New media project set up in Darwin

October 12, 1994
Issue 

By Tim E. Stewart

DARWIN — Challenging the daily terror of Murdoch headlines, a group of locals have embarked on an ambition media project. They are setting up a community-based paper in direct opposition to the sex, law and order of Darwin's only daily, the NT News. Currently Under Represented Views, or CURVE, will be launched this month as a bi-monthly journal aimed at getting new and different voices into the print media.

Green Left Weekly spoke to Jo Harcourt-Smith about the project. She said that the central aim is to get new and different opinions that the NT News doesn't cover and make the media accessible to voices that aren't often heard.

"The biggest thing with the NT News is its amazing silencing effect. For example, the opening of State Square in August was a classic. There was a substantial group of people there screaming their lungs out. And the next day there's a two-page spread on the opening, but there's only one line mentioning protesters. We may as well not have existed. That silence is so obvious.

"If we're running the same article and saying, 'Actually, there are more people who don't want State Square', people in their homes might feel better and think, 'I'm not the only one that thinks like this'. People in suburbia still have the same ambitions and fears and questions about where our money is going. CURVE aims to make contact with those people and say that these things are actually happening.

"By embarking on CURVE, we are trying to open up Darwin a bit more, give a bit more support for progressive ideas, a bit more truth."

Inspired by other NT media such as Spark in Alice Springs and the Northern Territory University Student Paper Deli-rra, the original plan was not to have any capital involved at all, but to use existing community and support organisations to provide articles and distribution networks.

"Already", Harcourt-Smith says, "people are saying yes, this is really good. Getting in contact with people has been fantastic. We've been in touch with the Alice Springs people group and the Aboriginal health centre in Tennant Creek. Most of the response has come from people in community organisations."

The founding CURVE editorial collective is made up of a high school counsellor, a postgraduate education student, an occupational therapist and the education officer of the university student union.

"The first edition is to try to figure out the politics of it, getting something together to try and take around to businesses for advertising", Harcourt-Smith said. "The eventual aim is to have it published more than once every two months. There is an idea that each issue will have a theme."

CURVE will reflect the rich cultural background Darwin — including Aboriginal, Filipino, Papua New Guinean and East Timorese. "We'll be inviting people to write in their own language because having their own language printed is a very empowering thing." Already, two articles for the first edition have been written in Portuguese and Burmese.

"The whole idea is to get information to people. Information is the most important thing." The first issue of CURVE is due out this. Phone (089) 855 773 for more information.

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