The Age Pleads: Spurn Our Advertisers!

SAY WHAT you like about The Age, but you cannot fault Melbourne’s broadsheet for failing to stick with its principles.  Take senior editor Michael Short, for example, who might at some dimly grasped level of comprehension appreciate that newspapers are supported by advertisers keen to bring customers into their shops. But does that consideration colour his journalism?

Not on your nelly! With the retail sector experiencing all sorts of pain, Myer reeling and David Jones valued primarily for its real estate, Short today provides a sympathetic pulpit to Tamara DiMattina, who wants readers to spend October spurning consumerist emporiums of the sort that advertise their wares in the pages of the Age and Silly. Ms DiMattina explains:

"Buy Nothing New Month is not at all against retail; it's not anti-capitalist … It's suggesting you buy as much as you like during Buy Nothing New Month, as long as it is second hand. If you want to get into the Brotherhood of St Laurence stores or Sacred Heart Mission stores, they have great stuff. But if you wouldn't set foot inside a charity store, then there are also plenty of second-hand designer stores, as well."

Short must feel there is no risk to advocating DiMattina’s cause on the grounds that, since the Age recycles green memes endlessly, there is absolutely nothing new in its pages that remaining readers will feel obliged to boycott.

UPDATE: Girls, why opt for one of those fusty, well-cut, properly hemmed-and-darted, planet-destroying frocks when you could be the toast of the Age newsroom -- if not the paper's advertising manager -- in something like this fetching little number, which DiMattina whipped up herself?

DiMattina thinks her dress "looks way better than the cookie cutter approach of high street labels". To Age readers perhaps.