful? Was it a good newspaper?
Well, a rising circulation — albeit slow and sometimes stationary — suggested it was embraced by the community.
The News became home for me in the early 1980s, and suddenly, I was launched into the strange yet exciting dynamics of a daily newspaper.
However, long before that, my editor at Echuca’s Riverine Herald, where I had worked on and off since I was about 16, was away for six weeks, and so being the senior reporter (we only had three on the editorial staff), the role naturally gravitated to me.
Before coming to Shepparton, I had left the Echuca paper and spent about two years in St Arnaud as editor of North Central News, a small weekly newspaper I dragged from its early 20th-century roots into the 1980s.
Did that prepare me for my role at this newspaper? Not at all, but being a sub-editor for a few months before moving into the editor’s chair gave me a chance to familiarise myself with the daily newspaper’s machinations.
Was I ready? As I said before, not at all.
However, I had immense support from my boss, Ross McPherson, reporters Geoff Adams, the late Keith Esson (a former editor himself), and the late Tom Carey (something of a polymath, but like all people, myself included, he was built of crooked timber and that cut short his reporting career), Noel Hussey (the then sport editor who had seemingly endless contacts and, like me, got his first chance as a reporter at Echuca), and last but not least, the legendary photographer Ray Sizer, who never eased in his ambitions to make our newspaper a better product.
And amid this cacophony of personalities, there was the quiet Welshman, ‘Johnno’, who found his way into newspapers through being a courier and, upon arriving here at The News, became, over time, one of our best and most sought-after storytellers.
Of course, there were others, and of them, some became embedded in our team, enriching it with their unique and frequently powerful talents, while others were just passing through.
It would be a failure on my part not to acknowledge all those in the building who, from the front office to the press crew, played a critical role in making my job comfortable and hugely satisfying.
The best story I published, and this can be remarkably subjective, was the work of the then young and talented reporter Sandra Lloyd, who explained how a newly married woman had lost her wedding ring while farming with her husband.
Some 38 years later, the couple’s 13-year-old grandson, had been sent to a paddock about 90m from the house where his grandfather was stripping wheat to tell him dinner was ready. Something on the ground caught his eye, he looked down - and there was the ring.
Readers loved that story, which illustrated that people want stories with which they can emotionally connect and, in some way, relate to their lives.
And the best phone call — again subjective — came about 6:30pm one evening, too late for the next day’s paper, when a farmer from out Harston way, south-west of Shepparton, called to say he had a UFO in his backyard.
If true, I imagined, the story would lead newspapers and other news services around the world — it turned out, however, to be a helicopter from the nearby Puckapunyal military base.
And so, what qualities make for a good editor?
I’m still not sure, but I do know good newspapers need a team of reporters, photographers and others with insatiable curiosity who are critically embedded in their community.
A good editor must be an intrinsic part of her or his community’s conversation. They must be across the local culture and willingly take readers along on whimsical journeys that are factual and sometimes fanciful forays. She or he must engage.
Was I ready? Of course not. I had never read the many books that were a part of daily conversation. Movies had never been an interest, and even today, I’ve probably seen only 10 of the many films linked to popular culture — and my interest in music was limited to just two or three performers.
Did it matter? Not really, except I mostly retreated into silence when the conversation drifted into those issues.
I wondered what worked for me. It became apparent that I was a contrarian, questioning what was. Always asking what, why, when and how.
I loved it — and with that curiosity still with me today, I love the often difficult but hugely rewarding social milieu of life.
The Wild West of social media has eroded once powerful and influential newspapers, but it seems to me — and I’m far from sure how or when — readers will again long for some sort of curated news service.
What appears may not be a repeat of what we know, but it will be phoenix-like, rising from the bones of what was.
Robert McLean is a former editor of The News.
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