Working on big issues

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.

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-19th 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.

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. 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. 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.

The biggest frustration, both for vendors and all of us working on the magazine, is that the Australian edition has existed for close to 13 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. Our sales are influenced by everything from bad weather to public-transport problems and holidays, but it seems clear that many people who, 12 months ago, would hand over $5 for a magazine without a second thought are now hanging on to it.

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: 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.

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. 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. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be a journalist any longer.

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.

Six years on, and 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.

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.

It was planned as a one-off excursion on a weekend morning, nothing more. I took my youngest son to the Collingwood children’s farm, just a few kilometres from Melbourne’s business centre. Our outing went OK, though Gus had seen quite enough animals after an hour or two. Before we left, though, and without much thought, I’d scribbled down some details under a notice headed Volunteers Wanted.

So I became a part-time farmer. I helped weed the veggie garden; I shovelled shit, working my way around paddocks with a wheelbarrow; I bottle-fed newborn lambs; I learned to milk a cow (badly). I enjoyed myself, coming home filthy but pleasantly tired.

The fact that I was earning nothing for my labour didn’t bother me. On the contrary, it was immensely liberating not to be putting a monetary value on my time.

My time at the farm turned out to be perfect preparation for working with Big Issue vendors, with their myriad problems. Ironically, I had to give up one to do the other. I left the farm on my last Friday afternoon with considerable pangs.

My contribution to the farm was minor: one afternoon a week only goes so far. But that time helped shape some of my thoughts about work. In retrospect, much of that period between leaving The Age in 2003 and starting as editor of The Big Issue late in 2006 was spent doing some hard thinking about what I really wanted to do.

Working for nothing at the farm, or as a fortnightly proofreader for the magazine, made it easier to go backwards (in terms of salary) when I took on the editor’s job. That wasn’t hard; after all, if money was what mattered most, I would never have left The Age. Staying somewhere just for the pay has always struck me as a slow death.

Looking back on a career path distinguished by several detours and a dead-end or two, it is clear that I’ve always been ambivalent about the nature of full-time work. And I’ve never been as concerned about pay as I probably should have been. Earning buckets of money has never been a priority. In fact, it has always seemed to me that huge salaries come at a high cost. It’s simple: if someone is paying you ridiculous sums of money, they have the right to believe that they have bought you.

The summer of 1977-78, before I started at The Age, was spent as a labourer/beach-bum in Mallacoota, near the Victoria-NSW border. I was helping a bloke who ran some holiday flats and did some abalone-diving. In return for odd jobs, supplemented by shifts at the local abalone processing plant, I had free board in a tiny caravan without wheels at the back of his property. For transport, I had a bicycle; for clothes, I needed nothing more than tee-shirt, shorts and thongs.

This was my life when a message was relayed via my employer: ring The Age. I made the call from a public phone in Mallacoota’s main street. I was being offered a coveted cadetship - on the strength of cuttings I’d sent in from the uni paper. I understood that my life was about to change dramatically, most likely forever. I was going to enter the workforce.

I got used to it. Sort of. Down the track a little way, after marriage and fatherhood, I went part time - first to look after a child, then for good when I realised I preferred working from home to working in an office. And that’s how it’s been for much of my time since. Let’s just say that in 31 years I’ve only once stayed long enough to earn long-service leave.

It may also be significant that my first day back from that long-service leave was the day I quit for good. A bit of perspective can be a very dangerous thing. I returned to my old desk, looked around, and at once it was perfectly clear: I didn’t want to be there any more.

I recall another moment of epiphany. This was in the US, around 1997. I was in transit in one of the huge hub airports, possibly Chicago, rushing from Gate 17 to Gate 53B. Suddenly I stopped and looked around, and was horrified by what I saw. There were hundreds and hundreds of people looking just like me: hurrying, hassled, with an overnight-bag on one shoulder, laptop on the other. This was no way to live your life. And it probably explains why, after I returned to Australia and a well-meaning editor tried to enthuse me with the prospect of further travel, that I told him I didn’t want to go anywhere for a while. You see so much more when you’re sitting still.

One thing was clear to me from my earliest days at The Big Issue: I was there because I wanted to be. Being an editor is like being a footy coach. You can be sacked any time. It’s an occupational hazard. If it happens to me, I’ll simply move along.

I chat with many of the vendors, but my main role, plain and simple, is to ensure that a new magazine is ready every fortnight. My job is to give them something to sell. That’s their job. And most are proud to do it. These people who have battled all kinds of demons in their lives have work, and something to do with their days. That’s no small thing.

I recall an occasion, when a conversation with a Big Issue veteran ended with him saying, quite softly, “Thanks for what you’re doing for us”. Those few words were more satisfying than any sherry upstairs with the MD. And can make mouse shit seem like nothing much at all.