By The New York Times (World News) | Created at 2024-10-04 04:20:09 | Updated at 2024-10-18 18:21:27
2 weeks ago
Australia|A Rest, a Reset and a Thanks for the Banter
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/world/australia/letter-hiatus.html
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Letter 373
After more than 350 editions, we are putting this newsletter on pause, with the editor who opened the Australia bureau departing and his successor set to arrive.
Oct. 4, 2024, 12:15 a.m. ET
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s issue is written by Damien Cave, who opened the Australia bureau in 2017.
Nearly eight years ago, as I opened a new Australia bureau for The New York Times, I tried to imagine what a weekly newsletter from and about the country would aim to do: add some insight and perspective to email inboxes; connect with new readers in a conversational tone; guide people to New York Times coverage they might have overlooked.
Now, after more than 350 newsletters, we’ve gathered an audience that seems to appreciate that particular mix. And we’ve done it over many years with an array of voices — from Americans like me to Sydneysiders to Melburnians, and New Zealanders too.
It’s always been a bit of an experiment, and I don’t by any means believe our work is done. But this is a moment of transition. I started writing this edition while above Australia, on a flight from Sydney to Ho Chi Minh City, where I am opening a new bureau for The Times in Vietnam. My replacement, Victoria Kim, a graceful writer who has already helped out with coverage on a couple of occasions, will be arriving soon.
As such, it seems an appropriate time to put this newsletter on pause. Consider it a journalistic version of that thing we have in American baseball known as a seventh-inning stretch: a moment when players and the fans stand up, pause, stretch and give some thought to what’s come before and what shall follow.
There’s probably some equivalent in cricket, and if there is, I have no doubt that someone in Australia will email to tell us, perhaps with a bit of humor or a suggestion for something to read or watch as part of our Aussie education. That is probably what I will miss the most as I move on and as this newsletter hibernates: The regular feedback, the guidance, the banter.
Starting a bureau in a new place requires conversation. Ideally, in my view, it should involve a constant give and take between correspondents and the culture we aim to inhabit, explore, critique and reveal in some deeper way to itself and to the world. This newsletter, and all the messages that followed each iteration, have helped make that a digital, weekly reality. You have helped keep us humble and informed. You, our readers, have made us laugh and learn. And hopefully, we have done a bit of the same.
