It's pretty essential that we find a photograph to go with each story, for typesetting and colour purposes, and sometimes this requires a little creative thinking.
'Man sues drug company for having a non stop erection for three years' is a made-to-measure online story, but you cant very well have an accompanying thumnail which demonstrates the said affliction. So you go for something like this:
To find the pictures you hit a program called NewsImage, which is like Google Images gone troppo. Type in anything, anything, and a ream of photos come splurging onto the screen. 'Paris+Hilton' turns out something like 48,000 matches - not just because of the tacky broad of the same name but also because of the city, the hotel, etc.
(I actually quite like her)
But its not all lithe blondes and footy players. Sometimes, you're scouring the system for photos you'd rather not look at, know about, think about.
A case that has come up in the past week is the reappearence in court of this notorious SA paedophile by the name of Bevan Spencer von Einem. He sounds like an Austrian composer, but no. He is not.
Sometime in the 80's, Von Einem was sentenced to three decades in prison for kidnapping the 15-year-old son of a famous local newsreader. Von Einem tortured, drugged, raped and held the boy captive for five weeks, before murdering him and dumping his body in the Adelaide Hills. Seriously. Fucked. Up.
The newsreader is still on air: he's like the Peter Hitchener of Adelaide. But he is discreetly put on leave every time Von Einem story bobs to the surface, to save him reading headlines about the man who no doubt ruined his life.
So Von Einem is back in the news after being caught with a stack of descriptive stories he'd written about young kids for his own gratification. It has caused an almighty stir: understandably anything to do with this man sets a ripple of unrest through the community. But it is still to be argued that hand written sheets of paper count as child porn.
Another big case featured almost daily is the Stuart McDonald trial. McDonald alledgedly infected 12 Adelaide men with HIV in a a string of gaydar internet hook up's. According to police, he knowingly infected the men and his extreme narcissism means he has no remource for his actions.
Whether this is guilty or not doesnt really diminish the fact that what we have here is a good old fashioned witch hunt, and the story sells papers. Lots of them.
There is only one photo of McDonald in existance, theres no choice but to run it. It's seared onto my memory.
Thats the trouble. Sometimes, you just don't want to know. Maybe thats why journalists have the whole a hard nosed, boozing, cynical reputation. It's all you can do but sigh, or shrug, or laugh - then move on to another Paris Hilton story.
For a city with a relatively modest population, Adelaide certainly has its share of the macabre. Apparently Salman Rushdie came to research a book here years ago, and said it had the strangest energy of any city he had ever been to.
Some think its the Aboriginal spirits still turbulating ancient unrest. Others reckon Australias baddest crims usually escape to the bleak wilds of northern South Australia to evade capture - making Adelaide the closest metro to prey upon.
In any case, an awful lot of random shit goes on in Adelaide.
Now I need to have a shower.
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