FOR many people who have had any more than casual contact with the Portland Observer over the past 60 years, the name Belden has been part of the furniture.
First it was Brian Belden, the school teacher/bus driver/taxi driver who began in the 1960s and would write the football and cricket reports in his kitchen at home over the weekends, before later becoming editor.
Then it was his son Denis, who started out writing junior football reports in the 1980s and would eventually, after a few years away, go on to become deputy editor.
But from today, that is no more – Denis Belden has decided to change careers, leaving behind a legacy that, just like his father’s, won’t easily be forgotten.
And ahead of his farewell, the Observer looks back on a career in an industry that has completely changed since he first started.
All in the family
It all began for Mr Belden in 1987, at the ripe old age of 16, when he got annoyed about the lack of coverage that year of junior football.
“I was playing junior footy with North Portland and there were no write-ups in the paper about it when there always had been previously,” he said.
“So I complained, mostly because we had a good side and I was copping a bit from some mates with them knowing Dad worked at the paper.
“When I complained Dad said ‘get off your backside and so something about it’ and I became the Portland Junior Football Association correspondent.”
That involved picking up the results from one of the service stations because that’s where they were dropped off, then Mr Belden would write something up on a Sunday night “and the Observer would sling me 20 bucks”.
There was also after-school work where young Denis would come into the office and write up press releases (which were mailed in) as well as work during the holidays.
“They’d give me a camera and send me off to Dartmoor for a day and see what stories I could get up there,” he said.
“You’d see Mick Greenham and Wendy Dowling and they’re still running the town,” he said.
So began a career that threatened to go away from journalism twice, but always returned.
“After that I had my foot in the door and I sort of morphed into Dad a bit,” Mr Belden said.
“One of my first jobs the following season was to come into the office on a Saturday night, before fax machines and the internet were invented, between 5pm and 7pm I would ring around all the home clubs in the South West (football) league and they would dictate the scores to me and tell me a little bit about the games, and I’d write it up from that.”
The same year, 1988, he was playing footy for the Portland under-18 side and became the team’s, and the reserves grade, correspondent as well.
That became a more permanent Sunday job, covering footy in the winter and cricket in the summer, while completing Year 12.
However another career loomed – Mr Belden went the following year to Deakin University.
Career defining
He graduated in 1991 with a primary school teaching degree, having worked Sundays at the Observer (as well as continuing to play football for Heathmere in the winter and cricket for Colts in the summer) while studying.
On graduating Mr Belden did a stint emergency teaching for a year but kept his hand in with weekend work.
But before the education system claimed him, journalism struck back.
“It was pretty hard to get a teaching job at that point and a maternity leave position came up at (the Observer),” he said.
That was in the features section, writing advertorials on subjects as varied as the building industry and bridal expos, as well as larger features.
Those were the heyday of newspaper profitability, the so-called “rivers of gold” from a reasonably captive local advertising market.
He was also reunited with his father, by now working full time at the paper having left teaching a few years earlier and about to become editor.
At that stage though the person in charge was the long-serving John Patterson.
“He was pretty old school with lots of yelling from the office,” said Mr Belden of a method familiar to anyone who has spent a long period in the industry.
The next year, 1993, an opening presented itself in the sport department when Ellen Barnes (now Zeunert) left.
What had also changed were the rules around teaching – to complete the fourth year of his degree Mr Belden would have had to go back to university rather than the previous method of doing it while teaching.
That didn’t appeal, so began a full time job covering local sport, mostly under sport editor Ian Lewis.
When Wayne Drew, the sport editor at Observer’s sister paper the Hamilton Spectator retired, Mr Belden transferred there to take on the job.
“But I didn’t particularly want to leave Portland because I really liked it here,” he said.
About one year later Mr Lewis resigned and Mr Belden returned to the Observer to take on the sport editor role, working initially with Michael Howard (who would go on to become sport editor at the Spectator) and then Simon Bamfield, a talented sportsman in his own right.
Mr Belden continued to play sport as well – among his accomplishments are having played 200 games for Heathmere (even if as a Richmond supporter it must have pained him to pull on the Collingwood colours) as well as becoming a life member of Colts cricket club (and later to write the club’s history) and president of the Portland District Cricket Association.
Time for a change, and again
Brian Belden retired in 1999 and passed away two years later – an event that had a profound impact on his son.
“I found it pretty difficult because I spent a lot of time with him in the office here,” Denis Belden said.
“So it took a fair while to get over his passing and I needed a break from this and decided to go and try something completely different.”
Thus began 10 years in the renewable energy industry, with Vestas and Keppel Prince.
“That was a great experience,” he said.
He hadn’t planned to return to the Observer but with editor Ellen Linke on the verge of retirement, a chance encounter in 2013 sealed his fate.
“It was just when the IGA had opened up again after their big fire and I just happened to be standing in the line behind (Observer general manager Gerard Lucas) who had come down to the opening,” Mr Belden said.
“He said ‘what are you doing in the near future?’
“At that point I was having (some health issues) and life on the tools was probably not going to be a long-term thing even though I loved doing it.
“I had to head back towards a desk somewhere.”
Keppel Prince was going through a round of redundancies so Mr Belden took one and headed back to his old stamping ground, this time as deputy editor.
It also meant unfamiliar territory in the general news side of the paper.
“The idea of the role was we had three editions a week then and Marlene (Punton) had accepted the role as editor but as she had kids about to start going through their sports phase I was happy to work on Sundays (for the Monday edition) as I’d done that most of my working life,” Mr Belden said.
“I was working Sunday to Thursday and much like I’ve been doing ever since I did a bit of everything – deputy editor was the title but ‘spare parts man’ was probably a better description.
“Whenever someone was away I’d pick up what they were doing. In my first six months back I had about six different desks as I tried to give some people a bit of annual leave and that sort of stuff.”
The time comes
So why leave now?
“I’ve been thinking about it for a fair while,” Mr Belden said.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that newspapers aren’t exactly booming any more like they were when I started, and it’s tougher and tougher.
“Particularly through COVID, we were lucky enough to keep our jobs but it was pretty hard going.
“I suppose a lot of the general public probably don’t understand that newspapers are built on advertising dollars, not necessarily the news content, and it’s been pretty tough for newspapers throughout the world.
“Looking long-term, did I see myself doing this to retirement age? Probably not.
“Who knows what newspapers will look like soon – will we have printed editions any more? Who knows.
“When the internet came it was full of promise but little did we know at the time that it sort of would do journalism out of a job,” he said.
“It’s never been easier to find information, but to find correct information is a different matter.
“Newspapers in themselves are less newsbreakers now and more of a magazine type of writing genre with features on people and more in-depth coverage.
“When you print twice a week it can be a fair lag between something happening and getting it in a hard copy edition of the newspaper.
“We’ve seen so many newspapers close over the last 4-5 years – you only have to look at a town the size of Mount Gambier which lost its newspaper overnight though thankfully someone else came in to regenerate it.
“It’s good to see them come back, but it’s much reduced.”
For his next career, Mr Belden has sort of gone back to his past in taking up a part-time role with Glenelg Southern Grampians Local Learning and Employment Network as its school-to-work broker, setting up Year 11 and 12 students with work placements.
“My initial career choice was teaching so the new position I’m going to I’ll be able to link in with young people,” he said.
“Now I have kids myself, your interests change and your more interested in what kids are doing.
“I’ve been pretty heavily involved with Little Athletics and I see a whole wide range of kids from 5-16 or 17 and I enjoy that part of the work, interacting with those kids.
Along with the new job, Mr Belden is in the process of qualifying as a swimming instructor at the Portland Leisure and Aquatic Centre.
Some highlights
For Mr Belden it has been reward in itself as a sports addict to get paid for covering it.
And while that has been the most enjoyable part of his career there have been a few highlights.
Big names coming to town – Rex Hunt, Des Renford (the Australian who held the record for most successful swims of the English Channel), and as a Richmond tragic Matthew Richardson are some that come to mind.
Then there were the cricketers, back when the Observer sponsored the sportsperson of the year awards.
“I won $10 off Dean Jones when he was out playing golf and Lewie (Ian Lewis) was interviewing him,” Mr Belden said.
“And Doug Walters – we played some cards with him later in the evening, it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life.”
But as is fitting, perhaps the greatest memory is the story he wrote on Anthony Bourke, the Bessiebelle Football Club legend on the occasion of his 600th game.
“That was pretty cool,” Mr Belden said.
“Bessiebelle had gone into recess and they reformed and played at Hanlon Park for a year or two and I’m pretty sure the motivation for that was to get Bourkey to his 600th game.”
That story won Mr Belden a Victorian Country Football League award – including a trip to Melbourne “for a good night out”.
“Back then the interesting thing was to find out about someone you had to talk to them or people associated with them and that helped you build pretty good relationships, not just by looking things up on Google,” he said.
Even if some of those were tested in the heat of the battle – copping sledges while playing football or cricket was par for the course.
A tight-knit workplace
Will there be anything he misses?
“I’ll miss the people in the office,” he said.
“Throughout the whole time I’ve been here we’ve always had a pretty diverse office that gets on well and respects each other.
“We all understand if you might cop something in public, we’ve all been through it and we all make mistakes.
“You might cop an abusive phone call here or there but you’ve always got an office full of people you can vent to who understand how that error might have happened and what you can do about it.
“The other thing I’ll miss is you find out things a bit before the general public too – it’s hard to keep a secret sometimes.
“What I won’t miss is having to look at the misinformation on social media where something’s just written by someone and there’s no fact checking or anything and it just snowballs in the community.
“Whereas your community newspaper’s role has always been to sort out what was gossip and what was actually fact.”
There have also been a few technological changes along the way – while the fax wasn’t invented when Mr Belden started, it has long been superceded.
In those days one of his Sunday jobs was to pack up a box with printed photos and hard copy stories and give it to Robert Halliday to put in his meat truck to take to Hamilton for printing.
“Nowadays it’s the push of a button,” Mr Belden said.
But for all that he’s found plenty to enjoy in his role in a family-friendly workplace he credits Ms Punton for championing.
“Guiding the younger writers has been good,” Mr Belden said.
“You sort of don’t realise how much knowledge you’ve picked up in your own career until you see someone new in the office and how naive they might be.
“You think that’s me when I started and I didn’t even know how to answer the phone properly.”
