New faces, same old methods
Paula Doneman is thankful that times have changed for female investigative reporting in Australia but she still touts old school methods.
“When I first joined the Courier Mail I was in the investigative unit and I remember being told by a senior member of management that I had no place there and I basically should be covering fashion because crime was no place for girls,” Paula said.
Paula is one of Australia’s leading crime journalists and is the senior investigative producer at Seven News.
For Paula, not everything about the way journalism was done in the past was necessarily bad, and she encourages budding crime journalists to get back to fundamentals.
“For me, my old school style is knowing that you’re not entitled. People don’t have to talk to you, its not an entitlement. It’s a privilege, it’s an opportunity,” she said.
Cultivating sources, building a contact network and looking at key stakeholder groups is also a big part of getting back to old school journalism and is something she describes as ‘becoming a lost art.’
“I know it can be really difficult…we’re in a very time-sensitive environment now and we are expected to do more with less,” she said.
“Learning to talk to people, to listen, to actually sit and listen to what they’re saying and be engaged, being compassionate, having a bit of empathy is what journalism is really about.”
She spoke about one of her early stories about drugs in prison as ‘a huge learning curve.’
Paula attended whistleblower groups and went to relevant unions to build trust between her and her contacts.
“Every time I reported I had a lot of pressure brought to bear on me, I’d be called an ‘idiot’, a politician even called me a ‘slut’,” she said.
“When you comprehensively cover something and you do it in depth people take notice of that.”
She admitted there were moments early on where she ‘stuffed up’, and recalled a time a detective called her to say she ‘completely f*cked up a death in custody investigation.’
Paula’s response was, ‘Okay, yell at me but tell me why.’
She described building relationships and trust with her contacts as a ‘two-way street’, saying that some can take baby steps while with others it is a leap of faith.
“It’s about being able to connect with people and showing that as a journalist you have a lot to lose as well,” she said.
When it comes to ensuring her personal safety during dangerous stories, Paula said she tries to be as careful as she can, particularly with difficult subjects such as organised crime.
“What I would try to do is get them [bikies] to focus on the fact that I was a paid journalist, not a female journalist,” she said.
“So I try and take the gender out of it so they don’t think ‘oh, okay, we’ve got a female alone here.’
“Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
“If something did go a little bit wrong or if I got assaulted, I would still try and steer them back to — ‘I’m a journalist trying to do my job and you’re a part of this story, you deserve a right of reply, and you have a voice in this as well’.”
She said she would find ways to make sure that her interviewees knew she had her phone and key ready, ‘and I take self defence classes’.
One of her big concerns now is that with the advent of new technology journalists are more vulnerable.
“The media are now more of a target — we are more accessible to the public,” she said.
Paula said she knows that she has had contracts put on her life, but she tries to keep in mind that, that can actually be a good sign.
“If someone’s trying to shut me down it’s usually a sign that I’m onto the right track,” Paula said.
“We are here to expose, to inform and to lift the lid, and sometimes that’s going to be a difficult path to travel… but for me it’s getting to the answers that I set out to seek and if it’s something I feel needs to be in the public arena then I do everything I can.
“Anyone that tries to shut you down or dismiss, deter, detract, just think — what’s really going on here?”
