I used to read the newspaper when I was younger, and by younger, I mean ages 4-16. I think the very young reading was an interest in the newspaper itself. They were intriguing things that supposedly held all of the information of the day, and I was obsessed with the paper and how it crinkled when you read. I was the “flick it out to read it” kind of kid because I liked the sound. I didn’t really take in anything that was written, but loved to go through the Classifieds and circle things, pretending that I had a reason to. I liked the comics and I liked drawing stick figures in the houses in the real estate sections.

As I got older, I liked collecting clips that seemed interesting, anything random that captured my interest, and eventually I started scrapbooking them as I reached that point in my life where I was becoming more aware of things that were happening, such as bush-fires and floods and murders. Before then, life outside books and the backyard didn’t really interest me, and I didn’t have a lot of empathy back then either, and so I couldn’t understand why I was expected to be impacted by “national tragedies”—although that might be more because of youthful egocentrism. I just remember when people talk about tragic events and how they remember them and my response would often be “oh, I don’t remember that” and assume it must’ve happened long before I was born. And then I learn it happened when I was six or seven, old enough to remember.

Around the age of fifteen, my attitude towards newspapers changed. I was still scrapbooking articles but noticed a trend. The articles about women being murdered in their own homes were so small … and yet there were six pages worth of football. I don’t care for sports—it’s not that I don’t like them or appreciate sport skill—and being raised in a few different domestically violent environments, it just didn’t make sense to me. Why was this woman’s life worth so much less than the football? And then the questions just kept coming. Why is this article of a serial rapist worth so much less than the football? Why are women being beaten to death across this country worth so much less than the football? Than the football? Than the footballers. The footballers who have plenty of domestic violence cases against them … plenty of rape cases … Are newspapers where abusers get a platform? Though not every footballer is an abuser, of course, why don’t they at least bring awareness to these little articles about people being murdered in their own homes? By their partners? By strangers who have been raping and murdering plenty of others? “Because it’s the sports section, it’s about sport” … but why is it so big compared to the suffering of the people who these newspapers are meant to be telling the news to? Oh … it’s not meant for us.

I was so confused at how society weighed the value of different things, and it left me bitter. And so I stopped reading them. And then I got to university and began learning about the “corruption” of the media—on every type. It never occurred to me, as a kid, that one person could control the news delivered to thousands. And so, it made sense. But I still think about that tiny article about the woman murdered in her own home, by a partner who was known to be violent. It was probably 10cmx5cm. And then flicking through and skipping those large spreads of sport and thinking, “why is there so much of this and so little of that?” Because the size of a spread reflects its value, metaphorically and literally.

Now I’m older, I look through journals for materials and take most of the news “with a pinch of salt”. The magazines and newspapers at the front of stores often confound me as to the purpose of the front-page story—or the incredulity of the headline—but I have found some semblance of that old love in magazines with more specific topics. Writing magazines, National Geographic, Australian Geographic, and wellbeing mags. But I still think of that comparison of sizes … and wonder what I can do to help change that.