At the risk of being patronising, the question needs to be put to the Tasmanian media that is put to each first year student of journalism and media studies: What is news?
Students learn to assess news value by applying a set of criteria, which are called news ingredients or characteristics. Most commonly, the list includes impact or relevance, proximity, prominence, timeliness, conflict, currency and the odd or unusual.
Obviously, not all seven ingredients will be found in every story but most stories will include more than one. A good story will usually include several.
Which brings me to the media release issued by Forestry Tasmania on 15 April 2003.
It is included here in full:
Derwent District Forest Manager Steve Whiteley said today that Tasmania's largest hardwood tree, 'El Grande', has once again demonstrated the natural resilience eucalypts have to fire.
"A regeneration burn conducted earlier this month has impacted on the tree despite our efforts to protect it by clearing away nearby harvesting debris, forming fire breaks and wetting down the tree.
Mr Whiteley said the giant Florentine Valley tree had sustained charring to the trunk and part of the inside lower portion and it is expected to shed its current covering of leaves before new leaves began to shoot.
"El Grande has endured many similar challenges by wildfires in its 350-year history and once again it continues to stand tall. The Eucalyptus regnans is of course protected from harvesting under our Giant Tree policy."
In deference to the tree's advanced years and fragile condition, Forestry Tasmania will exclude any harvesting or the passage of machinery within 100 metres.
Mr Whiteley said that seeds from El Grande had been collected and stored last year.
"Some of these seeds will be sown in prepared areas around the old tree to promote giant trees for the future on the site."
"We will be conducting a review of the condition of El Grande with a professional arborist in the near future to best manage its future. Earlier studies have shown it to be highly decayed, 80 per cent hollow and susceptible to collapse."
Measurements taken at the weekend show its height to still be approximately 79.5 metres.
ENDS
Contact details are provided plus a note: “A picture of the tree is available on request.”
The Mercury responded with a six-paragraph story written from the press release, accompanied by a photo of the tree and the headline: “Tasmania’s top tree survives the flames”. It ran at the bottom of page seven.
No other media outlet in Tasmania bothered.
Yet this story had more than its share of news ingredients. It was nearby, less than two hours away from Hobart in the Florentine Valley, so it had proximity. It was Tasmania’s largest tree, a named specimen. It may not have the prominence of an Eddie or a Kylie or the woman who fronts Big Brother, but it still has a level of prominence. It even had some timeliness. The fire had happened in April, within a week or so of the press release’s issue.
The element of conflict does not need explanation. Currency, one would assume, is also self-evident given that 18 per cent of Tasmanians voted Green at the last state election largely on the back of the forestry issue.
Impact or relevance is perhaps the hardest to identify. Does it make any difference to our lives that what is possibly the largest tree in Tasmania was almost destroyed by a fire lit by our forestry service?
For some Tasmanians, it wouldn’t matter. It’s old and rotting, according to the Forestry Tasmania press release, and its seed has been collected anyway. Nor is it classically beautiful when viewed in total, as the photograph supplied by Forestry Tasmania well shows.
But for other Tasmanians, it would matter. That tree and others like it in the Styx have come to symbolise much. Some people might think it important that forestry cannot be carried out in their vicinity without risking them.
But the point is not whether – in the end – Tasmanians think it matters or not. The point is only that they should have been told.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
On Thursday 1 May, the Mercury ran a follow-up story, bottom page 7, headlined "Doubt cast on scorched tree", where Paul Smith, Greens candidate and former forester, was quoted as saying he feared the eucalypt was fighting against the odds. But a Forestry Tasmania spokesperson responded by saying: "We don't expect it will die."
On Saturday 3 May, The Mercury reported that botanist Alan Gray believed El Grande had been cooked to death.
An emotional Mr Gray said: ``I have a particular feeling about Eucalyptus regnans, which are second in size only to Californian redwoods, and I take it almost as a personal affront to see this happen to a tree of such magnitude,'' he said.
``I consider things like this should be a national monument, anywhere else in the world it would be a glorified monument.
``They cleared away its natural habitat then burnt the damn thing. I'm angry and see it happening in many parts of Tasmania.''
Meanwhile Forestry Tasmania said it had never ruled out the tree would die, but advice was otherwise.
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown called for in inquiry into the "international disaster"
"This tree, so far as I know was the largest living tree outside North America," he said.
*LIBBY LESTER is a senior journalist and writer who has worked on The Examiner, The Age, and The Sunday Tasmanian and currently lectures in the School of Journalism at the University of Tasmania