The editor of this good paper received a reader’s letter. It questioned, if Don Riddell returned to The Advertiser, “who would he keep on staff ?” I don’t like columns that use “I’ a lot, but I suppose there is no way out on this one. So, immediately I’ll start to quibble. It’s such a simple question but, as I hope to explain, so difficult to answer. I guess the reader is thinking about the people whose by-lines he sees most days – people like Rex Jory, Mark Kenny, Kim Wheatley, Michael Owen and Tory Shepherd. Well, I’d take all of them.

But they’re only the tip. There’s a huge iceberg as well, dozens and dozens of them – editors (deputy, day, night, features, finance, sport et al) chiefs of staff, who direct reporters to stories, and a whole rank of sub-editors. That’s a job, not a title. They’re the people who check, cut things to fit not-enough space and write the headings. Wow. Can they muck you up, if they’re not any good. If they cut or mangle a vital paragraph, they can lose a reporter a good contact and a nice feeling in the morning. And there are pictorial managers and photographers and artists and a few people in other states, and, if they’re lucky, in one of the overseas bureaus.

These people, the people who agonise about what to report and where to display the result, set the tone of the newspaper just as much as those who have the blessed task of writing for it. In my time, I was lucky to have some genuine stars – Stewart Cockburn, Shirley Despoja, Max Fatchen, John Miles, Michael Cudmore, Bob Jervis, John Doherty, Bill Guy, Michael Atchison, Merv Agars, Matthew Abraham and I’m sure I’ve missed a couple. Yet the two most vital were split between the known and the hidden sides of our quaint trade – Des Colquhoun, the columnist, who touched the life of the state with his ferocious love and humour, and John Scales, the editor, day, deputy or whatever, whose sanity, common sense and understanding of what was going on always kept us relevant.

Now, I know only a few of the present hidden iceberg. You have to work with them to know who the real performers are. Give me a couple of weeks and I’d soon let you know.

And the reporters? Well, I don’t know how they’re briefed and, more importantly, I don’t know who gets out there and digs for stories and who sits back and re-writes PR waffle. Yet I see enough to know there is a lot of talent among the young reporters. The photographers are good too. Subs? Well, we always hate them. I guess I’m supposed to be curmudgeon about this. And it’s true, the present ’Tiser isn’t my ’Tiser. It’s a tabloid awash in editorial space with, to my mind, too much of it flipping around with celebrity and A-lists for crying out loud. Perhaps that’s jealousy because we were a broadsheet with space too tight for indulgence, or even good stories on some days. They do some things like business much better than we did. But I think we dug more.

Last week, The Advertiser reached 150 years. That’s a great record. I wonder if newspapers will last long enough to bring up the 200. We had a dinner to celebrate – about 20-odd present and former editors, managing directors and managers. It was overwhelmingly splendid and emotional. Though everyone was friendly and gracious, I did feel a little awkward. I was the only one there who didn’t either work for or had come to terms with the omnipresent Rupert Murdoch. In the little speechettes we all made, I tried to say this.

Mucked it up, of course. Came out as a churl. But I was trying to say that I didn’t hate the man as much as one who had fallen out with him should. (He reckoned I was a creature of the Adelaide Establishment, which was news to me and, I suspect, the much fabled Establishment.) I couldn’t hate him too much because he understands newspapers. He buys them. He keeps them alive. Other people slash staff and shut them down. I admire some of his newspapers and dislike others (though his Fox television news is the worst of all). But I’d rather work for a Rupert Murdoch than a Fred Hilmer, the man who managed the soul out of Fairfax.

The pressure to kill newspapers is suddenly fiercer. The on-line blogs are biting deeper. Almost anything that moves can display what some people call news. The iPhone is so clever it probably writes its own. There’s a huge danger in all this. Remember the dozens and dozens I said worked at The Advertiser. Add in a whole network of journalists in bureaus all around the world, and we’re talking a lot of people.

A big media company can afford this and a big media company can tailor news to fit every outlet.

But a big media company needs a lot of advertising to survive and the internet is sure carving into that. And a blogger only needs a computer, an axe to grind and a vague knowledge of the internet.

It still all comes out as a few words on a screen, or whatever. My worry is the next outcrop of management messiahs. Hey, look we can just have one bureau in every country, state or city. Push the words around like electronic sausages. Who needs all those journos? That’s why I was so pleased to read the thoughts of Mark Day (a former Sunday Mail editor) in The Australian that the internet might even help newspapers. If the blogs continue as they are to take up all the froth and gossip and the who-was-the-footballer-who-etc, newspapers can concentrate more on the serious and funny things that make up our lives.

Sorry. One more thought on who I would keep. Certainly I’d have my dear colleagues Sa Harris and Tim Lloyd. And remember, Michelangelo Rucci, I’m a Port Adelaide boy, not part of any sort

of Adelaide establishment.