Fires, funerals and MPs’ expenses keep the Herald newsroom humming

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By mid-December we are usually in what’s affectionately known in the media industry as “the silly season”.

This is when the serious news cycle slows, as politicians and business leaders start to wind down for the holiday period, and less serious, quirky stories bubble to the surface.

However, since last Friday the volume of serious news has been coming thick and fast.

The fire at Koolewong burning into the night over Brisbane Water.

On Saturday afternoon, the awful downside of hot weather came screaming into focus, when a fast-moving fire tore through the Central Coast suburb of Koolewong, forcing people to evacuate and destroying homes. Meanwhile, another out-of-control fire threatened residents near Bulahdelah on the NSW Mid North Coast.

We do a lot of training and planning in winter months getting our staff accreditation with the NSW Rural Fire Service, ensuring we have adequate supplies of personal protective clothing and looking at the risk assessments involved in covering bushfires.

On Saturday, we brought you the news of the fire from our breaking news team, before sending photographer Sitthixay Ditthavong to the scene. He was joined early on Sunday morning by reporter Sally Rawsthorne, and they found the amazing tale of Steve Foskett, a local builder whose latest construction, built to the new bushfire standards, survived while older houses burnt. Foskett also stayed and defended his own home, and his story and the heartbreaking images of the devastation this fire caused featured prominently on our homepage on Sunday.

Steve Foskett and his dog Cali, who “didn’t do any helping” while they defended his home.

We later found out National Parks and Wildlife Service firefighter John Lohan, 59, was killed by a falling tree at Nerong on Sunday night while battling the Bulahdelah blaze, which had spread over thousands of hectares.

After the weekend tragedy of the fires came Graham Richardson’s state funeral on Tuesday – a peak Sydney event covered in our live blog, featuring witty posts from our CBD columnists. We also published a sketch by columnist Tony Wright, who has attended more than his fair share of state funerals over the decades, and a wonderful observational piece by Harriet Alexander. While all media covered this event, the Herald stood out for refusing to gloss over the sins of Richardson’s past while questioning the merit of whether he deserved a state funeral.

On Wednesday, we had the introduction of the federal government’s social media ban for under-16s, a world-leading piece of legislation. We had a live blog featuring reactions from young Australians as they found themselves locked out of their accounts, although many found ways to beat the ban.

Not surprisingly, our own social channels were a great way to interact with new audiences about the ban. There was huge engagement on our Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and our WhatsApp channel before the ban, but the big winner on Wednesday was a video on the Herald’s TikTok account, featuring reporter Bronte Gossling, that had 3.2 million views and more than 3400 comments.

Unfortunately for the federal government, its moment of glory was somewhat overshadowed by a rolling crisis on MPs’ expenses, with Communications Minister Anika Wells at the centre of the growing media storm. The Herald has devoted considerable resources to examining the spending of Wells and others for the very obvious reason that it is our money they are spending. While most of our stories have been hard-hitting, state political editor Alexandra Smith published the contrary view, pointing out how hard-working most MPs are and the need for politicians to be able to see their families – within reasonable limits, of course.

Throughout the expenses fiasco of the past week, which has cut through like nothing else, Anthony Albanese and his ministers have been remarkably tin-eared.

After days of negative coverage, Albanese finally cracked yesterday, making the extraordinary statement: “I’m not the finance minister. I haven’t changed the rule.” He may well live to regret these words. Tomorrow we will bring you the inside story of why Wells is at the centre of this storm. Keep your eyes on our website after 6am.

The other big news event this week was the series of articles written by Melbourne investigative reporter Nick McKenzie about the MA Services Group.

The firm’s owner, Micky Ahuja, was forced to step down as chief executive on Thursday morning after the Herald and The Age uncovered allegations of him sexually harassing female employees, bullying and offering vulnerable women cash in exchange for sex. We will bring you more revelations about this disturbing story and its implications for the security industry tomorrow.

On a lighter note, following the huge interest in our reviews of Christmas hams the week before, the Good Food team published a taste test of the best supermarket smoked salmons. In this case, the cheapest came out tops.