Chief of Staff

Coastal born and bred Julian O'Brien, Chief of Staff at The Advocate since 2003, spoke at our last meeting.

In his dreams Julian was always going to be a policeman, but after Ulverstone High School arranged work experience at the Advocate he knew he was onto something... Cutting his teeth on the sports desk he soon became the youngest sports editor at the Advocate at the tender age of 25 years.

Highlights of his reporting career included historic events like Cathy Freeman's greatest moment of lighting the Olympic flame and winning Gold at the 400 meter at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

In his 16 years at the paper he has seen many changes. Three ownership changes, from the Rural Press to Fairfax and now Newspaper Pty Ltd. Julian saw the trend move from home delivery to now primarily casual sales, and he observed content shifting from news-focused to more lifestyle/technology orientated as people are looking for a more emotional experience when reading papers. As a rural newspaper The Advocate is one of the leading regional papers of Australia. The Advocate will also stick to their strengths and keep on reporting on the North West, not wanting to be a National Paper.

Newspapers, Julian tells us, are now heading towards a more magazine-style look, as we see with the Herald. Secretly Julian is wondering how The Advocate will look on the iPad in the future, but does not believe that they will ever charge for website content as there is just too much on-line competition including the tax payers funded Rural ABC website. (Ed.If a special daily electronic version of the paper were to appear for mobile devices of course there will be a charge).

Julian  assures us that the paper does everything to avoid bias between the Devonport and Burnie regions and that although on some days more articles might cover the Burnie region, others days it favours Devonport. It is still a common perception both in Devonport and Burnie that there appears to be bias.

The club very much appreciated Julian O'Brien talk and were impressed that he still claims that even after 16 years at The Advocate (which is celebrating its 120th year) he has not once considered another carreer or employer.