The New Zealand Edition of Aussie rolled along, making a colourful splash each month, and running in synch with its Aussie parent into monthly numbers that carried thematic titles like: the Gee Gee Number, The Sinful Number, The Wowser Number, The Lover’s Number, The Wife’s Number, The Husband’s Number, The Government Job Number, The Taxi-Cab Number, Mrs Grundy’s Number, Dave’s Number, The Divorce Number, and yes, towards the corny end, The Telephone Number.
The pattern of editorial content in the New Zealand Section, as it was titled, was tightly followed in a three column format. It was a regular pastiche of the art of the yarn-teller in joke-form, diversions and verse. The first page of the Section typically carried some items of relevance to current happenings and a topical cartoon with a relatively serious theme, before the reader was presented with a recurring set of subheads and bylines, heavily interspersed with an array of New Zealand advertising and more cartoons.
To reach that Section at the rear of the magazine, meant, of course, flipping through and/ or digesting some 48 pages of Australian-made content first. A study of the contrasts (for New Zealand readers) could well be a fruitful exercise. On the surface the editorial content between the two was much of a muchness in style, tone and typographical appearance, with the differences most notable in the almost inter-changeable variations in use of dominant slang and stereotypes.
With more space the Australian content featured more regular columns such as John Barr's "Men and Other Sins".
Women's page journalism, which we'll hear about from Patricia Clarke next at this conference, was in strong evidence in Aussie magazine with two sub-sections, firstly one titled "The Aussie Woman", followed by "The Voice of the Enzed Woman" for the New Zealand market.
The magazine also catered for the 'reading public' by a two page spread called "Bookish" under the Australian content, and Shibli Bagarag's "A Literary Page or Two" in the New Zealand Section, which I will now turn to.
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