THE NEWS IS A JOKE: Assignment 2 Research (Post 2)
POST THREE: RESEARCH
This week for each of us has certainly been busier with the larger class project taking up our time and with other assignments, but thankfully we have managed to establish a further sense of communication with one another by creating a facebook group chat to keep each other updated on the research process. As of currently, we are mainly communicating our research and general ideas with one another, as deciding on group roles is something we believe can be left until later as each of us are flexible with working in any role. We have lightly touched on angles for our news story, and have been gradually building up our research, but still have a bit of a way to go.
If I’m honest, my research has certainly been lacking, but I have managed to find a few more articles that were published within the past 15 months, and they’re still mostly similar in content.
However, I did find an interesting piece, published on the 2nd of March 2017, was an interview style report with Retail doctor Brian Walker, who visited the town of Bendigo in late February 2017, evaluating the state of the overall community and town. Mr. Walker described Bendigo’s business district as “a tale of two cities”, and highlighted that although the city certainly had a ‘unique’ and ‘chic’ culture, but there was clear room for improvement.
“We have customers coming to Bendigo for its wonderful gallery, its wonderful cafes, but they’re walking past empty shops,” he was recorded saying, acknowledging that the people of Bendigo and in surrounding Victorian towns have an interest and desire to come to Bendigo, but are arriving only to be disappointed. I found that this quote, in particular, could be used with the other research I had gathered from the Council and how they have faith that the people of Bendigo and the workers themselves need to assist in improving the state of the Mall. The article also stated that ‘Mr Walker believed shoppers would rather drive to a Melbourne mall than visit several Bendigo locations looking for the one product’.
If I’m honest, much of the reporting I have found on this issue isn’t entirely fair, much of the interviewees have been with people of power such as the Mayor and city council members. I can’t say that the reporting has been as balanced as I had hoped. I had expected to find a balance between interviews with council members, as well as Bendigo residents and shopkeepers at the Hargreaves Mall.
Although this update has taken more of a negative turn, I hope as the research process goes further and as we bring together our findings as a group, that we are able to find a fair balance in research, as well as establish a strong contention and points of discussion for our potential segment. This is not to say that we haven’t had any good progress, with Darcy’s more extensive knowledge and physical closeness to the issue, he has been able to construct a timeline of ‘events’ and moments that have lead up to the potential reform of Hargreaves Mall. The timeline and all our research is still in general a work in progress but we will certainly continue to record the progress we make over the coming weeks.
article with Brian Walker interview: https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/4503360/bendigo-trading-tale-of-two-cities-retail-doctor/