Although I have not met Catherine Deveny, I have followed her path in journalism with some interest. Some years ago she wrote for our sister publication, Australian Catholics, and I have a tribal interest in her subsequent career, like that of others among 'our writers'.
Even from infrequent reading of her columns in The Age, I noticed that she wrote often on the Catholic Church, but that her later writing could scarcely be described as 'Catholic journalism'. The Catholic Church indeed became one of her regular targets. In her early newspaper writing I admired the strength of some of the moral positions she took. More recently, her writing appeared less personally involved, and based more on appearing outrageous.
When I heard that she had been sacked from The Age for her outrageous Logie night tweets, I felt some sympathy for her. She seemed the victim of the culture of media commentary. In her column she was encouraged to write stridently and to cross the boundaries of good taste and of ordinary human sympathy. The response expected from the column was, 'Ooh, isn't she awful?'.
Such columns are attractive to newspapers because of their capacity to polarise, and so to grow, their audience, with some people being outraged, while others identify with the causes adopted. I personally did not find Catherine Deveny's column humorous, but those who did saw humour in her over the top critique, particularly of religion, and in her uninhibited sexual reference.
The challenge of this kind of writing is that what yesterday was outrageous is pedestrian today. The ante needs to be upped. Deveny's tweets, which in part served to draw readers to her blog and column, duly upped it. But then she was sacked by the newspaper which set her along this path in the first place. The sacking smells of hypocrisy. Some will say that it was fair enough that those who live by the sword die by the sword. But in this case it appeared that those who provided her with the sword and encouraged her to use it liberally, stabbed her in the back with it.
The incident might make us reflect on a larger point: the increasing amount of commentary in newspapers and their blogs. Many of the commentators, like Deveny, present a public face that is rebarbative and disrespectful of people. People who know the columnists often say that