Working on big issues
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 24: Participation Society
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Alan Attwood
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Alan Attwood's biography and other articles by this writer
For a couple of years in the mid-1990s, I worked out of an office overlooking Times Square. Sounds of the midtown-Manhattan traffic, many floors below, were screened out by huge windows, which, when it grew dark, offered spectacular views of the neon advertising signs and the lights of the fast-flowing canyons of traffic. Not infrequently, I abandoned all pretence of work. I'd just sit there at my desk, gazing out at the view, knowing that this couldn't and wouldn't last, and that I'd never again have such an extravagant office.
I was right.
Even before my term was up as New York correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the bean-counters had grown restless and the downsizing began. The operation moved to a less scenic location a few blocks from Grand Central Station. At street level there was a pizza shop; depending on the wind and quirks of the building's air-conditioning, we'd often get a blast of capricciosa or pepperoni late in the day. Yet still it was not exactly a hardship posting – how could it be with the stone lions outside the New York Public Library or the squirrels of Central Park within easy walking distance?
Now it's not unusual for my working days to begin with a minute or two spent brushing mouse shit off my desk, though I sometimes have to delay this while I twiddle with the bare light bulb above to get it to stay on. I work in a bluestone building that dates from the mid-nineteenth century: it's a heritage building and lovely to look at (from outside), but it often seems that much of the building's wiring and plumbing is only slightly more recent than its foundations. I know all about the plumbing: a toilet, used by many people, is next to my office. The computer I sit at is elderly and regularly shuts down without warning. Oh yes – the building has no air-conditioning, which makes working conditions interesting in the extremes of summer and winter.
Nevertheless, I feel more at home as editor of The Big Issue, the fortnightly magazine sold on streets around Australia by marginalised people, than I did for much of my time working in the mainstream media.
Part of the reason for this lies in the flip response I developed for those who ask me what it's like to go from somewhere like The Age – where I was on staff for eighteen years, on and off – to The Big Issue. ‘Well,' I reply, ‘you meet a better class of people.'
That usually prompts a snigger, but there's also some truth in it. One problem I had working for Fairfax was an unsettling suspicion that my labour was helping to make some fairly ordinary types even wealthier or more prominent. (The appalling Conrad Black was my putative boss for a bizarre period in the 1990s.) At The Big Issue, I mix daily with the people who sell the magazine: people who are or have been homeless; people battling substance-abuse problems; people with mental illness; people doing it tough for all kinds of reasons, including disability. They are people, across the country, who buy the magazine for $2.50 per copy from our offices or outlets like The Body Shop, then go out to try to sell them for $5.
But the magazine doesn't just represent money for the vendors. I realised that early in my time as editor, which began in November 2006, when I asked a Melbourne vendor how many magazines he hoped to sell that day. ‘Eight,' he replied. I quickly did the maths: the cover-price was then $4; eight sales meant a profit of $16, enough for cigarettes and not much more. But those eight magazines gave this bloke a sense of purpose and, importantly, something to do with his time. Days drag when you're unemployed. Those eight magazines represented a goal, which is why few workers ever look more pleased with themselves than a vendor who has sold his last magazine for the day. And it is work. Try it sometime: stand in a public place trying to interest passers-by in something you're selling – especially when everyone's feeling squeezed and daily papers are given away for free.
There are all kinds of reasons why people end up selling The Big Issue. It's often described as the magazine sold by homeless people. That's simplistic. Only some sleep rough. I don't know where most of the vendors (the vast majority of whom are men) spend their nights, nor is it my business to pry. But I generally only have to chat to a vendor for a few minutes to get a sense of why they are selling the magazine rather than doing something else. Most would struggle to hold down a ‘regular' job, which is why The Big Issue is so important: it offers employment to those who would otherwise be jobless. Some vendors are quite entrepreneurial: they have sales spiels and put on a show for prospective customers. Their income can reflect their salesmanship. Others do little more than stand or sit with the magazine on display. They are the ones I admire the most. And they are used to being ignored. People, especially in cities, are good at not seeing things. They stream past a vendor with that blinkered look that says ‘I'm not sure what you're selling, but I don't want any.' The biggest frustration, both for vendors and all of us working on the magazine, is that the Australian edition has existed for close to thirteen years now and yet too many people still aren't sure what it is. I hear myself saying all the time: ‘No, it's not a greenie magazine.' (Or a leftie magazine. Or a union magazine. Certainly not the Scientologists' magazine.) It's simply a lively, general-interest magazine that exists to help those who sell it – a task that's becoming harder rather than easier.
LATE LAST YEAR, WHEN THE WORDS 'GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS' crept into common use, someone said to me, ‘Well, your blokes aren't going to be affected, are they?' When I asked what he meant, he continued: ‘Well, the magazine sellers don't have mortgages; don't have super funds; don't have share portfolios going backwards. They're insulated from all this, aren't they?' No they're not. They've been hit, like everyone else. In 2007, we set records for magazine sales; last year, figures started to dip. End-of-year sales picked up again (the Christmas spirit is not dead), but this year will be tough. Our sales are influenced by everything from bad weather to public-transport problems and holidays, but it seems clear that many people who, twelve months ago, would hand over $5 for a magazine without a second thought are now hanging on to it. Everyone, in different ways, is feeling the pinch, including our vendors. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the same people who, not long ago, walked past vendors without a second glance will have to consider the magazine as an employment option one day. It's happening already: tough times can make the unimaginable worth considering.
I didn't become aware of The Big Issue myself until I returned to Australia from New York in September 1998. (The first edition had hit the Melbourne streets two years earlier.) From my first encounter, it struck me as a brilliantly simple and practical idea: a magazine that directly helped those who sold it. I started buying copies whenever I saw a vendor, though often I'd hand over the coins in the same way I might give money to a busker or beggar: it was essentially a feel-good purchase, and I might only skim the magazine later. When I did read it, however, I'd often be impressed by the content: this was a magazine with personality and presence. I learned a little more about it; visited the bluestone office (donated, rent-free, by the Wesley Mission) to write a newspaper article on a literacy program being run for vendors and friends. This was an outfit with a clear sense of purpose.
But it wasn't until some years later, in 2003, that I actually got involved – after I'd finally left my staff position at The Age. There were several reasons for this, and only in retrospect is it apparent that I was wrestling with the notion of work, and what I really wanted to do. At the time, the most obvious reason for walking away from a secure, well-paid job was a delayed case of foreign correspondent's syndrome: after being out of the country for several years, reporting on stories like a US presidential campaign, it can be hard to feel engaged by domestic politics and events. There was also a sense of covering the same events again and again, of measuring out my life with Melbourne Cups or Australian Opens. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be a journalist any longer.
I was fascinated by the career arc of a feature-writer I'd admired as a teenager in the 1970s, when I first started to get interested in papers. With great style, this bloke rode the wave of the so-called ‘new journalism', then walked away from it all and moved to the country to try life as a restaurateur. Later I read a story in which someone asked him why he'd done this. His answer? ‘I didn't want to keep asking people questions.' That was how I felt in 2003. There was another factor, too: my second novel had just been published, sparking a (short-lived) burst of interest. I was attending literary festivals not as a reporter but, rather, a guest. I was done with journalism; I was going to be an author.
Well, not just an author. I wrote a letter to The Big Issue, saying I'd always admired the publication and its purpose, and could I help? In response, the editor called. She'd be pleased to have me contribute some pieces, she said, but did I appreciate that they paid crap? That was fine; I wasn't doing it for the money. A little later, when I was contributing fortnightly columns for the magazine, I visited the office to meet her. I arrived on time at the bluestone building, announced myself and waited. Then waited some more. This was odd. I became conscious of a muffled banging from somewhere above. A young woman came down from upstairs, with an expression that seemed like a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. Sorry, I was told, the editor was locked inside the toilet. Seems she'd popped in for a quick visit before coming down to see me, only to have the door handle fall off. All that banging had been her trying to attract attention so she could get out.
Six years on, that visit seems like the perfect introduction to life at The Big Issue. Now I'm the editor, I sit in a small room next to that toilet, and I regularly tell people that I'd love to have them contribute some pieces, but did they appreciate that we pay crap? Six years ago, I wouldn't have anticipated this. After all, wasn't I going to be an author? Yes I was, until I discovered, predictably, that it wasn't as easy as it looks.
Other things were going on, too: my father, who'd already been in a nursing home for several years, inexorably slipped further down the ghastly slippery-dip of dementia. When I'd visit him I'd leave in despair; when I didn't visit I'd feel guilty. In between visits (or non-visits) I'd struggle with the next book, which had become a problem-child. In the scheme of things, spending too much time on my own talking only to the dog was not very healthy. My father's death in mid-2005 marked an end-point for all kinds of things, not least those incessant visits.
When it was all over, my sister and I looked at each other and asked: what did people do with their weekends? Suddenly I had more time. One thing I did with it was get more involved with The Big Issue and its people. I started going in once a fortnight to assist with proofreading, went along to Wednesday-afternoon soccer sessions, where my role was to prove to the motley mob who attended that none of them was the worst player on the pitch. No, that was me. Over time, I realised I was gravitating to the ‘Ish' and its people; there was something there – commitment, idealism, a sense of fun – I'd often found missing in mainstream journalism.
I was doing some of that again, too. I'd reconciled myself to the idea that journalism was essentially my trade. Some people are plumbers. Others are nurses. My trade was journalism, and there were worse things to do. Having wondered, in 2003, if I'd done my final interview, I headed out again with a notebook and tape-recorder for a magazine feature. Despite some early misgivings, it wasn't so bad. I felt like a footballer who'd missed a season with a bung knee and then found he quite liked being out on the field again, chasing a kick. Meanwhile, I'd also started volunteering.