The editor's of Melbourne's two leading daily newspapers talk on the eve of the election

Editor of The Age Andrew Jaspan along with his Herald Sun counterpart Bruce Guthrie appeared at Federation Square, as part of a live to air broadcast by ABC 774 radio host John Faine.

Guthrie said the Herald Sun editorial staff were meeting this afternoon to thrash out an answer on who their newspaper editorial will tell readers to vote for in the federal election. He noted that since 1991 when the Herald Sun came into existence, they have never supported the election of a Labor Federal government. Guthrie wouldn't be drawn on whether the Herald Sun would indeed support the Labor Party for government for the first time. Although he did reveal that he had a good idea what side of politics he thinks his paper should support, but when pushed would not reveal his preference and went on to reveal that he was open to be "swayed" to support the other side of politics by an argument from some of his editorial staff.

Jaspan also confirmed that The Age editorial staff we're meeting this afternoon to make their decision on this important subject, but he would not confirm whether the editorial in question would appear in the Friday or Saturday edition of his newspaper. While not saying it flat out, Jaspan did leave the Federation Square crowd that The Age would not take the middle ground in this matter and would come out in support of one particular side of politics. Both Jaspan and Guthrie said their editorial stance on the Federal election would come about from a consensus decision made by all their editorial staff.

Faine asked each editor which way they would cast their personal vote at the ballot box, Guthrie refused to reveal his intentions; while Jaspan an English man by birth who has just gained permanent residency status in Australia, did not have a vote at the ballot box this Saturday.

A more pertinent question from Faine was whether both editors were tired of being reliant on the political party machine's for sourcing their news. Both editors declared their frustration on how their paper's journalists were treated by our major political parties.

Jaspan retold a story about Michelle Grattan getting a phone call at 11pm from the Liberal Party and told to be at the airport at 6am the next morning. On arrival, Grattan The Age's senior federal political correspondent, found out she was flying to Brisbane. On arrival at the Liberal Party event in Brisbane, Grattan attended a photo opportunity with the Prime Minister, where senior journalists like herself weren't given the opportunity to ask even one question. Grattan flew back to Melbourne empty handed that very evening.

Both editors confirmed that it was also the common practice of our two major political parties to send journalists text messages to say they would be picked up at 4am the next morning, to then be shipped out to the location of that morning's press opportunity.

Guthrie said that most of the twenty political journalists the Herald Sun had covering the campaign worked almost exclusively on the information provided by the major parties and he admitted that he didn't have enough journalists assigned to sourcing material from outside this spectrum.

Jaspan told of a movement by the media in his homeland of England, where media outlets after being fed up by their treatment by, and the spin they were being fed by Britain's major political parties, had made the executive decision to no longer follow the media offerings of the political party machines to source their news.

Guthrie made the clear prediction on the election that Labor would win by four seats. Jaspan said that he definitely expected Labor to win, but that while the margin could be around four seats, the margin could blow out to a twenty seat victory to Labor if the Australian people woke up on Saturday morning in the mood to punish the Howard government.

I briefly spoke to Jaspan when he came off stage and he was interested in what i said about the experiment that has just started in the United States called 'beat blogging', where thirteen newspapers have designated journalists to source stories from online Internet communities. Jaspan agreed with the premise I put forward to him, the premise that most people in online communities already know, that our groups of people bounded by a shared common interest, often know about developments in news weeks and sometimes months ahead of the mainstream media. Jaspan said that he was interested in following the US 'beat blogging' experiment and asked me to send the information through to him.

It was good not to be fogged off by someone in a position of some power.

The rest of the ABC 774 Federation Square broadcast was very entertaining, including interviews with Julia Gillard going head to head with Peter Costello. And a political scientist from Monash University who was very forthright in his opinion that on his reading of the polls, that Rudd would win the election.

The only problem on the morning was that the crowd stood in the rain for most of the broadcast, but it was good of the ABC to supply ABC umbrellas to their loyal listeners who had made the effort to attend the broadcast.

A very enjoyable morning.