What four top Australian journos wish they’d known at the start of their careers
Get gutsy with your questions. Shrug off the doubters. Avoid explosions.
The Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year Award is now open for entries (if you’re a journo doing good work and under 28, you should apply here by April 26). So we at the Walkleys asked a handful of exceptional journalists what they wished they had known as junior reporters.
Here are their tips.
It’s your job to speak up …
Journalism can be combative, both in interviews with subjects and also in newsrooms. Like many journalists (especially young ones) it took Tracey Spicer a few years to get her nerves under control and start asking tough questions.
“I wish I knew how to shake off the shackles of the ‘good girl’. For the first two years, I was terrified about asking questions in press conferences,” Spicer said.
This is heartening given Spicer is now decades into a journalism career spanning radio, print and television, including anchoring news and current affairs programs. She also recently published a memoir of her career and how she learned to break free of the need to be sweet and sunny all the time.
Walkley winner Caroline Jones, whose career in radio and television at the ABC needs no introduction, urged young journalists to speak up, too — but in the newsroom.
“I also wish I had asked for advice from some more senior colleague when I was uncertain about anything. Most of them are ready to help, and it’s not seen as a sign of weakness,” Jones added.
… and it’s your job to shut up.
Jones’s other best tip?
“Listen very attentively,” she said, “and leave a pause at the end of each answer. Sometimes the pause draws out something extra,” Jones said.
Trust your gut — and trust in great journalism.
Speaking of experts, Sunday Telegraph deputy editor Claire Harvey’s tip for young journalists is to be smart about whom you listen to as the industry struggles through a difficult time.
“There have always been — and there will always be — elders and supposed ‘experts’ who say everything has changed, that the craft we love is in its last years, and that there’s no point pursuing journalism as a career. It happened when I was starting out, and that was more than 20 years ago. It wasn’t true then. It’s never going to be true. Journalism will always be around,” Harvey said.
“It might look a little different, and it might shape your career a little unexpectedly — but more people than ever before in human history are now engaging with and consuming journalism, every single day. Radio journalism is enjoying an entirely unexpected and beautiful renaissance. Television journalism is more powerful than it’s ever been. Print journalism is reaching vast new audiences, many of whom will never pick up a printed paper. That’s OK. We will bring the news to them, on the platform they choose, when they want to have it — and we’ll do it better than we ever have before.
“So when someone tells you to forget about journalism because it has no future, don’t listen,” Harvey says. “Smile politely and keep doing what you do. Because the number-one quality of every great journalist is tenacity. If you have it, you’ll succeed — and so will our craft.”
Get out of the office.
Key to the journalism craft is building genuine, trusting relationships with your sources. The best stories require high levels of mutual respect with well-placed people who know you well.
Or as ABC investigative journalist Mark Willacy, who has won three Walkleys, puts it:
“I think I spent too much time filing crap, and not enough time establishing quality contacts.”
So his advice is “to get out of the office and eyeball people. Get to know your sources and contacts, and let them get to know you. It builds trust and rapport.” Willacy said.
Solid advice for journalists on any platform.
And Willacy had an additional tip for his fellow television journalists.
“If you’re using lights,” he says, “make sure they don’t explode. I nearly burnt down the office of the Mount Isa mayor once with a dodgy light.”
Because if you have to go to jail as a journalist, you want it to be for protecting your sources, not causing an explosion.
The Walkley Young Journalist of the Year Award is now open for entry for journalists 28 or younger. There are several categories and lots of ways to win, so make sure you explore the opportunity and apply here by April 26, 2017.
And as Tracey Spicer says — just get in there. Several previous Young Journo award winners almost didn’t enter because they didn’t feel qualified enough!
