Storyology Sydney is on!
Meet your crack student reporters.
Holy mackerel, this place is crawling with reporters.
Not just the stars onstage, and not just the attendees. We have an able team of four student reporters from Western Sydney University and four photojournalism students from Macleay at Storyology today. They’re spilling out of a narrow hall off to the side, threatening at any moment to violate the fire safety rules at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst. In other words, it’s just like a real newsroom.
From Western Sydney Uni, with a taste of what they’re working on today:
Nicola Barton today will be covering how to make money from the news, how to structure stories and WTF is happening in the USA.
Jessica Cortis is working on stories about restoring trust in the media and how newsrooms are boosting their audience engagement.
Jessica Guttridge is in the throes of being edited, with a piece on the much-anticipated keynote from Aine Kerr; she’ll report later on diversity in media.
And Hilary Cassell will be joining us for Day 2, but I have yet to load her up with assignments.
Down the hall—I mean, one meter away—we have our photographers, Tom Livingstone (@livingstone_tj), Caitlyn Hurley (@c.hurleyphotography), Nina Matijevic (@nikolinamatijevic)and Jess Spiteri (@jessss97). This morning was photographer Christmas: Walkley-winning photojournalist Brendan Esposito unpacked and set up a Nikon D4 for each student and gave them an hourlong masterclass. As they brought their photos back, he hovered over them and showed them the Photoshop ropes.
For Spiteri, Storyology is her first foray in the sort of serious hustle required by breaking news. “I’ve had hours to do it, but nothing fast paced.” She says that Esposito’s tips on how to import, edit and process photos quickly (and get them to me, the editor) were most valuable part of the day.
While we pound these stories out, here are a few scenes from the conference so far:
