Graham Cassidy

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Laurie McGinness
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Graham Cassidy

Post by Laurie McGinness » Mon Oct 24, 2005 10:08 am

Some of you who remember who he is may have missed his appearance on Media Watch last week.......seems Syd works for the company doing the PR for the city tunnel these days and was busted for making a call to talk back radio claiming to be a "tradesman" from Cronulla who thought the tunnel was the best thing since sliced bread! Embarassing? True to form? I'll let you be the judge of that.

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Post by collnarra » Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:40 am

that is a long way from the ocean.

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syd

Post by filthbarrel » Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:41 am

You aint no spin doctor if you haven't been on Media Watch. I reckon GC would wear it as a badge of honour. I don't see anything wrong with what he did - ethically somewhat grey for sure, but not utter bullshite. And he be pulling a much better wage churning out spin than he ever got at the ASP.

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Post by Nick Carroll » Mon Oct 24, 2005 12:13 pm

Apropos of bugger all, I still reckon what the ASP Board did to Graham was the cruellest official move in that body's history.

Cassidy, a hardcore surfer from Sandshoes at Cronulla, busted his gut getting the 2SM-Coca-Cola Surfabout going back in 1974. He worked relentlessly to boost the sport's professional profile for many years, helping to drive it up and out of Fred Hemmings's minor league and into the global realm, and was ASP's executive director in the late 80s/early 90s, helping again to set in place the WCT/WQS format. Sid made a little bit of money doing this but I'll fricken guarantee the money didn't remotely match the effort. He did it because he really believed the sport needed to climb out of the drug haze of the early 70s and show itself for what it is.

Sid's big idea was to connect surfing up with mainstream event sponsors, people like Coke and Beaurepaires and Fosters and Subaru and the like. Undoubtedly this was a critical step in the development of surfing as a professional sport, and indirectly in its marketability to the wider world. It helped give the surf industry something to show people, and gave it a global basis for growth.

But Sid was never particularly matey with the surf companies' big guns, never One Of The Boys, and in the end it got him. In 1996 the ASP Board -- by this time peopled mostly with surf industry reps -- decided it didn't need mainstream backing, that the tour was better off in the hands of the surf industry. And Sid had made enough enemies in his time on board that they were easily recruited to cut him down. After all his time and effort, they shafted him without a second thought.

F**kin' woke me up as an observer of the surfing world, I tell ya. No more Pollyanna Nicky, thinking these companies were somehow fundamentally decent as a result of their surfing roots. Get between them and a dollar and see what happens.

Anyway ... just a bit of background on a very interesting man.

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Mon Oct 24, 2005 12:28 pm

It is a poor comment on standards of public morality filthbarrel that anyone would consider that kind of behaviour as anything but despicable......the hired mouthpiece, be it a shock jock or a PR flunky, is one of the lower forms of modern day life.

Now Nick,
He did it because he really believed the sport needed to climb out of the drug haze of the early 70s and show itself for what it is.

Sid's big idea was to connect surfing up with mainstream event sponsors, people like Coke and Beaurepaires and Fosters and Subaru and the like. Undoubtedly this was a critical step in the development of surfing as a professional sport, and indirectly in its marketability to the wider world.

........which is why so many of us had a major problem with him. I mean wasn't that a brilliant idea?....let's market this really nice little niche activity we've got going to the largest mass audience we can find....and get paid peanuts. Coke took surfing for a huge ride....the benefits went to their marketing arm......the costs to the vast majority of surfers who just wanted to ride a few quiet waves at their local beach without being inundated by people with no ongoing interest or commitment to the sport.

And the "drug haze" of the seventies was as nothing to the oblivion that came after. The image changed, the reality got even worse...but hey that's what PR is all about...sell more Coke, make a few bikkies for the hangers one...it's all good...isn't it?

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Post by bro » Mon Oct 24, 2005 12:33 pm

A great insight Nick

So then as a surf journo how do you marry the role of a journo in the surf industry with being able to write the truth about the industry?

As someone who works in the industry I see the mags bowing to the big brands whose support they need but it also means the industry is painted in nice rose tint but as you just mentioned and as others know there are some not very nice people in this sport who will do whatever it takes to make sure 'their brand" is represented in the best possible light. For example, (albeit a mild one) Billabong asking/telling Mc Coy to cut Blue Horizon to shoe AI in a more favourable light?

So would the truth cost you your career if you spoke your mind?

Your thoughts Nick?

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:43 pm

That's what happens when you don't use the preview button! The quote was actually my comment, the previous text was the quote from Nick.

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Post by collnarra » Mon Oct 24, 2005 2:54 pm

bro wrote: I see the mags bowing to the big brands whose support they need but it also means the industry is painted in nice rose tint
There's one very visible manifestation of this - mags, AFAIK, never do product comparisons. Read a car mag like Wheels, and you get the unvarnished truth about a vehicle. Read a computer mag like APC and they don't pull punches when something doesn't measure up.

Surf mags? They have "buying guides" to wetsuits and boards. I'm guessing the vendors pay to be in them, so you'll never hear how one suit is really shite, or another one really shines. You'll never get an editorial voice about the rights and wrongs of board production being moved offshore, and you won't hear a peep about the conditions your boardshorts and wetsuits are manufactured in.

If a mag did decide to take this line its ads would evaporate faster than metho on a mirror. Don't believe me? Stab dissed Slater in its first issue. You'll look long and hard before finding a Quiksilver ad in that mag.

But there are only three areas where you need the surf industry: boards, leggies and wetsuits. And, I guess, wax. They need you. That's why these sort of forums are good for unvarnished communication. Did anyone see how fast O'Neill responded when people in the forums started talking about poor service?

That's a company that's seen the future.

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Post by filthbarrel » Mon Oct 24, 2005 2:57 pm

I don't see the role of a PR person as black and white as you do Laurie. PR can be enlightening - it more depends on who you work for and what the expectations are. I would think that to work PR for Greenpeace is a reasonably acceptable position. Why is a PR worse than a journalist? They both need each other -like sucker fish and sharks - you can decide who plays what role on any given day.

Syd's story on Media watch was fine by me. If you work as a journo and you take the free tickets, trips, wetsuits and all the other payola, you are working as PR.

[url]http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transc ... 483777.htm[/url]

NC doesn't need anyone sticking up for him, but I would think he has shown that it is perfectly possible to balance contradictory ideas at the same time and remain in focus. I think he can point to plenty of his work, more than anyone than perhaps Warshaw, that is deeply critical of 'the machine' that the industry has become. He has become a legitimate opposition on the inside - hey there aren't that many people that can get paid for telling the bosses over and over that they suck big time. And he might point out when they do something good, such as donate to Aceh.

And I can look back to Surfing World in 1962 and see that there are tons of complaints about crowds at Sydney beaches. The myth that there was a golden era in the 70s when few people surfed is not supported by the number of articles in surfing mags from 62 on arguing about how bad the crowds are in the water suggest that 'niche' was nott an appropriate adjective by the time Syd was on the scene.

Maybe pre 1959 it was niche.

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Post by Clif » Mon Oct 24, 2005 3:46 pm

hahah, i'm with filthbarrel on this one. golden era? when, where and how? in the minds of a few old foggy brains.

this myth of a pure surfing soul corrupted by the media and corporations doesn't account for how there was no original purity. even the hawaiian's gambled, broadcast and disseminated surfing.

there are and always will be places to just go surfing with your mates without wetsuits in freezing cold conditions n a yellowed single fin made of balsa. but to think that surfing would be less crowded and more pure because of those qualities is buying into the very myths peddled by the corporations and surfing media.

there is a commercialised surfing taking place, use it to your own advantage instead of whinging about it. utilise the advances in wetsuit and board technology, the ability to travel and the like. to argue about the "soul' of surfing is to get caught up in the very mythical debates one is supposedly able to escape from and that fuel surfing corporations.

as for working in the surfing media as ethical compromise. every job is an ethical compromise at some level unless you are doing charity work. so those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

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Post by Nick Carroll » Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:00 pm

bro wrote:A great insight Nick

So then as a surf journo how do you marry the role of a journo in the surf industry with being able to write the truth about the industry?

So would the truth cost you your career if you spoke your mind?

Your thoughts Nick?
Hi bro, well as you can imagine I've given this question considerable thought over the years.

My experience of surf industry retaliation in Magworld is that it's not predictable, nor is it always particularly rational. If a company leader decides he doesn't like a magazine, the entire company will often kind of band together against that mag and make the editor's and ad sales crew's life hell, sometimes for years -- long after the actual sin, whatever it was, has been forgotten by all involved. On the other hand, if the same person decides a mag's "their mag", that magazine can do no wrong in that company's eyes, no matter the feebleness of their content or the incompetence of their ad staff.

I used to worry about it all a lot, especially in the USA, where an irrationally angry advertiser might cost your mag hundreds of thousands of dollars -- and like it or not, if you cause your mag to lose that kind of money, you're really not helping anybody at all. These days I don't really sweat on it, partly because experience has shown me that it all comes out in the wash. All you can do is make sure you've done your research and that your article is substantial, not just some slagging-off. (See "speaking your mind". "Speaking your mind" isn't journalism, nor is it usually even very good writing.)

Personally I'm not a journalist who tends to get hung up too much on what's right and wrong -- instead I tend to get curious about something, then if I'm lucky I get to indulge that curiosity. Right now I'm curious about quite a few things in the surfing industry, including Chinese-based manufacturing of surf clothing (wouldn't YOU like to know where your last pair of boardshorts were made, and who made 'em?), and the reaction of surfboard makers to the changes in their field of endeavour thanks to offshore mass production (on the one hand a timely shake-up of an essentially self-indulgent, anti-customer industry; on the other a painful and frightening experience for a lot of hardcore guys who see their livelihoods potentially shrinking).

But I've got a s**tload of other work on too, much of it more interesting to me personally (writing a biography of Lisa Andersen! good god), and I don't know how far I'll get down those roads in the next few months and I'm only one bloke -- a bloke who's also got to get in a fair bit of surfing and family time too.

I think it would be good if there were more people chasing all this stuff, but let's face it, other than Baker and O'Keefe (when he's not trying to be an editor) there's not a single actual trained journalist in the Australian surf media.

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Post by ric_vidal » Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:23 pm

there's not a single actual trained journalist in the Australian surf media
It shows and if it wasn't for the photography most of us wouldn't bother :!:

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Post by Hawkeye » Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:34 pm

Thanks for some interesting thoughts, Nick. I look forward to seeing the fruit of your "curiousity" in the not-too-distant future.

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Post by filthbarrel » Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:38 pm

Nick Carroll wrote (wouldn't YOU like to know where your last pair of boardshorts were made, and who made 'em?)

Sounds great -Nike sweatshop story but with boardshorts and other surf gear as the product. Love to see a documentary on that one.

That will make the Big Three sweat. I can see it now:

"Only a Sufferer Knows the Feeling " SBS Dateline

Surf fashion is ubiquitous and the fortunes of surf clothing companies seem to continually be on the up-and-up. Dateline travels to the sweatshops of China with an industry insider to reveal the appauling conditions in which those in the 'worker's paradise' are exposed to producing surf goods for the fashion conscious.

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Post by Beanpole » Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:06 pm

Its a bit rough on journos to say they are no different to PR people but unfortunately some of them come too close. They seem to drift perilously close to being one long advertorial most of the time.At least they have the potential to be more than the uncritical manipulators of public opinion for their boss.
I always thought surf mags would be the perfect training ground for would be journos.
Thanks Nick for explaining why so many mags have such lame content :(

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Post by tootr » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:31 am

Now that the big two are listed (US and Oz market) and have BIG institutional shareholders the SOLE imperative is sales and bottom line growth.

I've read a stack of brokers reports on the big two and some of the buzzwords that are used to describe their "incredible sales growth curve" include;
youth demographic, riding the surf culture wave, recession insensitive, price insensitive, massive margins, brand image, and the best one, "commoditising coolness".

surf mags are all part of the machine re marketing

(Don't forget that the investment banks are chasing Rip curl to get listed too)

ugh..

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:29 am

fithbarrel there are ethical ways of doing PR and unethical ways. A fundamental ethical practice across all forms of media is for people to reveal their vested interests when commenting. If he had rung up and said " I work for the company doing the PR for the tunnel......" no problem, but when he failed to do that he breached a very serious barrier. If you cast your mind back a few years to the cash for comment issue you have a clear example of the degree of public deception to which PR companies and advertising agencies are prepared to resort. Now if you want to live in a world where wealthy, highly resourced companies have the right to deceive the public by any means available that's your choice, I don't. As far as I'm concerned Cassidy crossed a line which has to be maintained, what he did should be illegal in my judgement.

On another point, it's interesting that in 2005 a mainstream surf journalist is just getting interested in the working conditions of those producing boardshorts etc. Given that this issue has been a fairly high profile one for a number of years in the fashion industry generally, I think it tells us something about the prevailing culture in the surf media. I actually spent quite a few hours trawling the internet a couple of years ago on this issue and found nothing to suggest that any of the large surf companies were serious offenders. I don't know if that was simply good PR, of the type described above, or the truth. I suspect the only way to find out would be to actually go there yourself and talk to the workers......a task, given the nature of the Chinese government and the present standard of corporate scruples, that might make surfing huge Mavericks look like a safe and relaxing way of passing the time!

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Post by filthbarrel » Tue Oct 25, 2005 9:03 am

But Laurie, surely one does not give away the right to comment on matters as a citizen when one works for a PR company. Syd rang as a private citizen and expressed a view. Now, as I said, there is a grey area, but one cannot remove the right of a citizen in a democracy to express a point of view, regardless of whether that person is on a payroll. He could genuinely believe his point of view regardless of payment. That is possible and without evidence, no court would convict otherwise.

It is a question of ethics, not law, and ethics are as malleable as plasticine in the hands of a kiddy. I might be unethical everyday (well, to tell the truth, I am, aren't we all . . .don't we all lie at some time during the day?) but I don't break the law intentionally (well there is that stretch of road where there is never speed cameras and the Toyota Echo (I must mention that Toyota are sponsors of mine) really likes to open up to 70kmh)

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