The Digital Story Innovations team: A case study on digital journalism innovation at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Master’s thesis Journalism and Media University of Amsterdam Anna Livia Céline Benders UvA-net ID: 10088121 Thesis coordinator: dhr. prof. dr. M.J.P. (Mark) Deuze June 18th, 2018 Preface
I woke up at 4 this morning, because the air was vibrating. I am buzzing with the energy of new possibilities that lie ahead. My stomach is aching from excitement about a future that has never felt as unknown as in this very moment. And from the pure joy to end a chapter and to, for the first time in months, write something non-academic. No literature, no referencing, just words.
The story about how this thesis came about is a classic tale of a series of events and meetings leading up to what I hope will result in my graduation today.
In October 2014 I boarded an airplane to Perth. It was a one-way ticket. I knew no one and I had no plan. Upon arrival, someone I had met only once a few years earlier, who happened to be from Perth, wrote me that I should go meet his 60 year old dad. I had no particular intention of spending my days hanging with a relative strangers’ father, but was so surprised by the Australian hospitality that I decided I was going to be a yes-woman.
I ended up spending an entire month at Bryan Bourke’s house in Claremont. We went for early morning swims in the ocean, ate Thai food and he helped me pick out a car that later became my (temporary) house. We also watched TV. Every Monday, we religiously watched Four Corners and talked about what we had seen until late in the evening. Now I know that he is the face of a dying breed of Australians still willing to sit down in front of a television at a set time, to look at what the investigative reporters had dug up for him that day. With every Four Corners show, I became more convinced that I wanted to become an investigative journalist.
Fast forward to November 2017. My professor Mark Deuze was stood in front of a classroom of journalism students, talking about his Beyond Journalism project. Over twenty of his former students had gone to different parts of the world to study journalism start-ups and this year he wanted to shift his gaze to innovative units embedded in existing media organisations, he explained. The ABC immediately came back to mind. Once home, I started to search the internet: “ABC Four Corners innovation”, “ABC Four corners multimedia”, “ABC Four Corners digital journalism”. Bingo.
There it was. An article written by Kimberley Porteous introducing her new Digital Story Innovations team, with a link to a crafty digital production on mortgage stress the team had made in collaboration with Four Corners. In no time I wrote my research proposal, but when back in the classroom the next morning I had lost all hope as I came to my senses. I had no savings, the ABC was on the other side of the world and the chances of anyone saying yes to a random Dutch student shadowing their every move for weeks seemed slim at best.
“Who wrote that proposal to go to Australia?” asked my professor.
1 I raised my hand in hesitation as the rest of the classroom started laughing. “Well you are a lucky then, because I know the woman who set up that team at the ABC and I am meeting her while I am on my book tour in Australia in a couple of weeks.”
My mind was blown.
And so it happened. Within weeks I had found someone to sublet my room in Amsterdam, applied for two scholarships, which got me just enough money for a return ticket, and I was on my way to Sydney – where I spent the first weeks staying at my friends’ house looking for a room I could afford, doing field research at the ABC by day, and working on my first ever investigative article for the Dutch newspaper NRC by night.
After moving three times in three weeks, the end of my field research was approaching and two doctors were threatening to sue me if I went on publishing a story about them continuing to practice abroad despite being struck off the register. Needless to say, the story was published and thankfully no one was sued. I was happy and exhausted and had found the most beautiful home to spend my last months in Sydney in.
Journalists need stories to make sense of the world around them. Maybe this is just one of them. Maybe it is all coincidence, but as cheesy as it sounds, sometimes all stars just seem to align and you find yourself exactly where you need to be. Which, in my case, was in a most amazing beach house in Freshwater, overlooking the ocean while transcribing my interviews.
I am so thankful to Kimberley Porteous, Stephen Hutcheon and the DSI team members for granting me full access and cooperation to study how the team innovates. It was a privilege to observe the work of such talented and passionate media professionals. To Bryan Bourke for letting me stay with him for a month in 2014 and for introducing me to the journalism of the ABC and to Kat for hosting me that first week in Sydney. A big thank you also to my parents and friends for putting up with me whinging about my thesis and to Mark Deuze for introducing me to Kimberley and for guiding me to the end of my degree. And I am so grateful for all those special moments and for the wonderful people I met in Sydney. It has been a rollercoaster.
I have no idea what the future holds, but I trust that it will be just golden.
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Table of contents
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………..5
2. Theoretical framework………………………………………………….9
2.1 Journalism in the transition to digital news work…………………… ...9 2.2 Innovation in journalism……………………………………………...11 2.3 Journalism start-ups worldwide……………………………………….13 2.4 Intrapreneurship in legacy media organisations……………………….15 2.5 Digital storytelling…………………………………………………….18
3. Methodology……………………………………………………………22
3.1 Case study…………………………………………………………….22 3.2 Field research in Sydney and Melbourne……………………………....22 3.3 Internal document and communication analysis………………………23 3.4 Semi-structured interviews……………………………………………24 3.5 Observations and field notes………………………………………….25 3.6 Thick description……………………………………………………...25 3.7 Grounded Theory……………………………………………………..26
4. Context…………………………………………………………………...28
4.1 The ABC: an institution in transition………………………………….28 4.2 Innovation at the ABC………………………………………………..30 4.3 The DSI team members introduced…………………………………...31 4.4 Media landscape in Australia…………………………………………..31
5. Results and analysis…………………………………………………….33
5.1 Composition and mission of the DSI team…………………………....33 5.2 Location and integration of the DSI team ……………………………37 5.3 Organisational culture………………………………………………...39 5.4 Digital strategy………………………………………………………..42 5.5 Work process…………………………………………………………44 5.6 Digital storytelling and audience development………………………...50 5.7 The ABC as an employer……………………………………………...52
6. Conclusion and discussion……………………………………………..57
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7. References……………………………………………………………….62
8. Appendices………………………………………………………………66
8.1 Document 1: DSI team members introduced………………………...66 8.2 Document 2: DSI mission statement………………………………...69 8.3 Document 3: Mission statement PowerPoint………………………...72 8.4 Document 4: DSI productions and reach……………………………73 8.5 Document 5: Equal Digital Life pilot with Four Corners…………….77 8.6 Document 6: Online reach and engagement comparison…………….90 8.7 Document 7: Links to DSI productions……………………………...91 8.8 Document 8: Interview questions……………………………………93 8.9 Document 9: Transcribed interviews………………………………...99 8.10 Document 10: Field notes and observations………………………..326 8.11 Document 11: Slack communication threads……………………….334 8.12 Document 12: Post-Mortem audience engagement reports………...382
4 Introduction
“The last decade has been one of creative destruction in the news industry” (Bruno & Nielsen, 2012, p. 1). And this is not just the case in Europe. Globally journalism is in a state of transition. Newspaper circulation is down, television ratings are plummeting and advertisers are moving away from legacy media. Thousands of journalists have been laid off and newsrooms are largely empty. Those who are still working continuously have to work harder with fewer resources at their disposal (Bruno & Nielsen, 2012; Deuze & Witschge, 2017).
As the Internet is becoming ever more prevalent in people’s everyday lives, audiences are turning away from legacy platforms. Moving into a digital era, media organisations are obliged to reinvent themselves in order to survive in this environment – and the online arena offers plenty of opportunities to do so. It is in this context that a new generation of journalism start-ups has emerged. Since the beginning of the millennium online start-ups have started to surface around the world (Deuze, 2017). According to Bruno and Nielsen they “have jumped on the web wagon with passion and pioneering spirit” (2012, p. 8). Simultaneously, legacy media organisations are trying to innovate from within in an attempt to cater to younger audiences who almost exclusively consume news on their smartphones and more often than not access articles via social media (Westlund, 2012). In doing so, they experiment with the recombination of existing media forms and the creation of new media formats and tools, the introduction of tech staff and the use of various distribution methods and platforms (Deuze, 2007; Deuze & Witschge, 2017; Doyle, 2013; Jenkins, 2013).
But only passion and motivation in itself will not cut it. The transition to online platforms proves to be difficult to say the least. The digital arena is a very different playing field where audiences are scattered and distractions are omnipresent. People generally spend a fraction of the time on a webpage compared to the time they used to invest in reading the newspaper or watching television. As Bruno and Nielsen describe it: “More people spend more time online, but not necessarily on news” (2012, p. 95).
In this highly competitive online media industry, many journalism start-ups fail to find sustainable business-models. Coming back to the notion of creative destruction, Bruno and Nielsen argue that ‘creative’ is not the only element of the term that goes for both legacy media and start-ups. ‘Destruction’ does not only afflict established media, but new entrants too (2012, p. 6).
This case study focuses on digital journalism innovation at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). This year, the organisation is celebrating its 85th year of existence and with over 4000 employees the ABC is the largest government funded broadcaster of Australia. But its broadcast and radio programs show similar patterns of audience decline as their counterparts in Europe and the United States.
5 The ABC is has been facing funding cuts resulting in a series of redundancy rounds in the past years. In March 2017, 200 jobs were lost in what the managing director, Michelle Guthrie, calls a tough strategy to bring transformational change to the national broadcaster. “We lack the flexibility to quickly adjust to the fast- changing audience trends,” Guthrie said in an address to staff. “Our reach on television and radio is declining and digital is struggling to bridge the divide” (ABC, 2017). What followed was a restructure axing the recognised television program Lateline that had been running for 27 years. The latest in this succession was the ABC’s announcement in April 2018 of new government funding cuts that could possibly see 20 state and territory jobs lost in favour of new digital positions.
The ABC, much like other legacy media worldwide, is thus trying to transform itself into a more flexible and digitally oriented workspace. Part of this strategy is the formation of the so-called Digital Story Innovations (DSI) team – the subject of the present case study. The team consisting of nine producers, developers, data journalists and digital designers from in- and outside of the ABC, are appointed to cater to new and younger audiences. As stated by Kimberley Porteous, the founder of the DSI team, in a backstory published on the ABC website, the team members aim to make engaging online, mobile-first, interactive and multimedia stories. They work closely together with the ABC’s existing news and current affairs programs to achieve this.
In order to study groups such as the DSI team at the ABC, consisting of people moving both within and outside of the company, Grabher (2002) suggests we turn our gaze away from the media firm as a generally unproblematized, coherent and unitary economic actor and start focussing on the emerging project ecology of shifting teams of people both inside and outside the company and the organisational practices surrounding these projects.
The ABC’s Digital Story Innovations team is one such project-based team. The present thesis therefore aims to shed light on the inner workings, the project ecology and the successes and challenges the team encounters when innovating, in an attempt to build on and possibly add to the body of research dedicated to change and innovation in the journalism industry.
This case study will be part of a larger research project led by prof. Mark Deuze called Beyond Journalism. The name derives from the need for professional journalists to go and perform beyond journalism. In order to survive in today’s media arena “journalists have to be committed well beyond what any profession could ask for – without most of the securities, comforts and benefits enjoyed by being a member of a profession” (Deuze & Witschge, 2017, p. 11).
Thus far journalism and media alumni at the University of Amsterdam have conducted over twenty case studies of journalism start-ups, operating on the outside (and often in opposition to) legacy news media worldwide. As of this year, the focus of the project has shifted to innovative units operating within existing
6 media organisations. The project aims to gain a better understanding of what constitutes media innovation and start-up culture from inside a media firm (also known as intrapreneurship, see Boyles, 2016), thereby contributing to the discussion about possible futures for journalism in a time of creative destruction.
The present thesis is one of the first to target start-ups within an existing legacy media company, such as the ABC’s Digital Story Innovations team. The present case study will study the DSI team’s position and the way in which they innovate within the confines of the ABC’s walls. In this context the main research question will be as follows:
What makes the role and position of the DSI team specifically innovative within the ABC and how does the team operationalize their stated mission and tasks?
To answer this research question, the following sub-questions will be answered:
1. How does the DSI team fit into the innovation history of the ABC? What has been retained from previous innovative projects? 2. What is the DSI team’s assignment? And how will the team’s efforts be measured or benchmarked? 3. What makes the DSI team specific within the ABC in terms of composition, management, tasks, activities and assignment? 4. How does the DSI team evaluate itself and its own efforts in terms of being innovative? And what is the team’s view on the ABC as an innovative organisation? 5. What kind of media productions does the DSI team make? And how does the innovation come about? 6. What obstacles does the DSI team face that stand in the way of innovation? 7. Does the DSI team benefit from being part of the ABC, as opposed to starting a new brand in journalism?
In the theoretical framework in chapter 2 this thesis will firstly draw on concepts emerging from journalism and innovation research in order to discuss different streams of thought that could prove relevant to contextualise the present case study. Chapter 3 will outline the methodology used during the field research and analysis. Consequently the findings from the observations, documents and interviews with the team members will be thematically grouped and analysed in the results in chapter 4. The conclusion in section 5 will then illustrate the main lessons learned from this case study and discuss the limitations and suggestions for further research.
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Picture: ABC Sydney Ultimo office entrance with TV studio
Picture: ABC Sydney Ultimo office building
8 2. Theoretical framework
This chapter will outline relevant concepts from prior research on journalism and innovation, to embed the present case study in theory and place it in perspective. To this effect it will first focus on the ways news work has changed in a period of transition to the digital realm and on how this impacts the very definition of what constitutes journalism today in section 2.1, to then illustrate how legacy media companies are responding to the digital turn by trying to innovate its processes, products and mindset whilst not losing sight of its traditional products in 2.2. Thereafter, section 2.3 will discuss literature on the journalism start-up scene to relate what is happening within legacy media companies to how innovation comes about in new media ventures. Consecutively, 2.4 will pay attention to how media incumbents are incorporating innovative units such as the DSI team into their organisation and the tensions that may arise from doing so. Finally, section 2.5 will conceptualise the notion of digital storytelling, as this is what the DSI unit engages in.
2.1 Journalism in the transition to digital news work The common perception of journalists is very much geared toward a romanticized idea that is perpetuated by popular culture. Being a (political) watchdog, reporting the truth in an objective manner and invocating the publics right to know, are all elements that shape the public’s understanding of the traditional core mission of journalists (Fulton 2015, p. 363). In spite of important changes in the field of journalism, this perception of the profession and the image of a journalist behind a typewriter are stereotypes that remain very much alive.
However, the Internet has given rise to the opportunity not only for legacy media organisations, but also for new journalism brands and bloggers to enter the online journalism market, raising a question concerning professional identity: who can be considered journalists in the digital era? Participants in Fulton’s study on bloggers suggest that those who self-identified as journalists had all previously worked at traditional media while those coming into the online space via other professional fields (such as Information Technology, the public service sector or marketing and sales) doing similar type of work, were very wary of using the occupational term. (2015, p. 367). This seems to underline the key position of legacy media not only in the traditional media landscape, but also in the online environment.
Deuze and Witschge (2017) argue that technological disruption has altered news work as well as news consumption. “Many newspapers or broadcast organisations are in a process of transforming into fully digital organisations. They adopt a digital first strategy or develop new online services that aim to provide added value for which users and advertisers are willing to pay” (Leurdijk, 2015, p. 5). Leurdijk (2015) explains that consumers nowadays expect to read the news as it breaks. Digital first refers to media spreading news online as soon as it is available through various digital platforms such as websites, mobile apps and social media
9 accounts. In many cases a digital first approach implies that editors prioritise digital content over traditional content (p. 16).
Following the introduction of touch-screen mobile devices, legacy news media have started developing mobile news applications (Westlund, 2012, p. 11). These advancements have led news organisations to invest in mobile technology, with some media stating that they have adopted a “mobile-first” strategy (Westlund, 2012, p. 13). As noted in the description of the DSI team’s mission on the ABC website, the unit is an example of a team with a mobile-first strategy. As later sections of this chapter will illustrate, such a strategy dramatically changes the type of work that is done within newsrooms.
Transitioning to digital, the nature of news work has changed greatly, as traditional journalists more often than not are expected to deliver online content as well as traditional media products. This in turn requires digital skills that were previously unheard of or separate from the creative process of writing or producing a story for newspapers or broadcast. The burden of selling the media productions has increasingly shifted from the marketing departments to the journalists themselves. A new type of journalist is born. “The term “entrepreneurial journalism” […] marries two parts long needing to be separate, even at times in one individual, the entrepreneurial journalist: the business side of the enterprise and the journalistic side of the enterprise” (Wagemans, Witschge & Deuze, 2016, p. 165-166). This often results in a heightened daily workload. Deuze and Witschge state that “journalists working in newsrooms consistently report having to do more with fewer colleagues and less resources” (2017, p. 6).
The skills needed to enter the profession have also evolved. Functions such as technical staff, designers, producers and programmers have multiplied and are shaping the practice of journalism and its output (Deuze & Witschge, 2017, p. 7). Once hired at a news firm the skill-evolution does not stagnate. In fact, according to Malemin and Virta (2015), given the changing requirements of journalism work, working in a modern media firm asks for an ongoing improvement of skills and competencies (p. 7). Especially technological skills are important to foster in a changing media scene, as technological evolution has created new ways to reach audiences, allowing for a more engaging experience by mixing genres, media- forms and outlets to tell stories.
Where journalists used to work fairly autonomously and newsrooms operated separately from each other, news workers nowadays are increasingly expected to collaborate with other journalists, newsrooms or technical professionals on multi- media stories. Malmelin and Virta (2015, p. 7): “One of the changes in the field of journalism has been the growing importance of collaboration and teamwork.” This increasing cooperation between different parts of the media organisation is commonly referred to as convergence (Deuze, 2017, p. 140). News organisations are thus transitioning into a ‘post-industrial era’ in which they “reorganize themselves into multiple smaller units or have shifted toward a more
10 decentralized, team-based managerial and working style” (Deuze & Witschge, 2017, p. 9).
In addition, the news consumer that was once unknown to the producers and journalists is now more visible then ever: “Online content delivery enables the service provider to use the audience data collected to adjust, modify and improve content offerings, even down to the level of individual users” (Doyle, 2013, p. 119). In fact, having this audience data readily available may greatly impact the choices made on the work floor. In a dwindling media industry, ignoring what the audience wants is not an option.
In light of these changes in the journalism industry Deuze and Witschge (2017) propose to move beyond the limitations framing the debate around what journalism is and who can be considered a journalist, stating that different types of journalism that have appeared inside or outside of traditional news organisations do not necessarily have different or opposing core values, ideals and practices of the occupation, even though they produce vastly different kinds of news and journalism (p. 4). Instead Deuze and Witschge urge a dynamic definition of journalism in which it is considered “a networked practice involving a distributed variety of actors and actants (including co-creating audiences as well as robots producing news), including an emerging global start-up scene of news work while recognizing the permanence of meaning-giving structures such as newsrooms” (2017, p. 6). This thesis will use this definition of journalism throughout the case study, as it encompasses the type of news work done by the DSI team.
In conclusion, changes in the journalism industry have altered news work and therefore the definition of journalism. These developments require studying journalism as a dynamic entity in the context of its transition to digital platforms, allowing for a widening definition of news work that moves beyond the traditional journalism practices.
The present study chooses to focus on the DSI team, as it is solely concerned with making digital productions as part of a large media organisation traditionally known for its broadcast and radio productions. As stated on the ABC website the team works in project-based collaborations, has a mobile-first strategy and has a unique composition of technical as well as editorial staff. As such the DSI team can be seen as exemplary for the changes happening in newsrooms, making it an interesting team to study in the face of the shift to digital. In an attempt to answer the research questions, this thesis will illustrate how this team composition and the required new management style facilitate or impede innovative efforts and how they exemplify the changes in the profession of journalism.
2.2 Innovation in journalism Innovation implies change and where legacy media have been facing continuous incremental change in the past, they are now confronted with the disruptive force of the Internet. As Naldi and Picard (2012) note: “Many established news
11 organisations are faltering and having difficulty transforming themselves into Internet operators (p. 70).
Since the mid 90’s media companies worldwide have started to experiment with some form of cross-media collaboration between previously separated divisions, newsrooms or personnel (Deuze, 2007). In the past decade newspapers and broadcasters alike have found themselves having to create and maintain an online presence alongside their main ‘media products’ such as newspapers or television programs. As Deuze (2007) points out, research in several countries shows journalists are getting increasingly accustomed to this new reality – meanwhile revealing the “distinctive character of online journalists” (p. 142).
Literature shows a certain degree of reluctance when it comes to embracing these innovations within the organisation. Interviewees in a Finnish case study emphasize that “the magazine business has deeply rooted practices that are highly resistant to change” (Malemin and Virta, 2015, p. 7). Studies from around the world confirm that this is not only the case in the magazine business, but also in print and broadcast media. Reportedly people feel anxious, distrustful and even threatened by the process of convergence. Deuze (2007) argues that “the shift from individualistic single-media journalism to team-based, collaborative multimedia journalism creates particular tensions in the industry and among journalists, and challenges the “nature” of journalistic culture in general, and individual journalists in particular” (p. 146).
According to Küng (2013) most legacy media organisations worldwide are in decline because they are facing two paradoxes. Firstly, “doing the right thing for existing markets and products can cause organisations to fail in new ones” (p. 11). This is likely to influence the ABC, as too much emphasis on broadcast and radio will ultimately mean they will have less time and money to spend on online journalism innovation. Secondly, “the need to optimise current operations and boost productivity often militates against being innovative and adaptive” (p. 11). Baumann adds to the list of dualities the fact that most media organisations are organised around projects with employees working together on a task-by-task basis. “These temporary project networks overlap the traditional hierarchical organisational structures of the permanent media entity” (2013, p. 80). In other words: the day-to-day practices and organisational structures can create a number of dualities that may impair or influence a smooth innovation process.
This is not to say that growth is impossible. It is achievable through innovation, which in turn demands organisational change (Küng, 2013, p. 12). As put by Storsul and Krumvik: “the existing media industry knows that the rules of the game are changing, and in order to survive they must innovate their products, processes, positions or even their paradigms” (2013, p. 18) The DSI team is set out to do precisely that, as the unit aims to transcend divisions between departments, traditional processes and media-products.
12 Storsul and Krumvik’s innovation theory is a helpful lens to analyse the current developments in the media landscape as a whole, and those at the ABC in particular. According to this theory there are several types of media innovation. Product innovation refers to the invention of new media platforms, genres or communication patterns. Process innovation relates to the way in which these media products are made and delivered. These processes can happen inside as well as outside of the organisation. Position innovation refers to how the organisation changes or frames its position within a certain context. Paradigmatic innovation stands for the organisation’s change of business model, mindset and values (2013, p. 16-17). This theory will be used to analyse the innovative efforts of the DSI team in an attempt to answer how the role, practices and position of the DSI team specifically brings about innovation within the ABC at large.
To delve a little further into process innovation in a broadcast setting for the purpose of this case study, it is useful to look into Doyle’s (2013) research, as it shows how innovation is influenced by user behaviour and competition – two factors likely to influence decision-making at the ABC. As audiences are increasingly reluctant to watch appointment television, they spend more time online where they consume content when it suits them. For broadcasters this means they are now competing against everything a consumer can possibly engage in on the Internet. In order to sustain audience flow, one way to react to this user behaviour is to opt for a multi-platform approach to distribute content – meaning innovating its processes of product-creation and delivery. Content on digital platforms can guide viewers to engage with television content, thereby creating an opportunity for broadcasters to grow their audience. MTV is used as an example because of its effective strategy of seeding teasers and trailers on several platforms to create an audience prior to the linear transmission of a new television programme.
Exactly how legacy media can use these opportunities to their advantage remains an understudied subject in the literature. This thesis will be a step towards breaking down and understanding how the DSI uses the opportunities brought about by digitisation to innovate online journalism. Using Doyle’s findings is helpful in understanding the operational strategies the DSI unit employs to tackle audience decline, and can provide an answer to the research question of how the team operationalizes its mission of attracting new audiences. Using Storsul and Krumsvik’s innovation theory in the present case study will showcase if, how and in what ways the DSI team is changing and improving the ABC’s products, processes, position and paradigm.
2.3 Journalism start-ups worldwide Disillusioned by the inability of some media incumbents to adapt to changing circumstances, some journalists decided to set out on their own. Around the turn of the century this resulted in a surge of journalism start-ups worldwide (Bruno and Kleis Nielsen 2012; Deuze 2017; Naldi and Picard 2012). Throughout this research a journalism start-up will be defined as an organisation that is not
13 affiliated to traditional legacy media, mainly operating in the digital space, producing innovative journalistic products (Bruno and Nielsen, 2012, p. 3-4).
Despite the commitment devoted to these enterprises most start-ups ultimately fail due to bad business plans or lack of capital. As Bruno and Nielsen (2012) note: quality journalism has a price tag. Entrepreneurial enthusiasm and experience in the field do not guarantee success (p. 8). After examining nine start- ups throughout Europe they conclude that none of them have found a sustainable business model for online journalism. All of them are having a hard time breaking even. Likewise, each of the 21 cases of journalism start-ups worldwide that have been studied in the ‘Beyond Journalism’ project led by Deuze, struggle to make ends meet.
So why is it that online news ventures are struggling to keep afloat? Bruno and Nielsen blame it on legacy media still dominating the online market. Having great advantages in resources and being well known to the general public they can attract a much larger audience and therefore revenue than new entrants in the digital space. Looking at the ABC’s new digital team, this thesis will investigate if their big broadcast brand, and the things associated with it will actually work in its advantage when trying to reach new audiences. In addition online advertising is mostly controlled by giant online operators such as Google and Facebook (ibid., p. 6). As Deuze (2017) points out: “Time is spent less with visiting news websites but more with finding and sharing news via social media (thereby enabling companies like Facebook and Google to further siphon off advertising revenue)” (p. 11).
Another issue that may affect entrepreneurial journalists is what Naldi & Picard (2012) call ‘formational myopia’, which “results from the experiences and perceptions of those with a work background in a previous industrial form – in this case in an earlier form of communications or media – constraining the vision of the requirements and necessities for an enterprise in the newer industrial form” (p. 76). To illustrate this, the researchers use the television as an example: when it came into existence it was treated as live radio with images. Thus pre-existing concepts were hard to shake off and it was difficult for journalists to appreciate the terrestrial television on its own merit. The present case study will try to decipher if formational myopia obstructs the DSI unit’s innovative efforts or if the diverse composition of the team facilitates change within the ABC.
Aside from the challenges, literature suggests some factors contributing to the success of journalism start-ups. Naldi and Picard name human resources as one of a venture’s most important assets. Economic resources, knowledge about for instance the industry or tech skills are examples. Wagemans, Witschge and Deuze (2016) add symbolic resources to the list, such as charisma. The personality profile of the news workers involved can have a great impact on its successful development. Success will greatly depend on making the best use of these resources in a competitive strategy. Wagemans, Witschge and Deuze’s (2016)
14 incorporate the notion of ideology as a resource. In the case of the French investigative journalism start-up Mediapart, its ideology of an organisation responding to a democratic, economic and moral crisis in France turned out to be one of its biggest assets (p. 170-171).
The successes and failures of journalism start-ups can be useful in studying how the DSI team deals with concepts such as its resources. Do they face the same challenges when trying to put their mission into practice or are there other issues that arise specifically from being embedded in a traditional broadcast organisation such as the ABC? The next chapter will illustrate this in more detail.
2.4 Intrapreneurship in legacy media organisations Innovation does not only happen in the start-up scene, but also within existing media organisations. News firms are continuously experimenting with how to incorporate a culture of innovation within the existing newsrooms (Boyles, 2016, p. 235). The term intrapreneurship is defined by Boyles as “the embedding of start-ups within the newsroom” (2016: p. 229). This definition will be used throughout this thesis. The DSI team is an example of an intrapreneurial unit embedded in the ABC. Investigating the innovative practices within the unit could serve for future comparison with other intrapreneurial teams around the world in order to deduct possible futures for journalism.
Boyles (2016) describes what most intrapreneurial units within news organisations look like, yet he leaves out any analysis of the impact these structures have on succeeding to innovate or being incorporated into the broader organisation. After speaking to 20 newsroom innovators and consultants he concludes that the intrapreneurial units are generally small, and non-hierarchical - in this respect resembling journalism start-ups. The team members get more face-to-face time and have more autonomy than the average traditional newsworker. “Particularly within the domains of big data, coding and programming, employees are given significant latitude to brainstorm and execute projects.” (2016, p. 237).
The organisation of these new businesses within existing media enterprises is of crucial importance. A great deal of trust and freedom is needed from an organisation to let these units flourish. As Hass notes: “The existing editorial departments have to be convinced to transfer their resources and content into a new venture with initially high setup costs, but low revenue opportunities. Moreover, the new venture might even accelerate the decline of the traditional content or advertising business, thus cannibalizing the established business model in the short run.” (2012, p. 55). In fact a crucial element of convergence as stated by Deuze (2007) is a high degree of commitment by management of a media firm (p. 144).
Where Boyles mentions only one way of incorporating a new media venture into the enterprise, Hass (2012) elaborates on different ways in which this can be done. Firstly, it can be integrated within an existing business unit. Knowledge from the existing unit is transferred into the new venture, but it also has a downside. “Such
15 an organisation structure often tends to transfer the old business to new media without adapting it according to the specification of the different context.” (2012, p. 56). This is what Naldi and Picard, referred to earlier in this theoretical framework, called ‘formational myopia’ and can prove to be counterproductive to the creation of new ideas. In addition employees might prefer the traditional way of working and organisational culture and may thus perceive the venture as a threat. Media incumbents or traditional journalists who have worked at a firm for years are often framed as people who oppose change, but Filak’s (2003) research suggests an important nuance in this discourse. When initiated by the reporters and editors themselves, the changes brought about by convergence turned out to be perceived as more positive than when it is forced upon them by management or some other agent.
Therefore Hass (2012) concludes that it could be beneficial to instead organize the new venture into a separate unit within the media organisation. This set-up gives the new entrants more freedom to experiment but doesn’t allow for the same amount of knowledge-swap and collaboration between the two businesses. There is also a third option. The organisation can set up the new venture in a completely separate company. This impedes cooperation between the old and new business but, aside from the entrepreneurial freedom, also gives rise to the opportunity of collaboration with outside partners.
Hass however does not provide much insight into which of these models of integration works best. Deuze (2007) does mention physical integration of different newsrooms as one of the main factors contributing to organisational convergence. Yet, he concludes that qualitative studies emphasize time and time again that embedding multimedia newsrooms into a larger news organisation is generally a far from smooth process. Future research should be undertaken to shed light on how to best embed intrapreneurial units. The present study will attempt to be a step towards this goal, exploring how the ABC has chosen to embed the DSI unit in the organisation, in order to examine if this strategy fosters a favourable environment for innovation to flourish.
According to Boyles (2016) there are three main management practices hindering intrapreneurship. Firstly, the divide between marketing and producing journalistic content caused by the traditional divide between the editor-in-chief favouring the civic value and the publisher harnessing the economic value of. Indeed Deuze (2007) underlines that when it comes to organisational convergence one of the key elements to facilitating it is “synergy between different departments (including marketing, sales, beats, hierarchical levels of management, technical and administrative staff)” (p. 144).
Secondly, the journalistic culture of autonomy impedes change across the organisation. The important concept of ‘organisational culture’ comes into play here. As defined by Schein (1983, p. 14) it is “the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration.” While this may be
16 advantageous because it allows journalists to work autonomously yet effectively, it can also often reinforce the way things are traditionally done in the workspace, which in turn can prevent innovation from happening. In fact, according to Deuze (2007) the process of collaboration it is often “best characterized by “turf wars”, all kinds of clashes and misunderstandings between journalists (from different beats, genres or departments), mutual prejudices, a perception of multimedia journalism as being less prestigious than working exclusively for one’s own medium, and resistance of reporters and editors whose social roles are thoroughly embedded in well-established newsroom cultures” (p. 144).
Lastly, Boyles identifies a third management practice that can obstruct change: the fast-paced and 24-hour news cycle restraining executives from coming up with strategies to implement change (2016, p. 230). The case study undertaken by Malemelin and Virta (2015) does underline the importance of making time for innovation: “It is crucial that in the situations of change, management provides the necessary conditions for creativity that facilitate, even demand, interaction and allow for enough time to generate and discuss new ideas together” (p. 11).
On the work floor embedding an intrapreneurial unit into a news organisation may give rise to various levels of tension across the firm (Boyles, 2016). “As a result of these layers of tension, the intrapreneurial unit often struggles to infuse creative ideas back into the core news organisation.” (Boyles, 2016, p. 242)
On the executive level there is conflict between the intrapreneurial manager and the senior executives, as the latter are generally averse to change. Often the executives will set unrealistic goals for the intrapreneurial unit, therefore managers will constantly need to temper expectations while still underlining their relevance. Innovation managers thus need to be outstanding communicators as the existence and continuance of the unit will depend on how articulately they can “relate intrapreneurial activity to broader return on investment for the news organisation” (Boyles, 2016, p. 239).
On the practitioner level there is tension between journalists working in the traditional newsroom and the members of the intrapreneurial team. Core newsgatherers of the organisations are not always fond of programmers, coders and developers joining them in the newsroom. It was said by interviewees that open communication, planning regular meet-ups and clearly identifying responsibilities helps to reduce this rivaly.
Lastly, oftentimes there is some level of internal tension within the intrapreneurial unit. Because members of these teams are sometimes hired from start-ups they are not used to the bureaucracy and hierarchical decision-making of the traditional media institutions. Yet, if managed the right way, questioning the decision-making process can become the organisations’ biggest asset.
What is needed to circumvent these issues, as well as how exactly innovative units should be embedded in a media organisation, largely remains unstudied in the
17 literature on intrapreneurship in media. The present thesis will attempt to illustrate how the DSI team within the ABC deals with these challenges and tensions.
2.5 Digital storytelling The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has traditionally been renowned for its quality television and radio shows but the DSI’s only publishing platform is the Internet and more specifically mobile phones. Therefore their core mission is to create engaging and creative digital stories.
Defining digital storytelling, is not as easy as it may appear. Literature suggests that in the broader sense it is a ‘method’ used in different areas such as education, advertising and journalism. It follows that literally the term refers to telling stories on a digital platform. Yet in the journalism context the exact meaning of digital storytelling and what it consists of remains undefined. One of the problems being that the term innovation in a journalism research is often used interchangeably with the term digital or new media (Anderson & De Maeyer, 2014). Following this line of thought digital storytelling would refer to any kind of innovative storytelling, which doesn’t exactly specify the concept. Other terms that regularly get mixed up are online journalism and multimedia journalism. They are often mistakenly viewed as one and the same thing, but as Deuze (2007) explains “The difference lies in the intensions or goals of journalism: online journalism is not driven by the purpose of multimedia – in fact, digital storytelling using multiple media can be seen as a potential but not a necessary element of added value to an online journalistic presentation” (p. 141). The way Deuze uses the term digital storytelling furthers the argument that the concept refers to a ‘mode’, that, rather than an end-product, should be viewed as a meaning to and end.
Due to a lack of space to speculate about the meaning of digital storytelling, Pavlik’s (2013, p. 183) definition of “innovation in news media as the process of taking new approaches to media practices and forms while maintaining a commitment to quality and high ethical standards” will be used. As such, literature on some of these approaches such as storytelling innovation, mobile news, multimedia storytelling, transmedia reporting and interactive storytelling will be discussed in the rest of this chapter.
Evans (2016) makes an interesting distinction between process and product innovation. When interviewing people working at US public radio stations about innovations in their organisation, employees kept referring to what Evans decided to name ‘storytelling innovation’. This frame bridges the divide between process and product innovation, as - for example - the creation of a tool or website refers to an innovative product, but is “part of a larger process of reaching out to audiences in new ways and changing journalism practices” (p. 13). The innovation theory of Storsul and Krumsvik mentioned earlier again seems helpful here. As Evans illustrated in the previous example, it is important to consider that when it comes to digital storytelling several types of innovation (product, process, position and paradigmatic) can happen simultaneously.
18
Furthering the argument of the importance of innovative products Kueng (2017) points out that it is proving to be complex “because it requires an understanding of how to tell digital stories, how technology supports that, and how to ensure that products do what they are meant to do” (p. 24). The difficulty here is that there is no consensus in the literature (nor in the industry) about what digital formats work for different new media. The available literature supports the thesis forwarded by Kueng stating that in fact “templates have yet to emerge from digital storytelling” (p. 28).
Kueng (2017) notes that storytelling for digital differs from traditional formats in three ways. Firstly, the relationship between the writer or producer and reader resembles a dialogue and is more conversational in tone. Secondly, this dialogue is between two equals. Journalists do not only send out facts but are now expected to be more transparent. Thirdly, Kueng stresses the importance of engagement. The online journalism industry has vastly changed the relationship between the producer and the user. Digital storytelling requires journalists to put the audience ahead of their own egos. Deuze (2007) concludes that “the combination of mastering newsgathering and storytelling techniques in all media formats, the integration of digital network technologies coupled with rethinking and re- configuration of the news producer-consumer relationship certainly tends to be seen as one of the biggest challenges facing journalism in the 21st century” (p. 146).
In order to establish a relationship with the reader or viewer news workers must get to know the audience they cater to. Being conscious of the news habits of potential audiences is therefore critical to choosing the best way of using digital possibilities to tell a story. Research shows that this is not easy. As Deuze (2007, p. 146-147) outlines people tend to prefer online radio and television-watching over linear appointment TV, they read less print and more online journalism, they increasingly value visuals rather than long pieces of written text and they are multitasking. Two complicating factors suggested by several studies are that on the one side audiences enjoy a sense of agency – they voluntarily engage in content – but on the other side they oftentimes have trouble accessing and interacting with the multimedia stories, meaning they ultimately do not engage in audio, video and interactive elements. This results in journalists having to “negotiate a user who is at once switched and switched off, engaged and complacent, informed and ignorant, increasingly reliant on journalism and inclined to bypass journalism altogether” (p. 147).
When looking into digital storytelling, a factor that always plays an important role is the medium it is produced for. According to Potts (2014) “the digital game itself is quickly evolving around us, with mobile news and information products setting off yet another tsunami of change and challenges” (p. 11). More than half of the news is consumed through smartphones. Therefore ‘digital’, is increasingly referring to stories and services accessed online via mobile devices instead of a desktop computer. (Potts, 2014). Mobile potentially opens up new possibilities for
19 legacy media to grow. As Pavlik (2013) states: “The increasing convergence between mobile device use and social media engagement presents a growing revenue opportunity” (p. 186). Put differently, publishing well-crafted stories customised for mobile devices could increase the ‘shareablility’ of the article via social media, thereby reaching a larger audience. According to Pavlik (2013) social sharing “signals a key strategy for news media leadership to the digital future.” In fact, in today’s worlds of rapid circulating news, increasing the shelf life of a story becomes increasingly important, or as Jenkins e. a. (2013) conclude: “if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.” A big part of digital storytelling thus becomes the craft of knowing how to design for spreadability. According to Jenkins e. a. “successful creators understand the strategic and technical aspects they need to master in order to create content more likely to spread, and they think about what motivates participants to share information and to build relationships with the communities shaping its circulation” (2013, p. 196).
There are several ways of transferring content from the original media source such as the newspaper or television program to fit mobile usage. An important concept in this regard is ‘multiple utilization of content’, as mentioned by Hass (2011). Legacy news organisations can use existing content not only for their traditional media-products but also for new mobile or web-products and use this as an opportunity to grow revenue. To this effect Westlund (2012) concludes that “mobile news publishing seems to have become increasingly synonymous with excelling in technological customisation, harnessing technological assets that enhance the perceived affordances of mobile device” (p. 20).
Yet Veglis (2012) argues that simply transferring the content from a print edition to a web edition without customising it isn’t enough for today’s internet users who have grown up with the Web 2.0 (p. 323). Instead the researcher proposes to implement what he calls ‘transmedia reporting’ referring to the breaking down of stories into little pieces and dispersing them via different channels as well as using different story elements such as text, picture, graphic and video in the same channel. Arguing that this is especially attractive to younger audiences who do not read the newspaper as it triggers their “exploratory instinct”.
For news workers, making this type of transmedia or multimedia journalism means their job increasingly consists of producing instead of reporting. Content Management Systems (CMS) have become more sophisticated, allowing for the publishing of articles containing various forms such as audio, text and video. Yet, Deuze (2007) shows that navigating these systems sometimes frustrates practitioners, as journalists see their creative efforts being restricted by the limited range of formats and templates the CSM has to offer – all the while damaging the perception of news workers’ identity as “creative workers”” (p. 144).
In conclusion literature seems to agree on one thing: content needs to be customised and the traditional templates of newspapers and broadcast need to be abandoned. Legacy media companies as well as journalism start-ups are experimenting with how to best do this. For the purpose of this research attention
20 will be paid to the way in which the DSI unit evaluates its successes and failures in terms of digital storytelling and how the ABC facilitates or impedes the team’s innovative attempts.
Picture: Sydney newsroom 1st floor
21 3. Methodology
3.1 Case study The research strategy chosen in this thesis is a case study. This approach provides in-depth and detailed knowledge of the processes, relationships, events and experiences occurring in a specific setting thereby aiming to shed light on the general by illuminating the particular (Denscombe, 2010).
The present case study is part of a larger research project led by Prof. Dr. Mark Deuze. Thus far a total of 22 case studies have been partaken in all continents in order to illustrate the inner workings of innovation in the media sector.
The case studied in this account is the Digital Story Innovations team, a new team consisting of eight news workers. The DSI team has been funded for an initial period of a year and at the time of field research the team had been in existence for six months. The unit is part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The ABC makes for an interesting media organisation to investigate, as it has no commercial pursuits and thus is not pressured to make a profit, hypothetically giving the DSI team more leeway to experiment, because the ABC is not at risk of bankruptcy.
There are various ways in which the DSI team proves suitable for a comprehensive case study. Firstly, because it is part of such an institutional public broadcaster its targets, goals and missions are clearly outlined and documented. This allows for a degree of benchmarking and comparison.
Secondly, the unit is made up of people with different professional backgrounds, such as developers, designers, reporters and journalists, collaborating on productions or articles. This type of mixing of skillsets is a novelty at the ABC as these professions were previously separated into different divisions of the organisation. The team therefore has special features distinguishing it from other teams within the ABC. On the other hand it has similar features to intrapreneurial units being set up in news organisations all over the world, allowing for future comparison.
On a more pragmatic level, after Deuze established the first contact, Kimberley Porteous, the founder of the DSI team, approved my request to study the unit, promising access to the offices, their private communication and documents which in turn gave rise to the opportunity to use a variety of methods that resulted in getting rich and detailed data on the team’s daily practice, experience, difficulties and successes.
3.2 Field research in Sydney and Melbourne The ABC granted access to their Sydney office for a period of two weeks – from Monday the 11th of December until Friday the 22nd of December 2017. In this period most of the DSI team members were interviewed, observations were made,
22 meetings were attended, field notes were taken and access to internal documents and communications was granted.
Upon arrival the ground rules were established with Stephen Hutcheon, the executive producer of the DSI team. Full cooperation and access was granted on the premise that the thesis would not be published without his consent. In the first meeting Stephen Hutcheon explained my presence to his team and urged them to speak freely as the interviewees could remain anonymous if they wished.
On the 4th of January 2018 I flew to Melbourne to interview the two developers of the DSI team, Ri Liu and Nathanael Scott, who are based at the ABC office in Melbourne’s Southbank. I spent two days at the office there.
Access to the Sydney office was prolonged for three weeks upon my request. From the 8th of January until the 26th of January 2018 I spent about two to three days a week at the office to work on my thesis and to conduct additional context interviews with ABC employees.
3.3 Internal document and communication analysis After my access was granted and before the field research commenced, I had extensive e-mail contact with Kimberley Porteous. One of her e-mails contained parts of an internal memo document introducing the DSI team members, their mission and its measures of success.
On site in Sydney I requested access to any other relevant documents that could be of use to my analysis. After some initial hesitation and a promise to treat the internal documents with care, I received various documents ranging from a memo written to showcase the DSI team’s (measurable) successes to the ABC board, an evaluation report of a pilot coproduction of the DSI team with the current affairs program called ‘Four Corners’, internal audience development reports and performance graphs. Most communication between the team members happens on Slack, a chat medium. By the end of my field research I managed to get access to some of the Slack channels.
The private nature of some of the documents gives rise to the question of credibility and validity. As Denscombe states: “Letters and memos also differ from reports in terms of the extent to which there is any formal obligation on the writer to give a full and accurate portrayal of events.” (2010, p. 218).
The documents mostly serve as benchmarks for future improvement or to justify the existence of the team to management. It should be noted that some documents such as the one written to the ABC board focus on the successes of the team, possibly leaves out the unit’s failures or struggles. The document analysis however studies a variety of documents, most of which are critical and systematic in nature, providing clear recommendations for improvement. The variety is seen to give a representative understanding of the issues at play.
23 Especially when held up against the interviews and observations, having internal documents to one’s disposal helps in counterbalancing the biases of the interviews (Meyer, 2001).
3.4 Semi-structured interviews In both Sydney and Melbourne the interviews were conducted one-on-one so as to make the interviewees feel comfortable to speak freely about their experiences and emotions. The interviews were semi-structured – there was a comprehensive list of questions to be answered, yet this mode of interviewing also allowed a degree of flexibility. When the interviewees wanted to elaborate on certain issues they had the possibility to do so and when certain questions proved irrelevant or already answered, they were skipped.
The interview questions were modelled after the ‘Beyond Journalism interview guide’ used by other researchers conducting case studies on journalism start-ups. The questions were slightly modified to fit this particular case and some questions were added. The interviews mainly focussed on how the interviewees perceived the mission and goals of the team, innovation in journalism, the daily practice and working conditions, the material context, self identity of the professionals, social identity of the professionals and digital storytelling.
The interviews lasted between 1,5 and 2,5 hours. In total ten interviews were conducted with news workers currently or previously involved in the DSI team, covering the entire team, making this a rich account of their practices. In addition three context-interviews were effectuated with ABC employees of other teams. They were selected using two criteria. Firstly, I interviewed two members of current affairs programs who had worked closely together with the DSI team, Dee Porter from the National Reporting team and Marianne Leitch from Foreign Correspondent. The main reason to interview them was because they could provide an outside perspective on their experience of working with the team. Secondly, I interviewed Matt Holbrook over the telephone, as he is part of an innovative team in Adelaide experimenting with Virtual Reality for children. This interview was conducted to get a better overview of different innovative hubs around the ABC and the ABC’s innovation history. Every interview was recorded and transcribed and the interviewees were given the option to remain anonymous.
The open nature of this type of interviewing gives rich accounts of the perspective and experience of the interviewee, and put together, the ten interviews where roughly the same questions were answered by all members of the team, provide knowledge on the functioning of the team as a whole and on the organisation they belong to. Therefore conclusions can be drawn on both a personal and an organisational level. Even though one of the weaknesses of interviews is the lack of facts that can be retrieved from them, the data on the DSI team become more reliable as multiple subjects express similar concerns or experiences (Denscombe, 2010, p. 193)
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3.5 Observations and field notes During the period of field research at the ABC I used the method of participant observation. “By participant observation we mean the method in which the observer participates in the daily life of the people under study, either openly in the role of researcher or covertly in some disguised role, observing things that happen, listening to what is said, and questioning people, over some length of time” (Becker and Geer, 1957, p. 28). During my research I was, as Denscombe (2010, p. 207) describes, participating as an observer. I was not immersed in the group, instead my identity as a researcher was openly recognized, thereby ensuring informed consent from the team members. Of course this approach could also disrupt the natural setting.
Good research demands enough time on site to gain trust and establish relationships with the group. The two initial weeks of field research was a short period of time for this type of method, but seeing as most of the DSI team members are young and sociable this issue did not seem to be in play. A potential risk of participant observation lies in getting too familiar with the group and losing sight of the purpose of the research. In Denscombe’s words “the success of participant observation relies on the researcher’s ability, at one and the same time, to be a member of the group being studied and to retain a certain detachment which allows for the research observation aspect of the role.” (2010, p. 212). During the research I got invited to join members of the group for lunch on several occasions and I got invited for one member’s birthday party celebrated at his house. At these times it was difficult to stay in the background as an observer, my role as a participant grew, yet I always tried to hold on to a degree of detachment bearing in mind my role as a researcher. Similarly, it was challenging to not get affected by the views and statements of many participants regarding their perspective on the future of journalism and the skills needed to be a journalist in this day and age. As noted by Denscombe (2010) the ‘self’ is the researcher's only instrument when observing – and in my case, being a graduating journalism student, a lot of the issues at hand applied directly to my situation, at times making it difficult to not get demoralised about my own future career.
To increase the validity and credibility of my observations I requested to extend my field research period. On site I turned by observations into daily field notes when the chance occurred to do so in private. Notes included my own actions spread out over the day. Separately, any behaviours and pieces of information that had not surfaced during the interviews were noted and written down.
3.6 Thick description The present case study will use thick description as a means to provide a holistic picture of the DSI team (Schutt 2014, p. 355). “The emphasis is not just on describing what ‘is’ but on explaining how the nature of this phenomenon is closely linked to other aspects of its social context” (Denscombe, 2010, p. 343).
25 This approach does justice to the complex nature of the DSI team and its interactions with other teams.
3.7 Grounded theory The method used to analyse the emerging data from the document analysis, the interviews and the observations made during my field research is called the grounded theory. This approach generates, rather than tests theories and is dedicated to link these explanations to what happens on site in the real world of a practical situation. The particular strength of this approach is that “there can be no allegations that researchers are in any sense forcing a fit between the data and the theory” (Denscombe, 2010, p. 118).
This approach requires the researcher to start with an open mind, the research itself should be treated as a journey of discovery (Denscombe, 2010). Upon my arrival at the ABC I had read relevant innovation literature and prepared my interview-questions, but I was fairly unaware of the Australian media landscape, the type of productions made by the DSI team and its work process – thus I had very little, if any, preconceived ideas, which enabled me to keep an open mind.
Of course there is a steep learning curve when on site. Along the way patterns can be recognised, which naturally causes a greater focus on some and a lesser focus on other topics in the interviews that follow. In fact, as grounded theory demands, my analysis had begun the very second I walked into the ABC office. As Corbin and Strauss note: “analysis is necessary from the start because it is used to direct the next interview and observations” (1990, p. 6).
When all of the interviews were transcribed, field notes were cleaned up and the internal documents were collected, all of the data was piled together. Upon reading the first data units some recurring themes started to emerge. After going through hundreds of pages new themes emerged and already established themes were redefined. The raw data were eventually reduced to quotes that fit into one of ten initial categories. During this process, the description of what these categories entailed became more specific each time. As Folkestad suggests: “it should be noted that the analysis phase in itself is a continuous process, and that we can not easily distinguish the collection, reduction and analysis phases from each other” (2008, p. 4).
After close inspection of the document containing the initial categories it dawned on me that some quotes were wrongly labelled and some categories seemed less relevant than others. After reorganising the quotes and deleting some themes, clearer defined categories emerged. Through a process of linking and associating some themes started to merge. To give an example, the theme I had previously named “professional identity” contained all utterances of interviewees talking about wether or not they identified as a journalist and the values that most inform their work. Upon reviewing this theme it turned out that in fact this whole category could be placed under the theme “the ABC as an employer”. As it turned
26 out, the professional identity of the team members was not associated with wether or not they felt like they could be considered a journalist, but rather with feeling part of the ABC – a corporation with status that also reflects their deepest ethics and values.
This process of re-evaluating, deleting and creating new categories was repeated several times until seven clearly defined themes emerged. In this coding process constant comparison was made with theories and literature outlined in the theoretical framework. Eventually theories started to surface.
Picture: DSI team moving to the first floor of the ABC Ultimo office in Sydney
27 4. Context
4.1 The ABC: an institution in transition Founded in 1932, the ABC has become an omnipresent and unique part of the Australian media landscape. Unlike many other journalism organisations serving a specific audience, ABC productions are meant to cater to all Australians. With no immediate commercial purpose, serving the public is the ABC’s main objective. This gives rise to other pressures, as supervising producer Hutcheon explains:
“The funding is linked obviously to reaching a broad audience of Australians. If you don’t, then you may have problems getting the funding you need from the government. I mean, the trend in recent years, especially with a more conservative government, is to cut funding to the ABC because they feel it caters much to the left elite.”
Just prior to the field research in December 2017, there have been some structural changes. The charts below show the organisational structure of the ABC before and after the restructure. When the DSI team was set up by Kimberley Porteous, it had no ties to one specific team or TV program allowing the team members to collaborate with a multitude of current affairs teams. As of December 2017 the team has been placed under the Investigations team led by Jo Puccini. This change in strategy has also meant the team had to physically move halfway through the field research. Where the team members were first scattered across the ground floor, which is where the current affairs and news programs are located, they have now been moved to the first floor where they are sitting all together and next to the Investigations team. The implications of the restructure will be discussed in the section on digital strategy.
28 Before the restructure
Director of News (Gaven Morris)
Senior manager future audiences and content 7:30 Australian Story Four Corners Foreign strategie Correspondent Q&A Lateline (Kimberley Porteous)
Digital Story Innovations Podcast team team Podcast team (Stephen Hutcheon)
After the restructure
Director of News (Gaven Morris)
Deputy director of News (Craig McMurtrie)
Senior manager future audiences and Head Investigations and content strategy In-depth Journalism (John Lyons) (Kimberley Porteous)
Podcast team podcast team
Investigations Australian Foreign 7:30 Four Corners team Q&A Lateline Story (Jo Puccini) Correspondent
DSI team (Stephen Hutcheon)
29
4.2 Innovation at the ABC Like many other media organisations, the ABC has always made an effort to be innovative. The ABC has been at the forefront as one of the first adapters of important technological developments, such as broadcast streaming services. With Iview they were the country’s first to offer an alternative to appointment watching, predating Netflix and other media organisations. Today, several interviewees comment that the streaming service as well as the Content Management System is out-dated.
The problem according to journalist Mark Doman is that despite the effort, innovation has not necessarily been backed up by a lot of funding. But that is changing now, he says. In recent years the ABC has put different teams in place that are working on innovative new forms of (digital) journalism.
In various places within the ABC, teams are experimenting with podcasting. The Audio Lab is making podcasts on true crime and Kimberley Porteous is working with a team on morning news podcasts. Over in Adelaide, Behind the News – a children’s news program – is exploring Virtual Reality. Behind the News producer Matthew Holbrook explains that he spent the last year creating a 40-minute VR experience for educational purposes in a team of three. It takes children down the Kokoda Track using archival footage, audio, interactive and gaming elements, in order to teach them about World War II. In Canberra, a small new political team will be making enriched digital stories with the aid of a developer and designer.
However, prior to the DSI team there was only one other team concerned with new forms of digital storytelling for the ABC website. The Interactive Storytelling Team (IST) was set up about five years ago in Brisbane, and still exists today. Aside from reporters the team incorporates news workers with developing, data and designing skills, but Kimberley Porteous wanted to bring even more digital skills to this new DSI team. Skills that the Brisbane team did not posses. Also, News management wanted the team closer to where the current affairs programs were in order to make them more accountable. Executive producer Stephen Hutcheon clarifies:
“They really set off this momentum to create mobile friendly bespoke content and where I understand […] there was a big demand from some of the current affairs programs to get a slice of this action, this assistance. […] The geographical distance also made it more problematic, so the idea was hatched, I don’t know say a year ago or whatever, for our team to start in Sydney and to do a very similar job to the team in Brisbane, but particularly to work more closely with the current affairs programs.”
DSI’s data journalist Inga Ting reiterates that the Brisbane team has paved the way for her team:
“We use all of their templates and even in terms of how our team works. I think they have done a lot of the hard work in trying to get people to understand what’s involved in these kinds of
30 stories, which I think is one of the hardest things because it’s basically a cultural shift that needs to happen in the newsroom for your team to work efficiently.”
4.3 The DSI team members introduced
Name Job title Location Kimberley Porteous Senior manager future audiences Sydney, 5th floor and content strategy Jo Puccini Supervising producer of the Sydney, 1st floor Investigations team (that the DSI now part of) Stephen Hutcheon (59) Supervising producer of the DSI Sydney, 1st floor team Mark Doman (31) Digital journalist and producer Sydney, 1st floor Inga Ting (34) Data journalist Sydney, 1st floor Jack Fisher (26) Video journalist/photographer Sydney, 1st floor Alex Palmer (26) Digital designer Sydney, 1st floor Michael Workman (30) Audience development producer Sydney, 1st floor Nathanael Scott (34) Front-end developer Melbourne Ri Liu (30) Editorial developer Melbourne
See Internal document … for a more details on the members’ backgrounds.
4.4 Media landscape in Australia DSI team members talk about various levels of competition they experience. The ABC as a broadcaster traditionally has been competing against major newspapers and broadcasters in Australia such as the Sydney Morning Herald or other Fairfax publications, the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and SBS. Interviewees note that a disinvestment in journalism of their commercial partners such as the Sydney Morning Herald, an ageing audience and trends such as on-demand television watching and Netflix were real game-changers causing an even more competitive journalism market and a decline in broadcast viewership.
At the same time, the ABC’s digital reach is only very slowly increasing. When looking at online journalism News.com.au generates the most traffic in Australia, whereas the website of the ABC is currently number two. In terms of innovative digital storytelling some other competitor emerge. Firstly, the DSI team members state to feel a friendly sense of competition internally with the Interactive Storytelling team at the ABC office in Brisbane. Other than that, the ABC competes with the digital journalists at the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald. Globally, the New York Times and the Washington Post are examples the team lead by. Some of the team members consider everything that is on the Internet that can potentially grab the user’s attention as competition, wether it is pictures, memes, online games, the Kardashians or chat apps.
31 A competitive market combined with declining readership and viewership of legacy media in Australia, has cost a lot of journalists their jobs. It is in this context that the journalism union has an increasingly important role in Australia’s media industry. The Media and Entertainments Arts Alliance (MEAA), Australia’s journalism union, has started a campaign called “Hands off our ABC”. In a press release on May 9th MEAA Media director Katelin McInerney said:
“The potential $43 million cut to dedicated news funding and the freezing of indexed funding at a cost of $84 million are crippling blows to the ABC and follow years of under-funding by the Abbott and Turnbull Governments. Including last night’s announcement, almost $400 million has been cut from ABC funding since 2014. ABC base funding has been cut in real terms by almost 25 per cent over the past 30 years. These funding cuts have placed enormous stress upon the ABC which, last night, was once again being asked to do more with less.” (MEAA, 2015)
Apart from running campaigns, conferences, seminars and awards, the union is also there to help negotiate contracts or salary. “The media union is very strong. It has more than 80 percent, maybe even 90 percent membership”, says data journalist Inga Ting. It is in this rapidly changing and highly competitive journalism landscape that the ABC has to navigate its way into the future.
Picture: DSI team meeting (only part of the team). Left to right: Michael Workman, Alex Palmer, Jack Fisher, Mark Doman and on the video screen Nathanael Scott and Ri Liu
32 5. Results and analysis
From the interviews, documents and field notes obtained during the field research period at the ABC in Sydney and Melbourne the following important recurring themes have emerged. The first theme that regularly surfaced is the composition, mission of the DSI team as its members understand it. The second and third team are location and integration and organisational culture respectively, because both are seen to influence innovation. The fourth category, digital strategy, will then be discussed in light of how it affects the DSI teams innovative efforts. A fifth theme talks about what it means to have the ABC as an employer. The sixth discusses the team’s work process, thereby highlighting how the innovation comes about and the final seventh theme dissects the theme of digital storytelling.
5.1 Composition and mission of the DSI team Kimberley Porteous who recruited and selected all of the team members set up the Digital Story Innovations team in July 2017. In Hutcheon’s words the unit is “on a temporary visa”. It will be funded for a year, after which its progress will be evaluated, possibly leading to continued funding. Previously the team was temporarily named the EDL team, after News director Gaven Morris’s newsroom mantra ‘Equal Digital Life’, referring to the equal treatment of broadcast and digital content. Afterwards the team and news director jointly decided that, bearing their mission in mind, Digital Story Innovations was a more appropriate name.
The team’s mission as stated in an internal document (Internal document 1) sent to ABC executives by Kimberley Porteous is as follows:
“They’ll introduce a range of valuable digital skills into ABC News to enable us to deliver quality journalism on non-broadcast platforms and reach younger audiences through a creative mobile-first approach. A primary aim is to reach the younger, smartphone-driven audiences that our broadcast programs do not currently reach and in ways that add significantly to audience engagement. The other key aim of the new unit is to help increase our teams’ digital capabilities with each collaboration. Our broadcast teams will learn about best practice digital commissioning, content creation and distribution through working closely with the team members, who are all specialists in their craft.”
In the case of a collaboration the document stresses the importance of equal partnership – thereby still holding on to the equal digital life credo:
“Editorial oversight for the digital journalism produced will be shared equally between the unit’s supervising producer and the editorial leader of the broadcast team.”
Marianne Leitch, executive producer of the respected TV program Foreign Correspondent who has collaborated with the DSI team on two occasions, offers an outside perspective on the team’s mission that she thinks might be too ambitious:
33
“I understand the impetus for having a team like the Digital Storytelling team go between programs, I totally get it. I think it is quite impractical in reality. I think you get a much better result having these people embedded in a team. […] The fact that they have been put there (in the Investigations team red.), rather than being kept where they were, is an indication in a way that it wasn’t a successful model to have them work between the programs, but I don’t know”
It remains to be seen how the reorganisation impacts the integration of the team. It is imaginable, and feared by Kimberley Porteous, that it will result in ‘formational myopia’ as defined by Naldi and Picard (2012), which in this context would result in the previous experiences and industry perceptions of broadcast journalists from the Investigations team constraining their vision of the necessities for a successful new media form. Kimberley Porteous was not consulted with the restructure and expects it will cause the team’s mission to change.
“They will most likely be more of a presentation team rather than digital transformation people who were to come in here and change the way everyone worked and thought about stories.”
The success of the team is measured by clearly defined benchmarks. Unlike their predecessors in Brisbane, the DSI unit has no formal targets in terms of the amount of articles the team has to produce, as it was found to be counterproductive to the innovative mission of the Brisbane team. The quality of their work suffered from being pressed for time. As Internal document 1 shows, within the 12 months of their initial funding-period the team has to deliver:
• Pageviews at least 100% above site average • Time spent on this content at least 150% above site average • Reach on third-party platforms at least 10% higher than other news content • Acquire new audiences: at least 15% of visitors to this content will be new to ABC News • Building capacity and competence for planning, commissioning and contributing to high- end digital storytelling within our broadcast teams through hands-on projects
Where research points out that tension may arise between the manager of an intrapreneurial unit and news executives because the latter often sets unrealistic goals (Boyles, 2016), this does not seem relevant to the DSI team as each of their productions have exceeded the targets. A possible explanation is the amount of experience Kimberley Porteous has in digital strategy. Using this knowledge in her business case, she was able to set ambitious yet realistic goals. Another resource to build on that has been of use in the creation of the DSI team is the existence of the Brisbane digital storytelling team. Learning from their mistakes and successes has been extremely beneficial to the team. This supports the idea emerging from the results of media innovation case studies worldwide that a great contributor to the success of start-ups is an adequate use of resources – prior industry knowledge being one of them (Naldi & Picard, 2016).
34 Apart from one, each DSI production has well exceeded the reach and engagement benchmarks. Internal document 4 shows several examples of the reach of DSI productions. To highlight just one, the ‘Ordinary Australia’ and related articles achieved 321,448 page views for all articles with 290,846 page views for the main article alone (goal 25,696 page views), a new visitor share of 70 percent (goal 15 percent) a third party platform reach three times against the benchmark (reach 733,163 versus goal 215,485) and time spent on page well above benchmarks for the main article across all devices excluding the app:
Ordinary Australia – Time spent results Device Time Spent Avg. DSI Goal Desktop 3 mins 50 secs Mobile 4 mins 23 secs 3 mins 29 secs Tablet 4 mins 19 secs App 49 secs
Most team members therefore feel confident that they will be funded beyond this year. As it turns out, almost all of the DSI team members rate the success of their team in terms of reaching these targets. This creates a marketing-like mindset that is new to journalism, one in which the DSI team speaks about itself in terms of being a ‘seller’ and the reader ‘a consumer’ that has a wide variety of choice and therefore needs to be lured into engaging with the produced content. But they are not only salespeople. Quality of the content can never be undermined in the process of selling stories and interviewees note that here is also a big experimental and creative element to their mission. Some report feeling the pressure of having their efforts measured and monitored, but this pressure lessens as their confidence grows each time they exceed their goals.
Besides these formalised targets, the DSI team members agree that there is another part to their mission, a part that is more difficult to measure. The impact of the team’s efforts does not stop when the audience goals are reached. In a way, there is no end-point to the unit’s mission. Jack Fisher explains:
“It is a constant iterative thing. A lot of what we do is centred around behaviours, user-audience behaviour online, and that is constantly evolving and will continue to evolve. And so I think our mission just keeps repeating itself as we watch for, you know, how are the phones going to be different in the future, how the audience accessing things on laptop versus mobile is going to be different. As these things change we will need to keep doing what we are doing to keep up.”
The DSI team operates parallel to the daily news cycle as they are mostly expected to work on bigger story projects. Taking the DSI unit out of the 24-hour news cycle seems beneficial in creating a positive environment for innovative ideas. This is supported by research suggesting that managers who are caught up in this cycle often lack time to strategize the implementation of change (Boyles, 2016). The other way around additional research conveys that creativity thrives when management allows for enough time for ideation and interaction (Boyles, 2016; Malemin and Virta, 2015). The members of the DSI team express feeling like their
35 supervisor grants them this time and freedom to experiment and exchange ideas. Yet, in order to account for their existence some members still feel pressured to produce a certain amount of articles:
Inga Ting: “I know that you are supposed to be measuring impact and quality of publication and not just the number of things you churn out, but I still think that’s just the way that the news media has worked in the past […] even if your direct manager is not counting it or your managers manager is not counting it, I still think someone is counting it somewhere.”
The DSI team is set up as an autonomous team that is given the freedom to experiment in trying to find the best way to tell any given story in the digital space. Just like other intrapreneurial units in media organisations (Boyles, 2016), the DSI unit can be characterised as flat and non-hierarchical. Even though the team is officially led by supervising producer Stephen Hutcheon, decisions are made collectively.
Stephen Hutcheon: “I might like something but if the rest of them say mehhhh..then maybe we won’t do it. I think in the old style of journalism, the boss’ views always reigned and that is not necessarily a good thing. So I am quite happy to engage in a discussion or a collective agreement.”
Literature suggests that intrapreneurial teams structurally model their innovative units after journalism start-ups with this type of set-up (Boyles, 2016). Breaking down these hierarchies facilitates organisational convergence (Deuze, 2007) and “creating new things, practices and processes” was found to spur the creativity needed to think outside the box. Collaborative ideation sessions, mutual learning and support among colleagues turned out to be of great importance in managing creativity (Malmelin & Virta, 2016). For the DSI team this open and flat structure indeed seemed beneficial to their innovation processes.
What stands out in the composition of the team is that it mixes technological and digital skills with journalistic skills. Interesting and, as interviewees explain, until recently fairly unique in the industry and certainly to the ABC, is the introduction of an audience developer who previously worked in the marketing department of the organisation – thereby tearing down the wall between editorial and marketing and placing more value on the distribution of the DSI productions. This is part of a clear strategy to reach new audiences deriving from a deep understanding of the importance distribution in digital storytelling. As literature suggests the shareability of a story is crucial to prolong the lifecycle of a digital production and to attract larger audiences (Jenkins et. al., 2013; Pavlik, 2013).
Audience developer Michael Workman:“I guess another thing with bringing me into the team, which makes us different to other teams, is that a lot of that distribution and measurement was put onto reporters previously, or executive producers and that is really not fair because they already have a lot of work to do and it is not something they would have the right expertise for. […] I think having people like myself within the organisation is a risk, because it can undermine the quality of the product, but I think because I worked in the news marketing
36 division, I already have respect for the news product […] I really don’t want to stand up in a place where the internet is filled with the Kardashians because that is what people want.”
Another first in the history of the ABC is the creation of the role data-journalist. As Inga Ting describes:
“I think that’s part of why my position was created at the ABC, because they have not really had any data journalist before, at least not titled data journalists. And so datasets just got dumped, they didn’t know what to do with it so they just ignored it, wasted it.”
The common denominator of the team is that each person has a varied skillset. Most have one specialty that sets them apart, such as development, design or data journalism, but all of the unit’s news workers have accompanying digital or editorial skills, such as animation, social media distribution, video shooting and editing, writing or data analysis or visualisation. According to Mark Doman, what his role requires is “being skilled in a lot of different things at the same time, because it is kind of like what these roles are going to be in the future. You will have to be able to do a lot of different things.” This is in line with literature suggesting that the skills needed to work in the journalism industry have changed as more technical staff, programmers and designers are being introduced into the newsroom (Deuze & Witschge, 2017). Judged from the success of the productions of the DSI team, bringing people with these skills into the organisation have a positive effect on the ABC’s output and its appeal to younger audiences.
5.2 Location and integration Location, in the broadest sense of the word, is a topic that keeps coming back. Often it is talked about as a more or less disturbing or interfering factor in carrying out the DSI team’s mission and the ABC’s digital strategy at large. The term location in most cases boils down to geographical distance: between the ABC’s digital imperium in Brisbane and the DSI team in Sydney; between the team’s developers in Melbourne and the rest of the unit in Sydney; between the people making, for instance, the ABC app and those teams using the app; between the decision-makers and those executing the decisions; and finally, on a micro level the physical distance between the DSI team and the journalists of the current affairs programs they collaborate with in the newsroom. Location seems to have an effect on the degree to which the DSI team is integrated in the newsroom. Cross-pollination between newsrooms and teams is limited because of the distance between them. As Inga Ting explains:
“Like it is hard having two people in Melbourne, especially the developers. I think in a way if it was just journalists who were there it would be easier, because I think people have a better sense of what journalists are doing, but developing is new for journalism and new for newsrooms generally. Lots of newsrooms don’t understand what developers are doing, so if they are actually physically separated from you as well, then people kind of like never…and the same goes for the
37 digital desk in Brisbane, people don’t visualise actual time that you were interacting with them and you don’t have as good as a grasp on what their work entails.”
According to Hass (2012) intrapreneurial teams can be incorporated into an already existing unit or into a completely separate unit. Neither of these options seem to apply to the mode of integration that was chosen for the DSI team. Instead the DSI unit’s initial set-up was some in-between form of integration.
The team is a separate unit in the sense that it does not pertain to any other team or newsroom, yet one of its missions is collaborating with other teams within the newsroom. In the physical office space, the team members were spread out across the newsroom in an attempt to facilitate their involvement with other teams. This way of embedding seems to overcome the disadvantage put forward by Hass (2012) of having less knowledge-swap and collaboration between the two businesses that comes from embedding an innovative unit as a separate entity while at the same preventing a transfer of the old business to new media - which was mentioned as the downfall of integrating an intrapreneurial unit into an already existing business. The field data suggests that Kimberley Porteous had chosen this type of physical and structural way of embedding the team to assist its visibility in the organisation and to promote the members’ roles as change-agents who are there to educate the newsroom.
Kimberley Porteous: “We have put so much effort into making sure that they are sat here so they could be part of things and not like off in a corner somewhere. And it just all has been dismantled. […] We did like the idea of having Alex our designer on the design desk, and the designers really wanted that so we could have a bit of skills transfer going on. But apart from that it would be nice to have them sit all together, that’s what we’ve been trying for. They will do that upstairs.”
The way the team is integrated into the newsroom has changed midway through the field research due to a restructure. The DSI team will spend the last six months of their funded term being part of the Investigations team. Although most team members acknowledge the necessity of forming relations and being spread out, most of them reported feeling exited to move one floor up where they could sit as a group and next to the Investigations team. This was because in practice, the cross-pollination envisioned to be a result of this way of embedding the team rarely happened and sitting far away from each other did hamper internal team collaboration. It is not unimaginable that this way of embedding would have paid off in the long run – possibly current affairs journalists who have already collaborated with the DSI team would be motivated to do so again purely as an effect of interacting with them in the physical newsroom. But thus far, co-productions generally resulted from manager meetings between Stephen Hutcheon and the supervising producers of other teams in which Hutcheon “fields opportunities” to collaborate.
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This is not to say that geographical segregation is insurmountable and that it prevents employees from doing their job. In fact, the DSI team shows a lot of creativity in trying to circumvent these hurdles, more often than not using technology as a tool to do so. The team members try to reach out to bridge distance by organising digital training sessions, by reaching out on an individual level to journalists from other teams to assist them with their digital strategy or data, by using Slack and Google Hangout to communicate with their team members in Melbourne and by re-formatting their productions to fit the ABC application.
Reese (2016) suggests a new spacial geography that arises from global connectivity. In a networked sphere the boundaries of journalism blur, but the newsroom structure and hierarchy persist even in a dramatically changed news ecosystem. Reese concludes that a lot of news work still takes place in institutionalised and organised settings. The overarching hierarchies at the ABC prevent the DSI team from fully exploiting the possibilities arising from working in a digital space in which geographical separation does not have to be an issue. Despite the fact that most interviewees work solely in the digital realm – in theory allowing them to work from any given location – it appears as though geographical distance can impede a smooth innovation process. This is also due to the DSI team’s partial role as newsrooms educators – which bring them from the digital space down to the physical work floor.
Again, this underlines the importance of face-to-face meetings and sharing a physical space, especially during a time of upheaval and change within an organisation. This is in line with literature stating that regular meetings and open communication indeed facilitate the process of collaboration, idea generation and team engagement (Boyles, 2016; Malemin and Virta, 2015). The theme of location is inextricably linked to the next theme of organisational culture as geographical distance between departments, teams and news workers does not create the most favourable environment for innovation to flourish and may even maintain or enforce the juxtaposing newsroom cultures.
5.3 Organisational culture The theme of organisational culture, as used here, encompasses the interaction between several subcultures observed within the ABC. What stands out from looking at the field material is that there are culture clashes at play. Because of the ABC’s long history there is what I will from now on continue to call a strong establishment of hard-hitting and high-quality broadcast teams. Most scoops and big investigations are revealed in TV programs such as Four Corners. As such, journalists working for these programs have often worked at the ABC for decades and are viewed within the organisation as situated at the top of the work floor pecking order.
39 Ri Liu: “I feel like journalism has this huge sort of legacy and history associated with it and tech is kind of like new and experimental and they try new things with environments and structures around management and all that. So, yeah, coming from being used to that environment and coming into journalism that has been interesting.”
Where most downsizing organisations apply a “last in, first out” policy, this is the complete opposite in the media industry. Journalists who have been loyal to the ABC for decades are now being replaced by – seemingly - young and inexperienced digital news workers. It doesn’t come as a surprise that in some cases this leads to a sense of animosity. Therefore in accordance with prior studies of innovation in newsrooms – especially regarding multimedia journalism and convergent newsrooms (Deuze, 2004), there is a culture at the ABC of broadcast journalism being perceived as more prestigious than digital journalism. The turf wars observed by Deuze (2004) when studying the incorporation of multimedia newsrooms in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s show some similarities with what is going on within the ABC today, even though it appears to only be the case when collaborating with some teams and not with others. In fact, the field research shows that in the face of the digital turn priorities shift resulting in somewhat of a tribe mentality. Interviewees speak in terms of ‘them’ and ‘us’ referring to those who do and those who do not understand digital journalism.
Because digital journalists are usually the last ones to come into the organisation, interviewees note that they are often looked upon as the “kids”. As Jo Puccini notes, the industry is not ready for these changes as there is a backlog in relevant skills to meet the demands of today’s media market:
Jo Puccini: “I think the most difficult is that really experienced journalists don’t really have the skills to, yet, for the media landscape that we are in, but the young ones that have digital and social skills to a high level, don’t have the editorial skills.”
This perceived skill-disparity reinforces a degree of misunderstanding and sometimes even hostility between the tribes.
Kimberley Porteous:“you know there is an arrogance there that digital journalism isn’t our best, our best is our TV program, Four Corners for example. They might be an element of truth there, but there is that bit of arrogance there that I don’t like.”
It seems that in order to be accepted by the established journalists at the ABC, the digital news workers carry the burden of proof: they have to show that they are worthy not only digitally but also editorially. Kimberley has therefore put a conscious effort into forming a DSI team that incorporates both these skills and more.
Juxtapositions between tradition and innovation, young and old, flat and hierarchical and broadcast and digital all suggest that the ideal of having an integrated newsroom where digital news workers work together with and alongside of existing broadcast and radio journalists organically is still a while away
40 from the current reality. Where prior studies suggest that journalists feel threatened, distrustful and anxious by convergence (Deuze, 2004; Malemin and Virta, 2015) interviewees of the DSI team members indeed report getting the impression that this is how some journalists of other teams feel about their arrival. DSI team members notice reactions of other teams as “putting their guards up”, “secretive” and “threatened”. Even though the DSI team members mostly report that this attitude towards them frustrates them, they do show a great deal of understanding and empathy. In fact, some see it as their mission to turn this fear into understanding by showcasing what the team is here to do and teaching anxious colleagues the possibilities of the digital medium.
It has to be noted that a limitation of this thesis is that most people interviewed are part of the digital ‘tribe’ and only two interviewees can offer an outside perspective on how the DSI team’s arrival has affected them. Additionally, it is not easy to admit feeling threatened by younger people entering the organisation, therefore getting honest accounts of this resistance from other teams remains difficult.
From the field research emerges that there appear to be some factors that contribute to mending the culture clash. An open attitude of the supervising producers of broadcasting teams seems to influence the degree of acceptance and willingness to collaborate. As Stephen Hutcheon explains:
“Well I think the team I probably had more to do with during the year is the Australian Story team. I found them very easy to get on with and very receptive to ideas. We haven’t done that much with them, but they have kind of embraced us a lot more, invited us to meetings and being less secretive about what they are doing. I like that open attitude. Whereas some of the other teams we have dealt with are being a bit more secretive.”
Prior relationships between members of the different ‘tribes’ can have a positive effect in trying to facilitate collaboration.
Dee Porter, producer of the National Reporting Team: “You know Kim Porteous? She is a friend of mine. We lived in Washington DC at the same time. I knew that she was creating this amazing team and Mark Doman, who is one of the digital producers there…used to work on my team. So he was recruited to be part of this team. So I knew him, I also knew about Stephen Hutcheon as team leader, I knew his background, I knew his sister. I knew that he was a former foreign correspondent and digital leader at SMH. So I knew those two and I knew their skill-base was really high and their level of expertise is amazing.”
This quote shows that prior relationships create trust, which in turn appears to be of crucial importance in the integration of digital news workers into established newsrooms. On a positive note, because the DSI team is given the freedom to autonomously reach out to build relations with other journalist and teams, they are sometimes able to extenuate the culture shock experienced by the establishment and “spread the love for digital” on an individual basis.
41 Michael Workman: “you can definitely overcome barriers that might seem impossible because of the way an organisation is set up. If your team is small enough and has a good boss who can kind of give you a bit of autonomy. So it helps for instance for me to know quite a lot of the people around the organisation, because I am able to kind of ask for favours when I need favours”
In order to foster relationships and facilitate interaction between teams it seems of value to have employees working in the same physical space. When it comes to building these types of relationships, interviewees note, there is nothing like face- to-face communication. This is in accordance with literature suggesting regular meet-ups and clearly identifying responsibilities help reduce the rivalry (Boyles, 2016). Again, location plays a part here – as having departments and teams physically separated may enforce the already existing organisational culture.
5.4 Digital strategy The audience of the ABC is ageing. As interviewees note, the main audiences for the organisations’ news and current affairs programs are Australians over 50 years old. Observing young people turning off appointment television and radio, increasingly turning to social media for the consumption of news, has caused the ABC to emphasize growth in the digital space in order to ensure its relevance down the track.
From the field research it emerges that part of the ABC’s strategy has been to break down the division between radio, television and digital, creating multiplatform departments. Furthermore, Kimberley Porteous is responsible for the recruitment of digital officers to be put in every newsroom across the country. In the Sydney newsroom all television programs have a digital journalist responsible for the day-to-day stories. For the longer projects, such as big investigations, the DSI team and the Brisbane Interactive Storytelling team are there to help out with more creative ways of digital storytelling.
Where literature suggests that many print and broadcast organisations are transitioning themselves into a fully digital organisation adopting a digital-first approach (Leurdijk, 2015), the ABC is opting for a more gradual strategy, where digital is valued as equal to broadcast.
Mark Doman: “There is a negative connotation that goes with digital first. People put their guards up when they see that.”
In practice, a full equal treatment has not been achieved. The field research reveals that the ABC is slow to embrace digital journalism. According to Hutcheon the ABC still treats digital newswork as a “second class citizen” compared to TV. A possible explanation for the slow embrace of digital journalism can be found in the fact that, like many other legacy media, the ABC shows deeply rooted practices that are averse to change.
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Marianne Leitch (Foreign Correspondent): “I thought, oh we are going to be way ahead of other organisations like the New York Times or whatever, and other legacy media organisations, because video is going to be where it is at and we have got the video storytelling skills. It hasn’t worked out like that, because we are so structurally set up to do TV broadcast and radio, that actually trying to… and we still have to do them, while at the same time trying to do new stuff.”
Another issue obstructing a clear course of digital action is the fact that traditional platforms are still attracting large audiences, says Jo Puccini:
“A piece of digital content is doing really really well if it gets over a 100.000 right? Our primetime television programs get close to a million. […] At the moment we haven’t completely tipped digital and I don’t think we can until…, you know, while you still have a Four Corners that can start a royal commission, or can start an inquiry, or bring down a government because of the massive impact that it has.”
A Crikey article shows that last year’s Four Corners story on retirement villages reached 1.341 million national viewers (Dyer, 2017). Here the organisational culture comes into play yet again. Kimberley Porteous is convinced that people will always be loyal to a culture, not to a strategy. What is needed for sustainable change is a shift in culture, which, according to Porteous can only be achieved in a large organisation when it comes from the top down and is reinforced by the entire middle management layer. This process can take years and having a few change-agents or short-term pilot-projects throughout the ABC is not enough to tilt an organisation of 4000 employees.
The research data shows that interviewees are confused about the strategies underlying the continuous restructures. Inconsistent decision-making in the top- management layer and the lack of coherent digital strategy (or the inability of top- management to translate its decisions into a practical directions) seems to have a paralysing effect on the supervising producers of broadcast programs, whom, without clear instructions on how to integrate digital people in their workflow, continue to do what they do best and what they are familiar with – again, reinforcing the cultural divide between digital and broadcast journalists. This in turn limits the scope of innovative impact of the DSI team causing, innovation to continue to happen in isolation.
Having various innovation hubs where experiments with VR, digital storytelling and podcasts take place spread out over the organisation and introducing more and more digital people into the ABC without a clear strategy on how to incorporate these people seems to stall the innovation process resulting in innovative efforts never making it past the pilot-phase. With no clear instructions or strategy communicated from the top down, supervising producers of legacy broadcast programs find themselves in a conundrum. With a limited budget the choice between an, often younger, digital journalist and a seasoned and experienced investigative journalist, feels like prioritising form over content, like choosing marketing over quality journalism. As such, managers are stuck in what appears to them as an either-or proposition, Marianne Leitch explains:
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“I don’t want to give up editorial roles. I don’t want to basically be putting money that should be for making programs and telling stories into marketing. […] Do you think the ABC’s priority should be that it reaches 100% of the Australian audiences and gets news audiences, or do you think that the priority should be that we do high quality journalism and storytelling that is having an impact on power structures and the direction of the country?”
This supports the literature suggesting legacy media are in decline because of the paradoxes they face of having to optimise current operations while also inventing new ones, and doing the right thing for existing markets possibly causing them to fail in new markets (Küng, 2013).
Following Storsul & Krumsvik’s (2013) innovation theory the ABC needs to innovate its products, processes, position and paradigm. As Inga Ting emphasizes paradigmatic innovation requires time, a clear strategy and most importantly, compulsory training:
“People are saying that they are too busy, because I mean journalists are really busy. But you know, you just have to change the way you do it, you just become busy doing something else instead of the things you used to be doing. […] you need management to make room and to say okay you do not need to file any stories today, you are off work until you do this training.”
All in all, the ABC seems in the process of changing its priorities, but as of yet seems not to have chosen a specific course of action. Interviewees mostly voice their confusion and at times frustration about the continuous restructures resulting from inconsistent decision-making higher up in the organisation.
The very core of entrepreneurship and organisational change lies in taking risks and having teams such as the DSI team in place to lead by example is a risk in itself. But only having several trial teams experimenting with new forms of journalism is not enough to tilt an entire organisation. Management needs to know what is happening, new strategies that have been concocted in the top- management layer of the ABC need to be translated to middle management in a practical way. Confusion about task division and about what to prioritise stifles the process of innovation – which is what can be seen in some broadcast teams. If they do not know how to collaborate with the DSI team, and if no one forces them to, they will not see the need to adjust to this new, more collaborative style of journalism. Thus innovation is inhibited by a lack of clarity about the ABC’s overall strategy. As such, a clear digital vision, communication about and the implementation of a digital strategy seem key influencers of innovation.
5.5 Work process The way the team works resembles the accounts found in literature of an emerging project ecology of decentralised, shifting team-based collaborations both within and outside of the organisation (Deuze, 2007; Deuze & Witschge, 2017; Grabher, 2002). Jo Puccini describes their workflow as “story based
44 commissioning”, where teams are “coming together and pulling apart” to work on projects.
The lifecycle of a project can loosely be categorised into three phases: an ideation phase, an execution phase consisting of developing, designing and reporting, and a rollout phase in which the production is pulled together and distributed. In between and during these three phases it is a constant back-and-forth between DSI team members, the supervising producer and other teams about various elements of the story. Typically the duration of a project is anywhere between two to four weeks.
Aside from a described skill-transfer between editorial and technical people in the team, with technical workers learning news judgement and journalists learning technical skills, the members mostly work within the confines of their own specialty. In practice this results in team members with a background in journalism, Mark Doman, Inga Ting and Stephen Hutcheon, coming up with story ideas and the members with other professional backgrounds working on the execution of these ideas.
Any given project starts with a brainstorming phase generally happening during the two weekly meetings. While the journalists of the team pitch a story idea, the unit collectively brainstorms about the angle, digital storytelling components and presentation of the article. In the case of collaboration with current affairs programs this process is the same with the exception that the team does not have to come up with the story themselves. Once the team has arrived to an initial agreement on the topic and treatment of a story, Stephen Hutcheon assigns which team members will be working on the project at hand. Mark Doman notes that the team members are still in the process of learning each other’s skills and how to best put them to use. Hutcheon argues that juggling the amount of projects they take on can be challenging.
“It’s a very cyclical kind of work-flow. When we are on the cusp of a project I will be much busier. When we are in between I don’t have as much to do […] We haven’t hit what I call a cruising altitude. When we hit a cruising altitude we have a nice balance of short and long-term projects, evenly spread and not all clumped together and then nothing.”
Projects rarely require the entire team to work on it, allowing the team to simultaneously work on two or three productions at any given time. Again, choosing how to best use the available resources can be tricky:
Inga Ting: “Sometimes when I am doing stories and I’ve got 8 people working on a story I am like, ‘is this story even worth 8 people? […] did the story deserve that?”
Nathanael Scott: “The most difficult thing is trying to find that threshold of how many projects we can work on. But then also there is that desire to make everything absolutely amazing, but then trying to figure out ‘where do I stop?’ and ‘when am I working on this too much?’”
45 A big part of Stephen Hutcheon’s job consists of scouting story opportunities for the DSI team to collaborate with other teams on. Aside from balancing long- with short-term projects, Hutcheon’s role also requires him to harmonize the amount of collaborations with the number of the team’s own productions. As Hutcheon explains, the story selection and commissioning involves a degree of strategy:
“For us really the key things are: have we been involved from the beginning and can we add value to the story? […] We are trying to pick winners for sure, we are trying to pick things that can help us hit those targets. But at the same time we are not just knocking back stuff because we don’t, you know, because we want to hit our targets”
The PowerPoint presentation made by Stephen Hutcheon (Internal document 7) shows that the key considerations (in no particular order) that follow when commissioning a DSI team production thus become:
• Uniqueness • Potential impact • What is the relevance to the audience? • Can we make the story more relatable, accessible, understandable? • How can we add value and context? • Are there elements of the story, which lend themselves to skills within the team? • Does the story have shelf life? • Are we involved from the beginning?
Because the team doesn’t have infinite resources they need to select what projects they take on – in some cases to the frustration of certain current affairs teams. In fact, Hutcheon describes his role as being the ‘diplomat’. In the story selection process, the team needs to manoeuvre between the, sometimes conflicting, interests of the ABC, the current affairs teams and the DSI team’s own targets and ideas.
Mark Doman: “There are a lot of cases coming in where people just have these really airy-fairy ideas, or don’t have an idea, they just know they want it to be different. They will be like ‘alright we have spent a lot of money doing this so we want a good digital component’, even though they don’t know what that is and they think that by talking to us that automatically guarantees this great interactive story, where we are just like ‘oh my god…what do we even do with this?’”
Despite this frustration and the continuous weighing of interests, being able to select what stories to work on appears to increase a sense of autonomy. This makes the members feel valued which – in line with literature on the management of creativity – is seen to increase their creativity and thus their innovative power.
Ri Liu: “It is good, because we do as a team have final say on what we work on and how that is presented, so we are not just creating someone else’s vision.”
46 Supervising producer Marianne Leitch from TV program Foreign Correspondent comments:
“It has actually been quite hard to find the right project to work with the DSI team on in advance, for various reasons. When we did want them they were doing something else and yeah, it just hasn’t been that productive for us. […] I can’t hold off a story until they are free. […] It sort of depends on wether they are interested or not.”
Leitch adds another issue that arises when attempting to collaborate. It proves difficult to incorporate working with the DSI team in the fast-paced workflow of a program such as Foreign Correspondent.
“They would say that, look, they don’t have the material they need early enough. Because we go off on a shoot, come back and madly have to make the story, and often the lay time is not big enough for them.”
Dee Porter from the National Reporting Team argues that it is hard, but not impossible to synchronise the interests of the two teams working together:
“I just did this recent story on cults […] we had done this interview with this dad about realising his daughter is in a cult and the fact that he is basically grieving for her because he doesn’t think she will ever get out. So I went to Stephen with this story idea and he said ‘okay, let’s come up with a few ideas’, and he came up with what we call ‘the graphical’ and employed an illustrator. So it was working parallel to legacy media, so we were doing our traditional 7:30, but they were working alongside, doing this amazing graphical. It was gorgeous, it was beautiful! […] So what we did, which was very difficult to do with the 7:30 team, is that we decided on a date that we were going to broadcast. […] this was a real turning point, I think, for the program.”
Collaborations with other teams again highlight the importance of concepts of location and organisational culture. While at times the DSI project ecology works like a well-oiled machine and co-productions evolve smoothly, they sometimes give rise to tensions similar to the ones observed by Deuze’s (2004) in the first emerging multimedia teams in legacy media. This mode of collaborative work was seen to militate against the very nature of the journalistic autonomous culture.
This effect can be observed at the ABC during some of the collaborations the DSI team has undertaken. An evaluation of one of the co-productions with the investigative TV program Four Corners (Internal document 6), signals several challenges. Firstly, the project and production timelines from long-form TV and digital journalism are very different, making the coordination of schedules a difficult undertaking. Secondly, it didn’t come natural for the Four Corners team to factor in a second medium, which resulted in a non-inclusive attitude in which ownership of the story remained firmly with the broadcast team, who were observed to treat the digital team’s output as complementary to their television production. Recommendations for future collaborations include having greater clarity around everyone’s roles, better communication, DSI involvement from the start, a physical inclusion of DSI news workers when going out on shoots and
47 researching, and overall inclusive attitude from broadcast teams.
Collaborations between the DSI team and other current affairs teams requires journalists to manage their competitive habits. Some teams were fast to embrace the DSI team, whereas others have been more secretive.
Inga Ting: “There is no point in being competitive and territorial about it, it would be ridiculous, so it is something you have to unlearn. You have to learn how to share and work with other people.”
After the initial story commissioning, developer Ri Liu explains that the execution phase starts off with some exploration:
“We will need to do some research when the rest of the team goes like ‘hey Ri or Nath, is this possible?’ and we actually have to go and find out if it is possible. So before we start we need to figure out if we are overcommitting ourselves […] Once we have some ideas we will either prototype them in code or do a mock-up in Illustrator or Sketch and then we play around with ideas and refine them.”
At this point everyone will be off making his or her part of the story, while regularly checking in with the rest of the team. The journalists will be interviewing, shooting video, writing and analysing data, developers will be writing code and developing tools and testing them on various platforms, the designer will be helping out with the design of videos, motion graphics or interactive tools. Technology is vital for most of the team, as it plays an important role in daily work of most team members. Each of them uses a remarkable range of software. The Adobe Premier is used to edit videos, Adobe Aftereffects for motion graphics, Photoshop and Lightroom to edit photos, Illustrator, InDesign, Sketch and Tableau to design, a program called R for statistical analysis, DataRaptor for data analysis, Highcharts for mapping, Excel, GIFcam to make GIF’s, CrowdTangle for social media analysis. As such, it is part of everyone’s job to keep their digital skills up to date and to keep experimenting with new tools.
During the roll-out phase journalists Mark Doman or Inga Ting are in charge of inserting the various pieces of content that make up the story into the Content Management System, named Core. This takes up a lot of their time, as the DSI productions are often incompatible with the CMS, the ABC application, Inews or Facebook Instant Articles. Getting the desired result therefore often involves a lot of testing, hacking into systems or altering the story. Sometimes the technical roadblocks are insurmountable, resulting in audiences on some platforms not getting the full experience as intended by the DSI team.
In the mean time, audience developer Michael Workman has written a rollout plan – a systematic distribution strategy, scheduling the ‘seeding’ of parts of the story in the form of teaser videos, posts or GIF’s on social media in an attempt to spark people’s attention for the story. While the designer Alex Palmer is “spitting out”
48 some last minute GIF’s, or re-working a video into a different format, the first pieces of content go live via Facebook or Twitter.
Interestingly and seemingly trivial, despite Michael Workman’s efforts to push the story on social media, at times even injecting the story into different Facebook groups to find potential new audiences, it is the digital team in Brisbane that is in charge of its placement on the homepage of the ABC website. Geographical distance again forms practical hurdles in the process of innovation.
Inga p. 129-130: “I find that difficult, because ultimately you can work as hard on a story and make it as great as you want on the inside, but if it doesn’t get the exposure it doesn’t matter how hard Michael pushes it on social media, or whatever, the homepage is where people find stuff still.”
The way the story travels on the Internet is constantly monitored by Michael Workman, who after the publication of the full production on the website, turns his distribution plan into a report containing an analysis of how the story performed on various platforms, how long the audiences engaged in the experience and how the team can improve its results (see Internal document 2 and 3 for examples of the kinds of reports Michael Workman makes).
The two developers Ri Liu and Nathanael Scott are located in Melbourne, whereas the rest of the team is stationed in Sydney. Due to the geographical distance an effort is made to have most team communication occur on a chat application called Slack. During the weekly meetings the developers are called in via a videoconferencing app (Google Hangouts). Still, a degree of isolation is felt among the developers in Melbourne. As Nathanael Scott explains:
“Sometimes you just feel a bit left out of the conversations […] generally, by the time we find out about the projects everyone has already kind of has a chat about it”
For each project the team creates a separate thread on Slack where the DSI team members can share their thoughts and ideas. A special thread called “Stuff we love” was created to share interesting digital productions made by other media organisations for the team to get inspired by the storytelling possibilities. Leading by example is often mentioned to be a key part of the strategy. When working on sensitive matters in collaboration with investigative teams they use the applications Signal or Whisper to communicate safely. E-mail is used for more formal matters.
In conclusion, in their work process the team is gradually innovating the ABC’s processes by trying to break down the barriers of hierarchy by steering towards an equal and collaborative work style both internally and externally and by literally changing the ways in which journalism productions are being made – in the sense of digital design, treatment and distribution of the stories – thereby also innovating its products. This does not go without struggles, as it required the team to effectuate paradigmatic innovation – a change in mindset that is sometimes
49 actively resisted by other current affairs teams. An open attitude, clarity about roles and honest communication between teams seems key in effectuating change. In addition, the research data shows that it takes time, experimentation and good communication to put human resources to their most adequate use in a team combining different skills.
5.6 Digital storytelling and audience development Digital storytelling differs in many ways from traditional newspaper or broadcast storytelling. The biggest difference is the changing relationship between the producer and the consumer (Deuze, 2004; Kueng, 2017). The field research shows some key differences and possibilities that come with publishing on digital platforms. According to Kimberley Porteous digital storytelling is all about using the strength of the digital medium. This translates into being “respectful of how people use those platforms and what the audiences like and what the audience- profile is on those platforms and communities.”
Similar to traditional storytelling, interviewees state that it all begins with topic selection. To attract millennials, it is important to pick topics that they can relate to. In line with what Veglis (2012) calls ‘transmedia reporting’, Stephen Hutcheon describes that effective online storytelling is about “dissecting the story into its atomic parts and recombining them in a way that makes it sink in better.” This type of storytelling is seen to trigger the exploratory instinct of younger audiences. In fact, evaluation reports (Internal document 2, 3 and 4) show that this strategy indeed creates increased engagement and reaches younger audiences.
Treating the Internet as a market place, it follows that the team spends a reasonable amount of time brainstorming about how to capture the attention of the reader, in order to increase the likelihood of selling the story to them. Stephen Hutcheon explains that every online story starts with a good hook:
“It starts with a compelling way of getting into the story without resorting to click-bait or anything like that. Good picture, good headline and things like that. […] every great story starts with an element of interest or curiosity, so you bring that to the top of the homepage and social.”
This strategy ties in with what Jenkins et al. (2013) call ‘designing for spreadability’, which does not only mean the actual design but also thinking about the rhetoric involved in attracting audiences using text. Summarizing a story in the lead does not invite to continue reading, so highlighting important details while leaving behind some crucial parts the reader needs in order to make sense of the story. This can increase the chance that a reader engages with a production and even decides to share it on social media.
One great advantage of the online realm is that it allows for the customisation of content to suit the audience, making it a more personal experience. Jack Fisher uses the example of adding an interactive tool to the article allowing the user to
50 insert his or her age or postcode in order to relate the story to the personal situation and experience of the reader.
The style of writing for digital platforms is often very different to more traditional forms of journalism. Field data shows that broadcast journalists are often not very practiced in this style of writing. Stephen Hutcheon and Inga Ting with their background as writers, report doing most of the writing and editing. What stands out is that the DSI team always bears in mind how the reader consumes news when they are producing a story – usually skimming through it via some sort of social medium on their phones. Therefore the team always attempts to make its productions digestible by inserting good visuals and by shortening the sentences and paragraphs. In line with literature (Kueng, 2017) suggesting digital storytelling requires a conversational tone and treating the audience as an equal, Jack Fisher underlines that speaking with instead of at the audience is crucial:
“What we are really prioritising with digital is really having a sort of equal relationship, a conversational rather than bombastic tone of voice. Instead of talking down to people, we are talking at, we are talking to them.”
This focus on catering to the audience derives from a changed power-relationship between the journalist and consumer caused by the large variety of news outlets available to the consumer on the Internet. New media technologies challenge what Deuze (2005) calls “one of the most fundamental ‘truths’ in journalism, namely: the professional journalist is the one who determines what publics see, hear and read about the world” (p. 451). In order to compete, the team therefore tracks and caters to the natural and observed behaviour of the audience – and design their productions accordingly. As Alex Palmer explains:
“You are trying to replicate the natural movement that people use day to day. So scrolling through a Facebook feed […] it is all about user experience”
Stephen Hutcheon: “Unfortunately the whole Chartbeat phenomenon ties us a lot to the metrics involved. […] because we are purely online our movements are much more subject to the success of the content we do.”
Following the audience behaviour, digital storytelling becomes something that is about delivering content to where the audiences are. For news workers this means a shift in the way they think about a story. The current news market requires news outlets to deliver content to where the audiences are, which stresses in importance of distribution in digital storytelling:
Inga Ting (p. 140): “I think one of them is to bring the story to where people are reading it. So that is going to be about platform, time of day, day of week, uhm…understanding what they are doing. Like, are people snacking? Walking and reading or listening and talking? Are they sitting at their desks using a desktop computer? Are they at home? Is it a stay-at-home-mom with a baby in one arm and the phone in another?”
51 Something else that is new to storytelling is that the web allows for a constant loop of user feedback. When interpreted well, this can keep news workers grounded in reality as opposed to developing tunnel vision. Alex Palmer illustrates this point by using the example of a slider tool the DSI had made. During a co- production with children’s news program Behind the News the DSI team used a dataset on the level op happiness of Australian children, including data on bullying and body image. The team chose to make a slider tool, allowing the reader to guess what percentage of children are being bullied:
Alex Palmer (p. 112):“We picked it up from Reddit users, which were like ‘this is a bit weird’. You know, when you slide it now it says something like ‘yes, that is right’, but before we had it so it was like ‘you got it!’ with a big smiley face. But a big happy face because you guessed how many kids were being bullied…there was some disconnect and that happens when you are in a bubble of creating a project for like three weeks.”
Apart from always having the audience in mind, the big question against which a story should be measured is if the storytelling elements really aid the understanding of a story. Time and time again, the team members underline the importance of not just using “bells and whistles” for the sake of beautifying the article. The digital treatment of the story needs to focus on functionality.
In conclusion, the possibilities that arise from working in a digital environment are enormous and storytelling formats continue to evolve. Using the digital medium in an optimal way require fundamental changes in the way news workers think about a story. For the DSI team to fully take advantage of these possibilities, the producers of current affairs and news teams need to trust them – as creating an immersive digital story sometimes requires news workers to deconstruct in order to reconstruct the story to make it more appealing to its audiences. Again, this means newsrooms need to shift their perspective and in the case of the DSI team some collaborations proved fruitful while other teams were harder to work with.
5.7 The ABC as an employer Time and time again the advantages along with the restrictions that come with working for the ABC surfaced in the interviews with the DSI team members. As it turns out, having the ABC as an employer gives meaning to the members’ jobs in several ways.
The ABC is an equal opportunity employer, meaning it is specifically non- discriminatory. Strict ethical guidelines and editorial values are in place ensuring a diverse and accepting workplace. There are programs in place to encourage Aboriginal and Torres Straight islanders to find employment at the ABC.
That the ABC embraces diversity becomes visible upon entering the Sydney building. The receptionist wears heavy make-up and is covered in piercings; the barista at the cafeteria has his hair dyed green. Inside the newsroom the office
52 attire is a little more formal: suits interchanged with more casual clothes. As designer Alex Palmer puts it:
“One thing the ABC has which a lot of other places don’t, is that there is a real kind of sense of ethics here. I feel like there is an effort to make sure that people feel comfortable and that there is no…I don’t know, just in past workplaces I have felt like, the last place I worked at I felt like there was always this undercurrent of […] misogyny.”
Despite its efforts to diversify, several interviewees still see a largely homogenous community of white workers at the ABC, with predominantly men in positions of leadership. A 2016 PricewaterhouseCooper’s media report suggests media companies to continuous review gender and racial diversity policies, as research shows the average media worker is a 27-year-old white male from the Eastern suburbs or the inner west of Sydney. In addition, 75 precent of media workers in Australia is male, monolingual, white and over 35 years old. Megan Brownlow, the editor of the report notes that this lack of diversity stems from an "unconscious bias" or "similarity of attraction", where employers are drawn to people like themselves (Ryan, 2016).
In terms of amenities the ABC offices in Sydney and Melbourne are well attired. Each have basic kitchens with fridges to store homemade lunches in, tea bags and instant coffee and in the foyer there is a cafeteria. All DSI team member have a (in some cases standing) desk with a computer with a monitor and/or laptop, containing the software they need. Some have a company phone. In the words of executive producer Stephen Hutcheon, the DSI team was given a “generous budget”, allowing the acquisition of “state-of-the-art cameras”.
Meeting rooms with video conferencing equipment are dotted around the open spaced newsroom. The building used to have walls separating the offices, but the walls were recently torn down, leaving an open-plan workspace. Most team members express feeling comfortable in this environment, although supervising producer Jo Puccini notes that she is not very fond of her office space.
“We were talking to women who had been raped and sexually assaulted and all that stuff and you can hear people in the background yayayaaa – you know, partying or chatting about lunch of Friday night drinks. […] I used to have an office, and there are no offices at the ABC anymore, which is fine, but I think this environment doesn’t recognise that different people do different kinds of work.”
Data journalist Inga Ting adds that the long and open floors do not necessarily promote integration. Again, suggesting that location and physical spacing has an effect on the newsrooms sociology:
“This long building structure means that people have to sit in these rows rather than in hubs. Like, I know that at the Herald (newspaper red.), the design of the newsroom is very important and they were very insistent on having a central news-wheel, and hubs that came off it so no one was closer to the decision-making pod than anyone else.”
53
Apart from the basic necessities, ABC personnel have access to a range of support, varying from a legal team and journalism union representatives, to IT support and counselling lines. Investigative, editing or CSM trainings are held, but as supervising producer Jo Puccini comments: “what tends to happen is they do it once a year and ten people will go”.
As Naldi and Picard’s (2012) research shows, the preconditions for successful innovation are the availability of tech skills, economic and human resources. Especially the latter and the personality profile of the news workers involved in the entrepreneurial unit are important in achieving and accepting change (Wagemans, Witschge and Deuze, 2016). Having no commercial pressure, a budget for innovation, ethical values and ample equipment, support, tech skills and a motivated work force available the ABC in general and the DSI team specifically, the organisation seems to have all the necessary resources to facilitate change.
Yet, the team members often report that along with the advantages of being employed by the ABC, the structure, hierarchy and bureaucracy of the organisation can become barriers for change. Jo Puccini sums it up:
“In a big corporation like the ABC it is quite hard sometimes to get things done quickly. When I first started here somebody told me: if you want things done, find and ally and crash through.”
On the technical side, the structure of the ABC sometimes obstructs an efficient work process. For one, the sheer size of the organisation and the fact that funding depends on the need for the ABC to have a presence throughout the whole of Australia forces management to organise the firm in separate divisions spread out over different parts the country. This again brings to light the theme of location, as the digital epicentre of the ABC is located in Brisbane, whereas the Sydney office is seen as the headquarters of broadcast. As data journalist Inga Ting explains:
“I feel our team is not at all integrated into the newsroom and I don’t know if that’s because no team at the ABC is […] the homepage guys are up in Brisbane, I don’t even know who half of them are, I don’t know if they are going to put the story up and where they are going to put it.”
On a practical level, working for the ABC also means the DSI has to deal with the systems that the ABC has put in place, often a long time ago. This results in the team sometimes having to hack the “out-dated” Content Management System in order to ensure a smooth rollout of their productions. Also the ABC application is problematic to work with for the DSI team because it usually doesn’t support the type of productions they make. This results in a strange construction: the DSI unit’s mission is to produce “mobile-first”, but their productions cannot be fully visualised on the ABC app, which means that the team had to decide to produce “mobile website first”. More detail will follow in the section on the team’s work process and conditions.
54
Changing these systems in a large organisation is a huge undertaking, which takes a lot of time and persistence. Ideas are hatched as fast as they are lost and despite promises to alter the ABC application to accommodate the DSI productions, it never actually happened. This all leads back to decisions being made high up in the organisation, sometimes leading to a disconnect between management and workforce. This can form a barrier for innovation to come about.
On a more symbolic level, the field research shows that having the ABC as an employer greatly influences the professional identity and motivation of DSI members. Those members coming from a different professional background as well as those who have been in the journalism industry for a long time seem to be driven by the same values and motivation. Time and time again similar values are mentioned and what stands out is that their driving force closely resembles the values voiced by journalists of all centuries. This supports the understanding of the profession of journalists as an occupational ideology as suggested by Deuze (2005), with journalists showing similar character traits and professional values worldwide. In line with the common perception of the public about the profession of journalism mentioned in literature (Fulton, 2015), DSI members talk about truth telling and being a watchdog that safeguards democracy as some of the most important values informing their work.
The interviews illustrate that to many of the DSI members, the ABC is the embodiment of the ideal-typical values associated with quality journalism (Deuze, 2005). Despite the DSI team’s goal of advocating change within the organisation, the team members report being proud to be part of the ABC and what it represents in terms of its heritage as a big voice in Australian democracy, its values, its impact and its mission of serving the public. In fact, a great motivation for most members to keep doing what they do in spite of the challenges stems from the very fact that their personal values align with the values of ABC. Therefore, being part of the ABC in a way shapes their professional identity. What motivates the team members a lot of the time derives from the frustration of watching their beloved ABC lose relevance in the current media environment, because to them that means losing grip of democracy and truthful and accurate reporting. Preserving the ABC as an institution by making their content more accessible to larger groups of people is a big motivator.
Kimberley Porteous: “So I always used to look at the ABC and think: there is so much potential, they really need to get their shit together because they are so weak digitally. So I thought that would be a really nice challenge, to come back and help make it a more dynamic and digital- thinking place.”
This shared professional ideology seems to, if anything, stimulate the DSI to innovate and find ways to beat the barriers that result from the structural set-up of the ABC, as it motivates the DSI members to show the rest of the newsrooms that the convergence process they are attempting to achieve might threaten the
55 news culture of individuality but that it does not undermine the fundamental understanding of the core values underlying the profession.
Picture: ABC Southbank office building in Melbourne.
Picture: ABC Melbourne Southbank newsroom
56 6. Conclusion
The results and analysis of the material gathered during the field research in Sydney and Melbourne, can now answer the research questions.
1. How does the DSI team fit into the innovation history of the ABC? What has been retained from previous innovative projects?
The formation of the DSI team is a result of the ABC’s wish to become stronger in the digital field. As such, aside from the introduction of digital change-agents and producers in the workforce, the ABC has started to experiment with innovative pilot projects in order to scout the storytelling possibilities that arise from technological advancements. In a time of digital transition the ABC has started experimenting with streaming services, Virtual Reality, podcasting and enriched digital storytelling. The biggest source of knowledge that has aided the set up of the DSI team is its predecessor, the Interactive Storytelling team in Brisbane. This illustrates and supports the theory proposed by Naldi and Picard (2012) that prior knowledge of the, in this chase digital journalism, industry had a positive effect on the successful development of start-ups. The Brisbane team has paved the way for the DSI team, creating templates for digital storytelling and proving the value of engaging online storytelling, which has created momentum for the type of digital storytelling that the DSI team engages in. It does have to be noted that the opposite effect of ‘formational myopia’ also occurs. Especially when working with some of the broadcast teams interviewees suggested they, at times, felt pressure from broadcast colleagues to make their digital productions resemble the broadcast production, thereby obstructing a fully immersive digital treatment of that story.
2. What is the DSI team’s assignment? And how will the team’s efforts be measured or benchmarked?
The unit’s mission is to create and experiment with different types of storytelling formats in order to translate long-form and in-depth investigations into engaging and appealing digital productions that attract new and younger audiences. Besides their own stories, the team members collaborate with the ABC’s most prestigious broadcast teams on their stories that lend themselves to an extensive and interesting digital treatment. Additionally, the team members have the role of change-agents: they are there to increase the digital literacy of the newsrooms. Through the use of best-practice examples of their own work and training sessions they teach newsrooms and individual journalists how to use and analyse datasets and how to increase audience engagement. The team’s guiding principle is clearly outlined and its reach and engagement targets are ambitious but not unrealistic.
3. What makes the DSI team specific within the ABC in terms of composition, management, tasks, activities and assignment?
57 The team is composed of nine news workers who all have a varied skillset including reporters, developers, a designer, data journalist and an audience developer. In accordance with what Boyles (2016) noted from his study among newsroom innovators, the field data shows that the DSI team gets significant leeway to experiment and execute projects. Sometimes so much so that the newness of the skills introduced causes a lack of checks and balances. Data journalist Inga Ting, for instance, commented that no one checks her data analysis because no one has more data knowledge than her. Bringing these skills into the newsroom is unprecedented at the ABC and therefore causes a change in the newsroom dynamic. For instance, the non-hierarchical and collaborative work- style adopted by the team when cooperating with each other and with current affairs teams, militates against the very nature of individuality of journalists. Broadcast journalists have to get used to this inclusive working style, which just as with the first emerging multimedia newsrooms worldwide (Deuze, 2004), sometimes results in culture clashes impeding a smooth innovation process. In order for collaborations to be successful, broadcast journalists need to let go of their competitive streak. On the occasions that broadcast teams did adopt an open attitude to sharing a story, it fed the innovative spirit allowing the DSI team to experiment with different digital storytelling forms and to make engaging digital productions.
4. How does the DSI team evaluate itself and its own efforts in terms of being innovative? And what is the team’s view on the ABC as an innovative organisation?
Because the unit’s innovative efforts are measured against the set audience reach and engagement targets, exceeding these benchmarks almost automatically means that the team members have found effective ways of storytelling. Even so, there is a clear effort to keep experimenting with new forms and distribution strategies and to not solely re-use the newfound templates even if they were proven engaging. The team often frame the ABC in terms of an “uncool, older, grandpa or uncle” who is trying to talk to an audience that is not listening – especially in relation to trendier and younger media like Vice. The team members seem to recognise and appreciate the ABC’s will to innovate, but the actual implementation of these wishes is slow and tedious due to the size, hierarchy, and structure of the corporation. Furthering the metaphor of the ABC as an uncool grandpa, just as can be seen in other legacy media (Malmelin & Virta, 2015) the ABC is rigid in its habits and lacks a streamlined and implementable digital strategy. However due to the small size of the DSI team and the agility of its members, the digital literacy of newsrooms or at least their willingness to hand over and ‘share’ stories, seems to increase slowly but steadily.
5. What kind of media productions does the DSI team make? And how does the innovation come about?
The productions are centred around the question how the story can be told in the best, most engaging and digestible way on mobile devices. From that starting
58 point the productions may or may not include elements of video, text, graphics, audio, interactivity and motion graphics. A comprehensive distribution strategy then helps to bring the story to the right audiences on the platforms they use. In this process the story is often cut up into little pieces of content that are seeded via social media in order to grab the attention of the reader or viewer and guide them to the full production. This has proven to be effective in reaching younger audiences not only in prior research (Doyle, 2013; Jenkins et al., 2013) but also in practice (demonstrated by the audience engagement figures in document 6).
To speak with Storsul and Krumsvik’s (2016) innovation theory, the DSI team thus innovates its processes in order to make new digital products. The aim is to slowly change the position of the ABC on the digital journalism market – from being a serious and institutional voice to having a young and creative online presence. A dozen interactive multimedia stories are unlikely to permanently change the image of the institutional ABC, but they can be treated as examples for the possibilities of the digital medium, which in turn could change the perspective of some policy makers higher up in the organisation. Experimentation and constant reflection on the team’s successes and failures allows for growth with each production.
6. What obstacles does the DSI team face that stand in the way of innovation?
The main obstacles obstructing change are firstly the size, structure and ingrained procedures of the ABC slowing down its processes. Secondly, the ABC has a strong organisational culture that ranks broadcasters higher than digital journalists, which slows down the process of growth on digital platforms. To the DSI team this attitude boils down to misunderstandings and stressful situations on the work floor when collaborating with broadcast teams. Literature suggests that regular meet-ups and, open, face-to-face communication can facilitate the integration and convergence process, which seems to be supported by research data.
Another factor slowing down the innovation-process have to do with the geographical separation of departments and teams. Having the digital epicentre of the ABC tucked away in Brisbane, the developers in Melbourne and the DSI team now not embedded in the central newsroom anymore reinforces the divide between digital and broadcast journalists, which keeps the organisational culture amongst broadcast journalists alive and feeds the ‘turf’ war in the newsroom (Deuze, 2004). In addition, a lack of time seems to impede the flourishing of the full innovative power of the DSI unit. The DSI team is still in the process of finding a good balance in the type and amount of projects they take on and in putting everyone’s skills to their most adequate use. Literature on journalism start- ups suggest that good management of human resources is in fact one of the preconditions for survival (Naldi & Picard, 2012; Wagemans, Witschge & Deuze, 2016). An intrapreneurial team such as the DSI team needs time of find its ‘cruising altitude’, one year might not be enough to showcase the team’s full capacity.
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7. Does the DSI team benefit from being part of the ABC, as opposed to starting a new brand in journalism?
There seem to be downsides and advantages associated with being part of the ABC. The obvious benefit is that due to ABC’s name and history, the DSI productions have a good starting position due to the ABC’s wide appeal in Australia. Having said that, the DSI team’s goal is to attract new and younger audiences and as the metrics demonstrate, a substantial part of the audience engaging with the DSI productions are new visitors to the ABC website. Downsides may include the often boring and serious image of the ABC inevitably clinging to the creative and playful DSI productions, which could lead to prejudices about the DSI content. This cannot be confirmed, as the present thesis has not included interviews or quantitative analysis on audience behaviour in relation to the DSI productions.
Having answered the sub questions above, the central research question can now be answered.
What makes the role and position of the DSI team specifically innovative within the ABC and how does the team operationalize their stated mission and tasks?
The role and position of the DSI team are uniquely innovative firstly due to its collaborative and educational efforts. This helps to break down barriers between divisions and departments, which in turn facilitates a change in mindset – a crucial condition for innovation. Having highly skilled team in place that is strong digitally as well as editorially, with time, can illuminate the prejudices and image that sticks to digital journalists as people who are only concerned with the form and not with journalism. Using these skills to experiment with creative ways of telling stories on a digital platform while truly catering to the audience, without dumbing down the content, is what makes the DSI unit innovative. In the turmoil of the current journalism industry it is this type of product, process, position and paradigmatic innovation that is needed for media to stay relevant and in touch with the needs of the outside world in a changing environment.
This thesis also has some limitations. In hindsight it would have been useful to interview more members of current affairs teams that have collaborated with the DSI team in order to get more data on how these co-productions affect their work and indeed lead to cross-pollination. Due to the summer stop of most television programs at the time of the field research this proved to be impossible. Another aspect that would have lead to a broader overview of the functioning of the DSI team would have been a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the DSI audience. Unfortunately, a limited timeframe prevented the addition of other methods and angles. Yet, some conclusion could still be drawn from the extensive reports and audience data collected and analysed by the audience developer Michael Workman. Additionally it would have been fruitful to come back for another period of field research, for instance towards the end of the DSI team’s
60 trial year. This could have established a deeper understanding of how the restructure has impacted the teams’ innovative efforts.
To end on a positive note: the Digital Story Innovations team has been refunded. In a recent e-mail, Stephen Hutcheon wrote: “So the good news (for us) is that we have been funded for the next year. I think we have proved our worth.”
61 7. References
ABC, (2018, April 30). ABC News overhaul of newsrooms, focus on digital, could see 20 jobs axed. Retrieved June 11th, 2018 from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/abc-news-restructure-focus-on- digital-could-see-20-jobs-axed/9710666
ABC, (2017, March 7). ABC Managing Director Address to Employees – Investing in Audiences. Retrieved June 11th, 2018 from: http://about.abc.net.au/speeches/abc-md-address-to-staff-investing-in- audiences/
Anderson, C. W., & De Maeyer, J. (2014). “Objects of Journalism and the News.” Journalism 16 (1): 3–9.
Baumann, S. (2013). Adapting to the Brave New World. Innovative Organisational Strategies for Media Companies. In T. Storsul & A. H. Kurmsvik (Eds.), Media Innovations, a multidisciplinary study of change (pp 77 - 92). Göteborg, Sweden: Nordicom.
Becker, H. S., & Geer, B. (1957). Participant observation and interviewing: A comparison. Oklahoma City: Society for Applied Anthropology.
Boyles, J. (2016). The Isolation of Innovation. Digital Journalism, 4(2), 229-246.
Bruno, N. & Nielsen, R. K. (2012). Survival is Success: journalistic online start-ups in Western Europe. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (1990). Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13(1), 3-21
Denscombe, M. (2010). The good research guide for Small-scale Social Research Projects. Open University Press.
Deuze, M. (2017). Considering a possible future for Digital Journalism. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación, 8(1).
Deuze, M. (2005). What is journalism?: professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 6(4), 442- 464.
Deuze, M. (2004) What is multimedia journalism?, Journalism Studies, 5:2, 139-152
Deuze, M., & Witschge, T. (2017). Beyond journalism: Theorizing the transformation of journalism. Journalism, ?, ?-?
Doyle, G. (2013). Innovation in the Use of Digital Infrastructures. TV Scheduling
62 Strategies and Reflections on Public Policy. In T. Storsul & A. H. Kurmsvik (Eds.), Media Innovations, a multidisciplinary study of change (pp 111 125). Göteborg, Sweden: Nordicom.
Dyer, G. (2017, June 27). Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings: Four Corners easily wins in its timeslot. Retrieved on June 17, 2018 from: https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/06/27/glenn-dyers-tv-ratings-four- corners-easily-wins-timeslot/
Evans, S. (2016). Making Sense of Innovation. Journalism Studies, 1-21.
Filak, V. F. (2004). Cultural Convergence: Intergroup Bias Among Journalists and its Impact on Convergence. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 12(4), 216-232.
Folkestad, B. (2008). Analyzing interview data: Possibilities and challenges. Eurosphere online working paper series, 13, 1-16
Fulton J. (2015). Are You A Journalist? New Media Entrepreneurs and Journalists in the Digital Space. Javnost - The Public, 22:4, 362-374.
Fulton J. (2014). Media entrepreneurship: alternative paths for media producers (not published?)
Grabher G. (2002). The ecology of advertising: Tasks, talents and teams. Regional Studies, 36(3), 245-262
Hass, B. H. (2011). Intrapreneurship and Corporate Venturing in the Media Business: A Theoretical Framework and Examples from the German Publishing Industry. Journal of Media Business Studies, 8(1), 47-68.
Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press.
Kueng, L. (2017). Going Digital. A Roadmap for Organisational Transformation (pp. 1 46, Rep.). Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Küng, L. (2013). Innovation, Technology and Organisational Change. Legacy Media’s Big Challenges. In T. Storsul & A. H. Kurmsvik (Eds.), Media Innovations, a multidisciplinary study of change (pp 9-12). Göteborg, Sweden: Nordicom.
Naldi, L., & Picard, R. (2012). “Let’s Start An Online News Site”: Opportunities, Resources, Strategy, and Formational Myopia in Startups. Journal Of Media Business Studies, 9(4), 69-97.
63 Malmelin, N. & Virta, S. (2015) Managing creativity in change, Journalism Practice, 1-13.
MEAA. (2018, may 09). MEAA says cuts to ABC dangerous and irresponsible. Retrieved June 6th, 2018 from: https://www.meaa.org/news/meaa-says- cuts-to-abc-dangerous-and-irresponsible/
Meyer, C. B. (2001). A Case in Case Study Methodology. Field Methods, 13(4), 329- 352.
Picard, R. (2006), Journalism, Value Creation, and the Future of News Organizations. Harvard Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, Public Policy Working Paper Series.
Porteous, K. (2017, August 23). Backstory: What is the best way to tell stories on digital platforms? Retrieved on November 20th, 2017 from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/digital/2017-08- 24/digital-story-innovations-team/8831908
Potts, M. (2014, June 16). NYT Innovation Report: Deja Vu All Over Again for Digital News. Retrieved January 23, 2018, from http://ajr.org/2014/05/19/new-york-times-innovation-reportdigitalnews/
Pavlik, J. V. (2013). Innovation And The Future Of Journalism. Digital Journalism, 1(2), 181-193.
Prenger M. & Deuze M. (2017) A History of Innovation and Entrepreneurialism in Journalism. MIT press, pp. 235-250.
Reese, S. (2016). The New Geography of Journalism Research. Digital Journalism, 4(7), 816-826
Ryan, P. (2016, June 7). Average media worker is a male hipster, report warns lack of diversity is harming industry. Retrieved June 17, 2018 from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/media-diversity-report-average- worker-is-male-hipster/7481678
Schaffer, J. (2007). Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism.
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Schutt, K. (2014). Investigating the Social World. The Process and Practice of Research. Sage publications Inc.
Storsul, T. & Krumsvik, A. H. (2013). What is Media Innovation? In T. Storsul & A. H. Kurmsvik (Eds.), Media Innovations, a multidisciplinary study of change
64 (pp 13-26) Göteborg, Sweden: Nordicom.
Veglis, A. (2012). From Cross Media to Transmedia Reporting in Newspaper Articles. Publishing Research Quarterly, 28(4), 313-324.
Wagemans, A., Witschge, T., & Deuze, M. (2016). Ideology as Resource in Entrepreneurial Journalism. Journalism Practice, 10(2), 160-177.
Westlund, O. (2013). Mobile News. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 6-26.
65
8.1 Document 1: DSI members introduced
Name Kimberley Porteous Location Sydney office, 5th floor Job title Senior manager future audiences and content strategy Job description Coming up with a digital strategy for News and a transition plan to implement that strategy. Working on various innovation pilot projects at the ABC, such as podcasts, recruiting and setting up the DSI team and hiring digital employees to spur the transition to digital. After the recent restructure she is not involved with the DSI team anymore. Background Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Postgraduate degree in Information Technology. Former Sydney Morning Herald entertainment and arts editor, travel and lifestyle editor, then news editor and multimedia editor. Worked on the digital transition of the Canberra Times, helped setting up the digital side of ICIJ (investigative journalism unit) in Washington D.C and did data analysis for ICIJ investigations after which she became the Chief Digital Officer at the Center for Public Intergrity in Washington D.C where she was helping to lead the newsroom.
DSI team members
Name Jo Puccini Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Editor/Supervising producer of ABC Investigations Job description Managing and editing the work of the investigations team, which the DSI team is now part of. Background University degree in Media, Radio and Political Science at UTS. Previously worked in commercial television. At the ABC she was the executive producer of current affairs program 7:30, she worked at Four Corners and started the National Reporting Team.
Name Stephen Hutcheon (59) Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Supervising producer of the DSI team Job description Overseeing every aspect of what the DSI team does and managing intra-team-liaison. Helping with story ideation, administration and occasionally writing stories. Background Digital acting editor of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). Worked at the SMH in various capacities for 35 years.
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Name Mark Doman (31) Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Digital journalist and producer Job description Story ideation, working with other broadcast teams to turn their ideas, stories and investigations into innovative digital stories. Interviewing, writing, writing script, occasionally cutting videos, producing the story in the content management system. Background Studied journalism at RMIT in Melbourne. Has worked for the ABC for 5 years in regional Australia, Melbourne and Sydney mainly doing radio and digital reporting. His latest role was digital producer of the National Reporting Team.
Name + age Inga Ting (34) Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Data journalist Job description Story ideation and working with other broadcast teams to turn their ideas, stories and investigations into innovative digital stories. Finding and interpreting data sets, interviewing, writing stories and raising the data-literacy in the newsroom through digital literacy training sessions. Background Bachelor’s in Arts and Film Studies and a Master’s in Journalism. Worked for a science magazine in mapping and geo-spacial sciences and was in design and desktop publishing. Worked at the Sydney Morning Herald for seven years in total as a digital producer, food and wine editor and eventually data journalist.
Name Jack Fisher (26) Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Video journalist/photographer Job description Writing video script, taking photos, filming, interviewing, editing, subtitling, constructing motion graphics, planning and producing the rollout of a video or story online. Background Bachelor’s in Communication, majoring in Journalism. Worked at the Sydney Morning Herald making videos for digital.
Name Alex Palmer (26)
67 Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Digital designer Job description Overlooking the design of the productions, video editing, motion graphics, designing the interactives. Background Has a Bachelor’s of Arts with Film Studies and English Literature and a Master’s in Digital Design. Did motion graphics and video editing for various companies and worked at magazines as an art director/senior designer.
Name Michael Workman (30) Location Sydney office, moved from ground floor to 1st floor Job title Audience development producer Job description Providing a clear audience and distribution strategy, tracking and monitoring the audience data for every production Background Studied communications at UTS. Worked for several years as a media buyer/marketer for different brands. Worked in the marketing department of the ABC the past two years, helping with digital marketing campaigns for ABC News.
Name Nathanael Scott (34) Location Melbourne office Job title Front-end developer Job description Front-end web development, web design and animation. Background Interned at Fairfax, which is the publisher of the Age (Melbourne newspaper) and the Sydney Morning Herald as part of master’s degree. Worked as a developer at Fairfax for 10 years.
Name Ri Liu (30) Location Melbourne office Job title Editorial developer Job description Writing code, frontend development and design and specialises in data visualisation. Background Studied IT and communication design. Previously worked in web-design. Worked for a tech company in Chicago and for a data visualisation studio in the Bay area, San Francisco. Was a developer at the Guardian Australia.
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8.2 Document 2: DSI mission statement
DSI internal memo document (sent by Kimberley Porteous)
What's the new team here to do? They’ll introduce a range of valuable digital skills into ABC News to enable us to deliver quality journalism on non-broadcast platforms and reach younger audiences through a creative mobile-first approach. A primary aim is to reach the younger, smartphone-driven audiences that our broadcast programs do not currently reach and in ways that add significantly to audience engagement. The other key aim of the new unit is to help increase our teams’ digital capabilities with each collaboration. Our broadcast teams will learn about best practice digital commissioning, content creation and distribution through working closely with the team members, who are all specialists in their craft.
Most of the team members will sit in the network newsroom in Ultimo with the two developers sitting in Melbourne’s Southbank newsroom.
Who’s in the new team and what are their capabilities?
Stephen Hutcheon, supervising producer: a senior editor to lead the team and commission the long-form and in-depth digital work in tandem with our broadcast teams’ major projects. Stephen’s had a long career as a digital editor at smh.com.au, is a former foreign correspondent and foreign editor, and has the perfect mix of the required editorial leadership and diplomatic skills.
Mark Doman, digital producer: a hands-on journalist producing the team’s long- form work and helping shape, commission and create complementary content for multiple platforms, including video and other visual journalism. Mark joins us from News’ National Reporting Team.
Ri Liu, designer and front-end developer: will wear two hats in the team to help create the visual style of the team’s work, visualise our interactives and data journalism, and create our interactive elements and long reads. Ri was most recently at The Guardian where she designed and developed interactive journalism such as The Nauru Files (earning a Walkley nomination) and Jacob’s Story. Ri will work out of our Southbank newsroom.
Nathanael Scott is the team’s second developer, and handily also possesses strong design, illustration and animation chops. He joins us from The Age where he developed and crafted their long-form reads and interactive elements, including this week’s co-pro with Four Corners. Nathanaeld is also working out of our Southbank newsroom.
Inga Ting, data journalist, will help our teams find stories in large datasets and create immersive, data-driven interactives and quick turnaround data visualisations
69 and interactive news graphics alike. She joins us from The Sydney Morning Herald and has just been named a finalist in the international Data Journalism Awards for her individual portfolio.
Alex Palmer is the team’s digital designer who will help art direct the team’s output and create motion graphic video animations to give our broadcast work an equal digital life. He’s the current art director (digital) at Gourmet Traveller Wine, has a strong background in interactive and app design for editorial brands and is an accomplished videographer and video editor.
Jack Fisher is the team’s video journalist and photographer and brings a highly creative and artistic approach to visual storytelling. He shares my desire to produce graphics-heavy explainer videos in which Vox News excel. He’ll create original made-for-mobile video for ABC sites and third-party platforms.
Michael Workman has already joined us from ABC Marketing and is devising and implementing bespoke distribution strategies and third-party platform content plans so that the team’s work reaches the widest possible audience. He created the distribution and publication strategies for Four Corners’ Lindt and China stories, and his detailed analyses on the Manchester and London attacks ABC audience have gleaned a lot of actionable information on the precise audience segments interested in this coverage, which is already being applied by Gary Kemble and the News Digital team.
What type of work will the EDL team produce?
The unit will produce a wide range of interactive digital journalism along the lines of these examples:
• Ambitious and bespoke visually-driven projects blending still images, text and video such as They’re slaughtering us like animals , Borderland and A girl can dream • Data-driven interactives such as Blue Feed, Red Feed and The Nauru Files and The Color of Debt • Motion graphics-rich video explainers such as Syria’s war: who is fighting and why and How Donald Trump made it harder to fight terrorism • Data visualisation projects such as Failure Factories • “Scrollytelling” long-reads such as Highline’s work and Stories from Mosul • Searchable databases such as Vital Signs, the Texas Government Salaries Explorer or Dollars for Docs • Stories which blend storytelling modes such as The NSA Files • Smaller interactive graphics set within articles such as You draw it: how family income predicts children’s college chances and this interactive climate map • Innovating with alternative story formats such as explainers told entirely in bullet-points
70 • And, finally, smaller or less-ambitious versions of all of the above will be produced on a more frequent schedule and inserted within article templates.
A core tenet of the EDL team will be choosing the best way to tell a story for mobile audiences using digital techniques. Thus long-form narratives won’t be the unit’s only output as these aren’t always the most effective way to tell a story for digital audiences.
It’s important to recognise that this unit is not a presentation team – it’s a reporting team of journalists. These collaborations won’t be a success on digital platforms unless the team is involved as equal partners in the reporting process for the entire story lifecycle. They’ll be full members of our content teams during these projects. They’ll conduct original reporting. They’ll shoot footage and stills unique for digital. The data journalist can help analyse and find stories in datasets. They’ll sit in all project meetings when working on a story. Please urge your managers to accept them as full members of your team during their collaborations.
How will the unit work with ABC News’ content teams? As per the News Exec directive in December, the new team will collaborate with both current affairs programs and news teams.
Editorial oversight for the digital journalism produced will be shared equally between the unit’s supervising producer and the editorial leader of the broadcast team.
Measures of success The work produced by the In-depth Storytelling Team will deliver significant return on investment for ABC News within the first 12 months, including:
• Pageviews at least 100% above site average • Time spent on this content at least 150% above site average • Reach on third-party platforms at least 10% higher than other news content • Acquire new audiences: at least 15% of visitors to this content will be new to ABC News • Building capacity and competence for planning, commissioning and contributing to high-end digital storytelling within our broadcast teams through hands-on projects
71 8.3 Document 3: Mission statement PowerPoint
Written by Stephen Hutcheon, gathered from PowerPoint presentations.
Mission statement: To collaborate with newsmakers to produce unique, high quality, mobile first journalism and in so doing, deepen engagement and extend the reach and influence of the ABC brand.*
* In order to satisfy the “extend the reach” element of the mission statement, the execution means that we need to go beyond packaging up story elements into a traditional longform presentation - known here as nar-ticles (narrative articles): like this and this.
While these are now seen as the new presentation benchmark for important stories and investigations, the EDL team’s challenge is to try and go beyond this, expanding the ABC footprint and finding new (or lapsed) fans, followers, readers, listeners and viewers.
We will do this by identifying elements and angles which can be used to extrapolate the story via Facebook and mobile, in particular, to reach audiences who are not already rusted on ABC fans. For example, this and this.
Key Considerations (in no particular order):
⬜ Uniqueness ⬜ Potential impact ⬜ What is the relevance to audiences? ⬜ Can we make the story more relatable, accessible, understandable? ⬜ Is there a more effective way to tell this story on digital platforms? ⬜ How can we add value and context? ⬜ Are there elements of the story which lend themselves to the skills within the team? ⬜ Does the story have shelf life? ⬜ Are we involved from the beginning?
Our Mantra:
■ Create attention ■ Create relatable, accessible, understandable journalism ■ Make an impact ■ Deepen engagement ■ Amplify the message ■ Extend the reach
72 8.4 Document 4: DSI productions and reach
From Stephen Hutcheon to News management
The following summaries performance highlights of recent Digital Story Innovations team digital projects and their results against benchmarks.
Digital Project #1 – ‘Ordinary Australia’ Mobile url: mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/census-2016-ordinary-australia- probably-isnt-where-you-think/8680052 Desktop url: abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/census-2016-ordinary-australia- probably-isnt-where-you-think/8680052
Summary: The first offering from the Digital Story Innovations team ‘Who is an ordinary Australian?’ was an immense success. This piece utilised 2016 Census data to explore the changing face of ‘Ordinary Australia’ told through a rich digital
Above: ‘Ordinary Australia’ mobile screenshots sample. interactive built with mobile front of mind. The interactive combined several digital elements including video explainers, data visualisation and interactive tables that enabled audiences to compare just how ‘ordinary’ their suburbs are. The production of this piece also resulted in multiple local news articles that drew on the findings for local audiences. Against DSI goals, ‘Ordinary Australia’ and related articles achieved: - 321,448 page views for all articles with 290,846 page views for the main article alone (goal 25,696 page views) - A new visitor share of 70% (goal 15%) - 3rd party platform reach x3 against goal (reach 733,163 v. goal 215,485) - Time spent on page well above benchmarks for the main article across all devices excluding the app:
73 Ordinary Australia – Time spent results Device Time Spent Avg. DSI Goal Desktop 3 mins 50 secs Mobile 4 mins 23 secs 3 mins 29 secs Tablet 4 mins 19 secs App 49 secs
Digital Project #2 – ‘Mortgage Stress hotspots revealed’
Above: Mortgage Stress hotspots revealed mobile screenshots sample. Mobile url: mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-21/how-interest-rate-rises-could- affect-home-loan-stress/8798274 Desktop url: abc.net.au/news/2017-08-21/how-interest-rate-rises-could-affect- home-loan-stress/8798274
Summary: The second offering from the Digital Story Innovations team was a collaboration with the Four Corners reporting team which used data visualisations to reveal mortgage stress hotspots. This piece drew upon mortgage stress data sourced from a finance data scientist Four Corners interviewed, presented via data visualisations and repurposed into a search tool where audiences could compare rates of stress in their area based off modelling scenarios. Against DSI goals, ‘Mortgage Stress hotspots revealed’ achieved: - 336,899 page views (goal 40,000 page views) - A new visitor share of 74% (goal 15%) - 3rd party platform reach x2 against goal (reach 479,255 v. goal 215,485) - Time spent on page above benchmarks across all devices excluding the app: Mortgage Stress – Time spent results Device Time Spent Avg. DSI Goal Desktop 3 mins 57 secs Mobile 4 mins 15 secs 3 mins 29 secs Tablet 4 mins 25 secs App 45 secs
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Digital Project #3 – ‘AFL finals 2017 Predictor’ Mobile url: mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-07/what-chance-do-teams-really- have-of-winning-the-afl-grand-final/8862758 Desktop url: abc.net.au/news/2017-09-07/what-chance-do-teams-really-have-of- winning-the-afl-grand-final/8862758
Summary:
This offering from the Digital Story Innovations team utilised historic AFL team data sourced from a sports data scientist to allow audiences to see the likelihood of different teams winning the AFL finals. Results were displayed within a ‘probability ladder’ flowchart that reflected the nominated team’s chances against the likely outcome.
Against DSI goals this achieved great results, especially considering the more niche appeal of the predictor: - 130,448 page views (goal 40,000 page views) - A new visitor share of 79% (goal 15%) - Time spent on page was best on tablet and mobile: AFL – Time spent results Device Time Spent Avg. DSI Goal Desktop 2 mins 39 secs Mobile 2 mins 58 secs Tablet 3 mins 24 secs 3 mins 29 secs App 29 secs Apple News 27 secs
Digital Project #4 – Australian Story, ‘Two foster dads redefining the meaning of family’ social video Facebook url: facebook.com/ABCAustralianStory/videos/10156760040872818/
Summary: This social video was an accompaniment to a related Australian Story article and program on the ‘modern Australian family’ aimed at fuelling interest in the
75 program about two fathers who raised adopted children. DSI team video resources were brought in to assist, shooting additional footage and repurposing b-roll for the social video.
This video massively overachieved against the DSI 3rd party platform reach goal with a unique reach on Facebook alone of 1.4M against our goal of 215,48.
The success of this video can be attributed to the utilisation of a square video format built for mobiles, hard-coded subtitles and an early morning weekend rollout with cross posting on several ABC pages.
76 8.5 Document 5: Equal Digital Life pilot with Four Corners Equal Digital Life long-form digital pilot with Four Corners document
DRAFT Recommendations and findings
An Equal Digital Life pilot project in Q3 and Q4 2016 paired Four Corners with members of News Digital’s Interactive Digital Storytelling Team to collaborate on a story/episode. The aim: to explore ways to deliver compelling long-form broadcast current affairs content on digital platforms.
Executive summary: the recommendations
1. Empower our digital journalists as equal editorial partners Close collaborations are necessary to give our broadcast journalism an Equal Digital Life — but don't treat digital team members as a service department. Digital platform specialists must be free to tell the story in what they decide is the best way for the medium. Our digital product will be at best a sophisticated repurposing of TV stories for as long as the broadcast teams control all of the editorial decisions.
2. Elevate our digital capabilities through recruitment and repurposing The digital transition of our broadcast operations won't be successful until we reallocate some personnel towards digital responsibilities and install experienced digital talent into the programs.
3. Continue to experiment with long-form digital journalism to identify optimum formats for serving our audiences Create a unit of digital storytelling specialists who enable innovation to flourish, and help accelerate our broadcast teams' progress towards digital maturity.
4. Digital storytelling specialists should be co-located within program teams during these projects Being physically located within these teams results in better communication, rapid increase in digital capabilities of the program staff, and a stronger digital product.
5. Introduce distribution and audience engagement expertise into News The challenges we face go beyond learning new storytelling techniques and changing our workflows: we must put as much effort into distribution as we do into creating the actual product.
77 6. PROJECT OUTCOMES
At the outset of the project we set these success measures, which were largely achieved:
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KEY FINDINGS
These main findings are a summary of candid, one-on-one postmortem interviews undertaken in November and December with project team members Linton Besser, Ruth Fogarty, Tim Leslie, Matt Liddy, Lisa Main, Morag Ramsay, Emma Turner and Michael Workman, and of the program review chaired by Bruce Belsham.
Process and production
• Greater clarity around everyone’s roles in these co-productions is required. The digital team should also preferably take a lead in deciding earlier on what the digital piece would focus on, as the project allows.
• The project and production timelines for long-form TV and digital journalism are quite different. An ambitious digital treatment takes time — the story needs to be fairly refined before production can commence, which shortens the available time for digital team members to devise their approach and adds stress. With TV, content is gathered as they go and can be shaped during edit at the relatively last minute. The digital team members were waiting for the program to decide on the story before they
79 chose the digital angle, which leaves them a shorter time to construct, design and build the digital piece (bearing in mind development takes the most time). Various prototypes were built whilst waiting to determine which would be the final product.
• The reporter was available to work on the text write for the digital piece during this project, but this is highly unusual. Typically they are not usually free at the end of a project as they are still working on the story. Likewise, the 4C team were also able to spend more time checking the rough digital version only because it was the end of season. We couldn’t realistically factor in either their or the reporter’s availability for every project.
• It can be challenging for TV producers to also factor in a second medium. Very little was shot for the digital product. It will take time until they can fluidly move between the demands of the two, assuming we continue with the model of servicing two platforms with existing program staff numbers. 4C admit they let the digital team members down as they didn’t deliver everything as planned. The producer was under a lot of pressure because she was fighting multiple fires (they were shooting using a different technique, and working with a “difficult” cameraman who was older, resistant to changing the style) and didn’t deliver everything the digital guys had asked for early on. The 4C supervising producer regrets this, saying the extra work required of the producer wasn’t that onerous so it should have been possible.
• Communication fell down in some areas within the 4C team. Some stills were shot for digital yet deleted off the camera card because the team member didn’t realise they were required. The editorial assistant for 4Cs wasn’t across the collaboration; Brisbane had difficulty in getting material out of Sydney as a result. The legal team wasn’t prepared to legal a digital piece, especially considering layout and what was implied due to placement, etc. but presumably this will change.
• Unless physically located within the team, out on shoots, researching together, etc., the digital team members have limited scope to commission and gather their own footage and original content so can’t realistically take part in producing journalism. They instead become closer to repackagers or “interpreters” who re-format the journalism for digital.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Interactive Storytelling team are not investigative reporters and aren’t as experienced in the deep research required for a 4C program. These skills could be developed however, says the 4C team.
80 • Ownership of the story remained firmly with the broadcast team. There was a belief within the program from the outset that the TV episode was to be the primary output with the digital piece only a complementary part. Content and style were both driven by the broadcast team, so it wasn’t as creatively satisfying for the digital team as it could have been. The result was a repurposed version of a TV episode, not strictly the best way to tell a story for the digital medium, so that gap still exists. If we didn’t have to create a 45-minute TV episode, what would have been the best way to tell this story? The digital team members would have liked to have found out.
• News Digital was disappointed they weren’t given credits in the TV show. Tim Leslie, Simon Elvery and Paul Crossley all contributed research but didn’t get credits on the program. There was a group conversation around who to include in the digital credits but the 4C team didn’t think to do the same.
• Oversight and planning could have been more inclusive. At the outset of the project the Executive Producer said it was important that she be across what the digital team proposed before that was pitched to the wider group, or “before we’re too far down the path and can’t wind it back”. There were also disagreements over the need for a common planning meeting and the EP didn’t think all team members needed to be part of that conversation. The EP also didn’t see the need to involve marketing, distribution and engagement strategists, or involve the planning desk, at the start of the project. Likewise for the CAff short-form video producer: the Executive Producer said only one week’s notice was necessary. The end result would likely have been stronger if communications were inclusive and initiated early on.
• The pilot was a positive experience for most with everybody being respectful and collegial, although the experience was not without stresses. Both teams gained understanding and insights into how the other team worked, what’s involved, what takes time, etc. Now 4C understands a custom build is required to realise a different product and the time that involves, and that signing off on design has to happen before the build commences. The 4C team had questions/suggestions over the design of the digital piece once they were coming to the end of their work, but these came too late to raise — you need to sign this off early on to prevent a complete rebuild of the digital shell. Output and format
• Video was only a small part of the digital piece. It was decided relatively early it would be based around a text write (for mobile usability, and so they could
81 begin building the product earlier) which disappointed the broadcast team. Then when it was decided to base the digital version on an angle they couldn’t use on TV (limited vision possibilities) that meant only a few episode clips of unrelated characters would make sense to avoid audience confusion. 4C team understands why some of the strongest vision wouldn’t have made sense to run on digital, and say it was a valuable learning moment for them — they hadn't considered the implications of taking the different angle. Still, there is a sense of a missed opportunity for not using more video in the digital presentation. Video from the episode was available to use on social media distribution, however.
• Counter to the above point: very little was actually shot specifically for the digital product (one estimate was only 5% of the total). The digital team had to rely on what was brought back as they didn’t go out on shoots, and much of what had been requested in the production meeting wasn’t delivered.
• Design and look of the digital output: Digital team thinks the broadcast team puts too much stock in "making stuff look nice". Instead, digital thinks the program team should focus on how to tell the story best for digital and mobile, and in creating original content for these platforms instead of obsessing over design. The 4C team were underwhelmed by how the digital version looked, thought the design was lacking. Conversations around design seem to be rooted instead in whether the digital piece has equal emotional heft to the TV output, and this is more important.
Distribution, audience engagement and marketing
• Publishing the digital story ahead of broadcast would have been ideal, but wasn’t possible in this instance due to injunction fears.
• The plan devised by the Brisbane social desk was not ambitious, instead resembling the same plan for any mid- to large-scale story. Some parts of the plan also fell short due to illness (Gary Kemble had a family medical event on the day of publication).
• Further complication: the 4C digital producer changed in the week prior to broadcast and no handover was given. Therefore some plans (such as uploading the episode, or parts of it, to YouTube) didn’t eventuate.
• Getting News Marketing involved and spending on paid promotion was well worth the effort. Michael Workman drafted Facebook posts for 4C to edit and targeted them to likely audience segments, and these largely performed
82 better than the organic posts from either the Four Corners or News Facebook pages in terms of link clickthrough rates back to our site.
• It is unclear why nothing more creative or ambitious was realised in terms of an audience development plan. Lack of expertise in national social desk? Or unclear where boundaries lie between social desk and marketing? Or was the digital output not deemed distinctive enough for the national social desk to warrant extra effort?
• Four Corners’ digital producer never linked to the online piece from the program website, despite repeated requests. Visitors to the Four Corners site are committed fans and heavily invested in the content, so would have been prime candidates to share the story with. This betrays a critical misunderstanding of their digital audience.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation 1: Empower our digital journalists as equal editorial partners.
To truly give our broadcast journalism an Equal Digital Life, both parties participating in a co- production must share equal ownership of our big stories. Our digital product will be at best a sophisticated repurposing of TV stories for as long as the broadcast teams control all of the editorial decisions.
Recommendations:
• Digital teams should be empowered to tell the story in what they decide is the best way for the digital medium, even if this takes a different focus to the broadcast version.
• Digital journalists and platform specialists, such as the proposed Big Story team, must have the right to commission content from the reporter and producer during future co-productions. 2017 will be a pivotal year in which our broadcast and digital specialists begin to collaborate closely in cross- functional teams — in the spirit of an Equal Digital Life — and accommodate each platform’s strengths and limitations to create stellar, in- depth digital journalism. The News executive should be instrumental in both setting the collaborative tone for these co- productions and in helping our teams embody a “story-based approach”. This guiding principle of putting the audience before the medium will upend how we’re resourced and how we work, and there will be tensions as our flagship broadcast
83 teams insist on continuing to make all editorial calls. Our role will be to set and communicate priorities so that long-form broadcast teams know where to focus their efforts, and help them understand that:
• A story-based approach affects commissioning decisions as our teams begin considering the best way to tell each story in a platform-agnostic way;
• The editorial decision-making process will change to accommodate producing our flagship work for digital platforms. Editorial calls should be made collaboratively between the leads of the broadcast and digital teams, with the digital specialists granted the permission to explore new approaches. (NB: Success largely depends on the calibre of the digital platform specialists we attract to the Big Story team.)
• Once we change our strategies, we must change our structures. Broadcast workflows and roles will need to adjust to accommodate these collaborations, and the future forms of our work. The changes coming are nothing less than transformative, but the payoffs should we succeed are enormous.
Recommendation 2: Expand our digital capabilities through recruitment and repurposing.
The Four Corners-News Digital co-production made it quite clear that change is required in both capabilities and processes to enable our digital transition. The challenge for ABC News is how we continue to exploit our TV assets while simultaneously explore digital opportunities to avoid being rendered irrelevant.
Broken Homes confirmed that we cannot currently resource digital journalism adequately within our program teams due to:
• Demands of the weekly TV product;
• Unavailability of digital expertise;
• The priorities we’ve set as a division: the broadcast output is what the program team is still judged on. Even if we could afford to free up the broadcast team from television’s demands to allow for more of a digital focus, we realistically won’t be successful at creating digital journalism until we reallocate some personnel towards digital responsibilities and install experienced digital talent into the programs. Simply giving each broadcast team a developer and a digital designer is not the solution as long as all reporting out of these teams continues to be done for TV output. Our
84 broadcast stories have to be rethought for digital, and content must be commissioned and created for these platforms. Until we can afford to repurpose roles within programs, digital journalists and platform specialists should be seconded into these teams to help them advance to the next stage of digital maturity. Recommendations:
• As a priority, our long-form broadcast teams each require an experienced digital editor to help commission and create content, and play a hands-on production role bringing the digital project home as production ramps up. 90 percent of what Broken Homes delivered could be achieved with a high- performing digital journalist with storytelling expertise.
• We should look at adding responsibility for providing digital video and stills to the producer’s current role. If they plan ahead this could be allowed in their workflows. It may not be realistic at this stage for broadcast producers to also commission for digital, so the digital lead should work in collaboration with them in the field.
• It is essential that we shoot specifically for the digital product, potentially using a different camera. The digital team could be shooting separately to the broadcast camera operators although it would be more efficient if the program team could accommodate both. This may depend on the operations talent used. Video should also be edited specifically for digital, and while the different platform warrants a different approach, practically this could be done by the same editors who craft the broadcast product.
• Strong design — and the impact it can have on arousing empathy and emotion through immersing the audience — is crucial for long-form co-productions with marquee ABC News properties such as Four Corners. It’s therefore recommended we engage a strong editorial digital designer to work on our big stories.
• Digital team members and their contributions should be held in equal esteem by their broadcast colleagues, and not considered window dressers who layout broadcast content online. Ideally their input to the TV output would also be welcomed and they’d be able to help steer the direction of the program. It’s also time we update our protocols on which digital team members receive credits on the broadcast episode. A workflow analysis was not part of this project, but will be undertaken in early 2017 to help determine which roles may be able to be repurposed either to cross-platform or to digital- only. Consideration should also be made whether this is time for a digital-only investigative team, given the very different production
85 timelines required for TV and digital projects. Quality investigative reporting doesn’t need to be tied to a timeslot — it’s not usually tied to the news cycle — so can be delivered at any time when the digital product is ready, rather than minimal repurposing of a broadcast story for digital platforms.
Recommendation 3: Continue to experiment with long-form digital journalism to identify optimum formats for serving our audience.
Experimentation around optimum outputs and formats for long-form digital journalism should continue, particularly to help determine which types of stories to execute on digital, which are best suited for video/TV formats, and how to get the best out of both platforms — even if digital explorations have less certainty of short-term success than our broadcast work. Without further exploration in this area we cannot hope to remain viable in the face of change.
There are specialists within News, particularly Matt Liddy’s Interactive Digital Storytelling Team, who work at the forefront of this field. Yet until now neither the expertise nor the storytelling explorations have circulated far into our program teams. The proposed Big Story team would add more of these capabilities and help accelerate our broadcast teams’ process towards digital maturity.
What was learned or exposed about long-form digital storytelling options during the Broken Homes experiment includes:
• We don't have enough expertise in creating long-form digital journalism. ABC News would benefit from a unit of digital storytelling specialists who enable innovation to flourish, and help accelerate our broadcast teams' progress towards digital maturity.
• Emotional impact is key to engaging audiences with these stories. It is imperative we explore how to invoke empathy and create engrossing, compelling experiences of our long-form digital stories.
• Labor-intensive one-offs which create bespoke presentations unlikely to be re- used aren’t the most efficient use of a developer’s time. (This is also the conclusion reached by digital leaders at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Quartz, amongst others.) It’s far better that we prioritise creating a few effective and sustainable tools and templates — that are thoroughly tested on all platforms and browsers and optimised for mobile audiences — over short-term hacks and workarounds. We’ve reached a point where platform innovation is a requirement, yet this is a choke point
86 as News currently doesn’t control these resources.
• If we’re hoping to build large interactive graphics and databases in conjunction with programs such as Four Corners, we need to consider the enormous fact checking task this entails. Because every element is often included in these — unlike a few examples typically used in a TV program — the task is vast. This wouldn’t be possible in the final days of a project so must be built into the timeline. Even the small charts in Broken Homes represent weeks of work and a large fact checking task.
• Placing front-end developers into program teams is not a solution to reach digital maturity: many of our long-form TV stories aren’t data stories, so the best digital treatment is more likely to be a combination of video, stills and text with scope for interactive graphics.
• The best use of video in digital long-form remains an open question. There’s a tension between long-form video not being the best vehicle on mobile yet being the primary format of our long-form broadcast work. It’s a challenge for us to crack in 2017.
• Interactive storytelling formats such as data-driven graphics and games are prime formats for boosting engagement with long-form digital journalism, yet our current capacity to provide these is extremely limited. We must add to this expertise.
• Some stories are better suited to ambitious long-form digital productions than others, and should be chosen strategically. We must develop the skills beyond our digital teams to identify strong prospects.
• Text will be important to translating our long-form journalism to digital, so it follows that having craft text editing and rewriting skills in News is also important.
Recommendation 4: Digital storytelling specialists should be co-located within program teams during these projects.
It is essential that specialised digital platform practitioners teaming up with programs be physically located within a project team for the duration of these co- productions. It means they are present to make commissioning decisions and for all of the ensuing discussion and decision-making about the story, and that they're on hand to commission original content from the team directly. It also means they’re on hand to accommodate last-minute schedule changes to shoots and
87 interviews. Just as critically, co-location helps with communication. It should prevent the issues we experienced with Broken Homes when not all team members knew about the project, with at times unfortunate effects. Adjustments to workflows and the process changes inherent to digital upskilling and the adoption of new equipment will also run more smoothly if they're working together closely. The digital capabilities of the entire program team should accelerate as a result. It’s less important that any designers be physically embedded for the duration of a project timeline, but any digital reporter, producer and architect of the digital coverage should be there in person.
Recommendation 5: Introduce distribution and audience engagement expertise into News.
The digital medium isn’t just another platform like television or radio: it’s a paradigm shift in the way the audience discovers and consumes content. Our role as content creators has also changed, and the challenges facing News in 2017 go beyond learning new storytelling techniques and changing our workflows: we must put as much effort into distribution as we do into creating the actual product. Audience habits have changed — our regular broadcast audience can no longer be taken for granted, and on digital a regular audience seldom exists. We therefore must become adept at choosing a specific audience for every story we do, then using this to inform the way we distribute it. Distribution on third-party platforms is key to ABC News reaching its ambitious audience reach targets. We can provide a better service to audiences if we act on the insights contained in audience data from these platforms to create content tailored to their consumption habits and information needs. Recommendations:
• Introduce audience development and engagement expertise into the News division to create audiences for the expensive, time-consuming product of long-form digital journalism.
• Every major digital project requires an audience development plan.
• The audience development role must be brought into project teams from the outset so they can help shape the digital content for maximum target audience impact — and continue the campaign in the weeks following launch.
• It would be worth publishing digital treatments of broadcast stories into market a day ahead of broadcast so that we can build momentum and interest around a story and potentially increase TV and iView numbers. We should follow News Marketing’s recommendations on this.
88 • Involving News Marketing in advance during planning stages will bear fruit: they can provide ideas on how to more effectively promote our projects with targeting, and can put together digital marketing campaigns. Their efforts with Broken Homes and spending on paid promotion were a success: their targeted Facebook posts outperformed the organic posts from either the Four Corners or News Facebook pages in terms of link clickthrough rates back to our site.
• Digital producers in our broadcast teams would benefit from social media training. Facebook posts on the Four Corners page often don’t follow best practices and in fact contain errors — discouraging audiences from clicking through to our content and damaging our ability to encourage consumption of ABC content on our own platforms, instead circulating audiences throughout the Facebook ecosystem.
89 8.6 Document 6: Online reach and engagement comparison
90 8.7 Document 7: Links to DSI productions
Article written by journalism.co.uk https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/how-abc-news-is-experimenting-with- comic-book-style-storytelling/s2/a714952/
Articles about the mission of the DSI http://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/digital/2017-08-24/digital-story- innovations-team/8831908 http://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/digital/2017-11-21/making- paradise-papers-nike-video/9174720
Examples of DSI productions
Australia’s most (and least) popular birthdays revealed http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-13/australias-most-and-least-popular- birthdays-revealed/9241978
Brainwashed http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-11/brainwashed-the-phonecall-that- changed-gerry-wagemans-life/8960004
Who is Gautam Adani? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-02/who-is-gautam-adani/9008902
Brainwashed: A father's struggle with losing a daughter to a cult https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giQBugr7UOI
A tale of two cities reveals vast gulf in housing affordability http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-05/how-long-does-it-take-to-save-a-home- deposit-in-australia/9225272
Mind the gap: Where you fit in the changing jobs landscape http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/where-you-fit-in-the-changing-jobs- landscape/9160862
The surprising journey your money takes after buying a pair of Nikes http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/paradise-papers-the-journey-your- money-takes-after-buying-nike/9075626
The secret, handwritten deal to ‘exploit’ Michael Hutchence’s estate http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-06/the-secret-deal-behind-inxs-michael- hutchences-estate/9075634
91 How Nike avoids paying tax in Australia https://www.facebook.com/abcnews.au/videos/10157566430394988/
Black Lives Matter in Australia https://www.facebook.com/abcnews.au/videos/10157546869334988/
From victim to victor: The making of Jeff Horn (just the pictures and video) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-16/jeff-horn-the-making-of-a- champion/9037904
‘Ordinary’ Australia probably isn’t where you think it is http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/census-2016-ordinary-australia- probably-isnt-where-you-think/8680052
The worrying trend in the minds of young Australians http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-10/the-worrying-trend-in-the-minds-of- young-australians/9013954
AFL finals 2017: What chance do teams really have of winning the premiership? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-07/what-chance-do-teams-really-have-of- winning-the-afl-grand-final/8862758
Two foster dads redefining the meaning of family https://www.facebook.com/ABCAustralianStory/videos/10156760040872818/
Mortgage stress hotspots revealed http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-21/how-interest-rate-rises-could-affect- home-loan-stress/8798274
Articles about affiliated innovation teams at the ABC http://www.abc.net.au/btn/kokodaVR/ http://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/digital/2017-11-02/the-making- of-kokoda-vr/9103832 http://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/the-world/2017-11-03/experiencing- the-kokoda-story-in-360-degree/9114178
92 8.8 Document 8: Interview questions
DSI team members inverviews
A. Introduction Before the interview starts, make sure there’s a relaxed atmosphere. If necessary, first talk about trivial subjects. When ready, you can start the interview with the following introduction:
‘First, I would like to thank you for participating in this interview. With this project we would like to understand what it means to work in your field of work, and anything you can tell us about your work will be valuable.
There are no right or wrong answers in the interview, it’s about your experience and understanding of your work. If any of my questions are unclear or you have questions of your own during the interview, feel free to interrupt me. If you don’t feel comfortable enough to continue the interview, we can stop at any time. The interview will approximately take XXX minutes. If you wish, you will remain anonymous and only the researchers on this project will know your identity. Do you have any questions before we begin?
Now that we’re all set, I would like to turn on the recorder. [TURN ON RECORDER] And then I need to start the interview with one last formality: do you understand what we are going to do, do you agree with doing this interview and having it recorded?’
Opening questions Goal: to ease the participant into the interview with relatively simple questions and to establish the context for the interview.
1. What is your job or job title? 2. How long have you been doing this for a living? 3. How did you come here -- What did you do before you became [insert job title/description they use]?
Questions about the DSI and its history
1. When was the team formed? 2. Was there a similar type of team responsible for innovation before? If so, what happened to the team? Were they successful? 3. Are there any other teams within ABC doing similar work? 4. How does the DSI fit into ABC’s innovation history? 5. What is DSI’s mission? 6. When will this mission be successful?
Questions about practices
93 Goal: establish the practices and skills of journalists working elsewhere.
1. Do you have a daily work routine? - If yes, could you describe that to me? - If no, could you describe what comes close to a typical workday for you? 2. What kind of activities do you feel a [insert job title/description] is supposed to do? 3. How many different tasks do you have on an average day? 4. How do you experience having these different tasks? 5. What are the skills that someone needs to do what you do? 6. What have you learnt since starting doing this work? 7. Do you work together with other teams within ABC? 8. Do you generally work alone or with colleagues? 9. Who are your peers and colleagues? 10. How do you interact with them? Do you see them often/ work together? Where do you see them? Who are you missing in the team?
Questions about work and labour Goal: to establish the workload and combining of tasks.
1. How many hours would you say you work in a week? How much of this time would you say is specifically dedicated to journalistic work? 2. If relevant: What other jobs do you have? And how much time do you spend on them? 3. What do you consider ‘free time’? 4. How many hours of free time do you consider you have in a week? 5. In what ways does your unit earn income/revenue? 6. Do you manage to earn a living from doing this (if so, how exactly; if not: how is the income supplemented, and how do they feel about that)? 7. Do you take assignments that you’d rather not take if you’d make more with other work? If so, ask for examples and how they feel about this. 8. What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? (For instance: combining different tasks, making a living out of your journalistic work, balancing work/life, dealing with stress)
Questions about material context Goal: to establish the wide material contexts in which the participant conducts his or her everyday practices.
‘We are very interested in the context in which people work, we would like to ask you some questions about your workspaces, and perhaps we could take some pictures, or you could send us some pictures of the different work places.’ 1. Where do you work most? How much of the time do you spend there? Where is/are your main workspace located? Why there? 2. (If there are multiple places:) what is the second place of work? Third?
94 3. (When main workplace is not at home) How do you get to your main workplace? 4. How would you describe your main workspace(s)? 5. What facilities do you have in your workspace? For example: a coffee corner, wifi, etc; 6. What kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential? 7. What kind of hard- and software do you use in your workplace? (when not working at home: How much of that hard- and software do you bring from home) 8. How important are these technologies in your work? 9. (If not working from home) What do people wear in your main space of work? Do you feel comfortable in that environment? 10. Do you share your workspace with others? With how many and whom (varying or stable)? 11. What kind of support is there available in your workspace? For example: is there a possibility to get legal or financial advice? 12. What would you like to change, if anything, about your places of work?
Questions about self identities Goal: discuss (changing) reasons behind working in journalism: motivations, aspirations, professional goals and values.
1. Why did you start working as [insert job title/description]? 2. Has your motivation changed over time? 3. What would you describe as your ‘mission statement’ /the ‘mission statement’ of the organisation you work for? 4. What does that mean for your daily work, if anything? 5. What are your professional goals? Where would you like to go next? 6. What are the most important values (such as being objective, providing a public service, telling the truth, and so on) that inform your work? 7. Do you feel your work lives up to these values? - If no: What are the key elements that are constraining you live up to these values? - If yes: or enable to 8. Does your work make you happy? If so, what makes you happy? 9. Do you ever get angry in your work? What makes you angry? 10. Is there anything that scares you in what is happening in your field of work? 11. What is your main motivation to keep doing what you do?
Questions about social identity Goal: establish social identity and professional values of journalists.
1. Which communities would you say you belong to? 2. Do you have memberships to trade unions, a local group or network, online networks such as through LinkedIn or Meetup, or other professional associations? How active are you in these communities?
95 3. How useful are professional communities to you? What can such communities do (or: what can you do) to make them most useful? 4. Is there a community you would like to belong to, but don’t do yet? Which community is that? 5. Who do you see as your main competitors? - What do they do? 6. Has this changed? Do you have new competitors? 7. Who are your audiences? 8. Are you satisfied with these audiences, or are there other people you would like to reach?
Digital Storytelling 1. How does the DSI bring about innovation within ABC? 2. What do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? 3. Has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other innovation teams within or outside of ABC?
Audience 1. How do you plan to attract new audiences?
Last: one big question: what do you see the most fundamental challenge for the field you’re working in?
Finishing ‘We’ve reached the end of the interview, is there anything that you’d like to add to the interview - something we’ve maybe forgotten? Do you have any questions left regarding the research? Thank you very much for participating in this interview.
Context interview questions
Introduction ‘First, I would like to thank you for participating in this interview. With this project we would like to understand what it means to work in your field of work, and anything you can tell us about your work will be valuable.
There are no right or wrong answers in the interview, it’s about your experience and understanding of your work. If any of my questions are unclear or you have questions of your own during the interview, feel free to interrupt me. If you don’t feel comfortable enough to continue the interview, we can stop at any time. The interview will approximately take XXX minutes. If you wish, you will remain anonymous and only the researchers on this project will know your identity. Do you have any questions before we begin?
Opening questions 1. What is your job or job title?
96 2. How long have you been doing this for a living? 3. How did you come here -- What did you do before you became [insert job title/description]?
Questions about the DSI and its history 1. What do you know about the Digital Stories Innovations team? 2. What is DSI’s mission? 3. Have you worked with the DSI team? 4. Do you have a daily work routine? If yes, could you describe that to me? If no, could you describe what comes close to a typical workday for you? 5. Do you involve the DSI team in all of the projects? If not, how and at what stage do you involve them? 6. How do you interact with them? Do you see them often/ work together? Where do you see them? 7. How did you experience the collaboration and the end result of the co- production?
Questions on DSI innovation 1. How does the DSI fit into ABC’s innovation history? 2. Do you think the DSI team has been successful so far? 3. How does the DSI bring about innovation within ABC? 4. Do you know of any other ways in which the ABC is trying to innovate? 5. Are there any other people I should speak to who have maybe not embraced the DSI team as much?
Finishing ‘We’ve reached the end of the interview, is there anything that you’d like to add to the interview - something we’ve maybe forgotten? Do you have any questions left regarding the research? Thank you very much for participating in this interview.
Matthew Holbrook interview (Virtual Reality)
I am just calling to have a chat with you for my masters’ thesis. First, I would like to thank you for participating in this interview. With this project I would like to get a better understanding of innovation projects within the ABC, in order to place the Digital Story Innovations team in a broader context.
I have been here for two weeks now for my master thesis research. I am a student at the University of Amsterdam currently doing a case study on the Digital Stories Innovations team here in Sydney in order to see how they bring about innovation in a huge media organisation such as the ABC. My thesis will be part of a research project led by prof. dr. Mark Deuze called 'Beyond Journalism'. Over the past few years about 30 alumni have gone abroad to study journalism start-ups worldwide
97 in order to see what the future holds for journalism. This will be the first year that the project will focus on innovation within legacy media organisations.
I have interviewed all the DSI team members and would now like to speak to some more people from other teams who have been involved in innovation. Oscar told me that the BTN team is experimenting with Virtual Reality and that sounded really interesting, so I am happy you are willing to have a chat with me about what you do.
If any of my questions are unclear or you have questions of your own during the interview, feel free to interrupt me. The interview will approximately take 30 minutes. If you wish, you will remain anonymous and only the researchers on this project will know your identity. Do you have any questions before we begin?
4. What is your job or job title? 5. How long have you worked in this team? 6. How did you get here - What did you do before you became content lead at Behind the News? 7. What would you describe as the ‘mission statement’ of the ABC and more specifically your team? 8. When and why did the team start experimenting with VR? 9. Whose idea was it? 10. How has it been going so far? 11. What has been the reaction of the ABC to the VR productions? 12. Could you tell me a bit about the ABC’s innovation history? 13. Do you know of the DSI team? If so, how did you come to know of them?
98 8.9 Document 9: Transcribed interviews
Interview Jo Puccini
What is your job title? I am the editor of ABC investigations, which is a new multiplatform investigative unit that’s been set up here at the ABC.
When was it set up? Oh! It was announced in November, so not very long ago. It morphed from another unit we used to have called the National Reporting team and that was a mixture of four investigative reporters and some reporters that were specialist rounds-people health, environment, arts, indigenous. Essentially what they decided to do, which was very much in line with, I don’t know if you have read the New York Times innovation report for example around the strengths of the organisation and what we should be moving towards. So our director of news decided that specialist reporting is something that he really wanted to focus on across our platforms. So those specialist reporters will move to their own units, which gets a little more money and the aim will be to get them to do a lot more you know really be the experts in their field, get them to do a lot more digital content a lot more analysis as well as a broadcast, News 24 and 7 O’clock news and all that other stuff they do. And to then put the investigators in their own investigative team and put a bit more money into that and that’s what I’m running. Essentially because within the ABC, investigations are one of the strongest things we do and have done traditionally. That is an area they want to keep investing in but also innovating in and not just having it sit in our broadcast platforms.
And how long have you been doing this for a living? What my career?
I guess yes. Well this job here I only just started. Prior to that I was the executive producer of the 7:30 program which is our nightly current affairs program, prior to that I started the national reporting team which is the other multiplatform unit that I just talked about. Then I have also worked primarily in television, at 7:30, Four Corners for eight years as a producer and in commercial television.
And what kind of university degree do you have? I have a media degree, funnily enough, in radio and political science here at UTS.
When was the DSI team, is it called the DSI team I am so confused with the names now? So what will happen now is I am the supervising producer and together we have the investigative and digital producers that will take care mainly of the day to day stuff. But the DSI also comes under me, it will still be run by Stephen and it was
99 set up about 5 months ago essentially to do, ah I guess, more, sort of, interactive and deeper more immersive treatment of particular kinds of content that the ABC wants to invest in and to grow new audiences in the digital space.
Was there a similar type of team responsible for innovation within the ABC before the DSI? Yes, there is in Brisbane. Called…ah I can’t remember what they are called. You should see if you can go and visit them, they are very good. And they deal with news content. They do a lot of stuff around set paced news so for example when there is an election they do this thing called Vote Campus to really get the mood of Australia about what issues they care about, how much those issues determine who they are going to vote for, who they will vote for if they will say. They do a lot of that kind of interactive stuff, they do a little bit of video as well. But they will mostly work with our news team on events, or stuff that’s happening and it was felt that we needed a similar kind of team in Sydney where most of our current affairs programs are and our current affairs programs are usually the ones who do original content and investigative content and while each of those programs has a digital producer, none of them have kind of you know the sort of developer and designer, all of that expertise needed to do anything more than just your very basic digital presentation.
So they still exist and do that, are there any other ABC teams doing similar work? Yes, there is lots within the ABC obviously this is such a big place that I don’t know all of them. There is the Audio Lab, they are mostly focussing on podcasting although they too will be… everything at the ABC is multiplatform. Everything’s got a television and digital rollout as well. And I know that they’ve got a new initiative on True Crime. Funnily enough one of our kids television programs is doing interesting innovation with Virtual Reality. It is on the Kokoda track, a World War 2 story to really show what it was like to be there and what happened. And they are taking that and they want to turn, they are just pitching at the moment for VR team to work with news. They are the ones I know about, there is probably a lot more.
Do you have a daily routine? Well not at the moment because we are not set up yet. But I can tell you what the daily routine was like in the National Reporting Team.
Well if there is not routine right now, that is fine as well. We are currently recruiting staff.
And you will try to create a routine, when you are all set up? Uhuhhh. We will have reporters, and what we call multiplatform producers and they are mostly radio and television but they can also write digital and digital producers in the investigative part will be sitting with the DSI team so that we can hopefully work more closely together. Look, how it works, I am a big believer in daily editorial meetings and I am a big believer in everybody being there and really
100 sharing knowledge. So we will have those and we will plan as the story comes along, because again it is story based commissioning, so we don’t have to fill a program every night. They we begin to think, okay: how do we make this story, where does it best belong, maybe we take one aspect for a television piece but then there is other data behind it that can make an interesting database as well.
What kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your role? So I am an editor so my role is firstly to assign or approve stories that are pitched by reporters or producers then to work with them in getting that story ready for publishing. When I say work with them I mean everything from editorial, to legal, to meet the ABC’s stringent guidelines around editorial, and also from a production point of view to make sure that they are producing the story to the highest quality that they can produce it.
How many different tasks do you have on an average day? – I know this is a hard one to answer because your days are not very average now. Well we just did a big investigation, while I was hiring people so I can tell you what I did there. It was about a television personality from the 80’s and 90’s who was a serial sexual harasser of women and who was protected by the channel 9 network, who he worked for. And I helped them, so I commissioned the story because when the Weinstein happened I said we should start looking at our own people and I had heard rumours about him from my day. So we started making phone calls and I helped them with the phone calls. We did it together and as a coproduction with the Sydney Morning Herald. So I negotiated the coproduction with the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald, we set up a team of 4 journalists and me and we all hit the phones together. I the coordinated the travel to Mexico and Canada, got Stephen and the DSI team involved and briefed him along the way. We did a lot of filming and ended out on 7:30 and took up the whole show. It was a massive story. We had 1,3 million viewers on TV and all of our digital content all together I think we reached 2,7 million people. It was, you know, big. So then we oh gosh, once we had it all, we had to get it written, legaled, we also had to approach the man himself, he threatened legal action, so then we organised a whole bunch of people that would come to court too that wouldn’t go on camera that would support the evidence given by the women. And then when we had written and produced it all I had to check it all for accuracy. Because when you are doing multiplatform, it is just crazy how many pieces of content you do and how much has to be checked. Digital pieces all had to be checked by legal, I had to be sure they were checked, every Facebook post had to be checked, we did three short-form videos that all had to be checked, we did radio news, again that all had to be checked, we wrote RVO’s for the news network, we did 7 pm newsstories, 7:30, then the next day we did another digital piece, more radio, more RVO’s. So my job really was to make sure that again everything was produced as well as possible and that there were no mistakes across the platforms.
So you were communicating with everyone, available for everyone with questions?
101 And that is the most dangerous part of an investigation is not the actual investigation, it’s how the other part of the other part news division in the ABC reports on it. You can be really really careful but if somebody on radio says the wrong thing than they can sue the ABC.
Right, so do you all get together to talk about these kind of things? Especially when it’s such a touchy subject. It’s really hard to talk to everyone, because there is just so many people. Generally what we do, we deal with the planning desk, who then puts out instructions. We prepare the pieces of content for everybody and we make the TV, make the radio, produce the digital and we give it to the various areas who then obviously need to look at it themselves, but we always out on it ‘this has been checken by legal, if you want to make any changes, come back to us or here are the names of the lawyers to check anything with. So yea, it’s really complicated.
Yes, it sounds very complicated. So on a day to day basis how many people were so speaking to on average, were you mostly behind the computer, were you walking around? Depends on the day when we were in the research phase it was mostly the reporters and the people in the story, because I was helping the research I was helping to make phone calls. So women who worked with him, we had a Google drive where all of our notes were stored and shared so then when we got to the production phase I was communicating with the 7:30 program, because the TV was going there, I was communicating with Stephen because of the digital and he was then talking to his own team about that, and also with Brisbane because they are the digital publishers. Our digital team is based in Brisbane, so I talked to them, talked to the lawyers and also to the Fairfax editors, the Sydney Morning Herald editors, because we had to make sure our pieces were very similar because if we were going to get sued we would both get sued. So even though they were treated quite differently, looked quite different, we had to be on the same page. There was one sensitive thing that we couldn’t get wrong, also with them too we swapped materials. I love co-productions for that reason, they are a newspaper and they love video for their website because they can put adds at the front of it. We gave them a little bit of our video and we had no stills, no still photographs of Don Burke at the time, so they gave us their stills. So it’s a story that would have cost us a lot more money if we would have each done it separately and it would have taken a lot longer. But we did it together.
That’s really interesting because are they usually rivalling? We used to. We are doing a lot more co-productions now. We have discovered, I have done a lot with Fairfax, with The Age, this is my first one with the Herald, but I have done the Australian. And everyone at the beginning was really suspicious because of the rivalry, but we have found it doesn’t chop your audience in half it actually amplifies it. Because it becomes the only story in town. The Herald I think is the biggest website in Australia and we are the second biggest. So if we are putting all of this effort into this story, then anything else gets forgotten.
102 So instead of halving our audience it doubles it. Our first piece I think it hit about 400.000 which is very good for us, and for them it hit a bit more than that.
I will get back to this, but was it first produces online or on radio or television? Our first thing was online.
On the website or on Social media or both? On both. So we didn’t go out on social before we published it on the website, mainly because of legal issues. So online we had a written piece that Stephen subbed for us, we didn’t need a lot of help from the DSI team because it didn’t need interactives. I asked Stephen’s advice and he said look this is such a strong story you don’t need too much, just write it really well and have good photos and you’ll be fine. But the DSI team did the social strategy, they cut one of the social media videos, we cut the other two. So yea, went out online I think at midnight, with the first bit of social as well, then morning radio, and evening television. Because for us the morning is stronger for digital and for newspapers, but the evening is where all our television is. So what we did was we put a little bit of video out, we had the whole story in the digital space, but not all of our video. We used sort of teaser videos through the day, just to get people interested in the main story.
And how do you experience having these different tasks? Uhm…I really like it. I like – the two parts I like are the digital and I like the long form television. I don’t really like churning all of these other little bits, the radio and News 24, because its just churning the same content in bite-size pieces. I just get more worried because of the sensitivity of the kind of work that I do, I get worried that we’ll make a mistake somewhere in the process. And it is also a bit annoying that the outlets themselves within the ABC can’t do it themselves because it’s just writing two paragraphs of radio-copy. So our reporter, they wanted her on the Morning news to talk about the story and News Breakfast came to us and said can you write us an introduction and three questions for your reporter. And I was just thinking, why can’t you do it yourself. She is on your show, why don’t you write your own questions. It is a lot of work.
So what is left for them? It is just us, and they say it is because they don’t want to make a mistake, that it is better to come from us, but it’s actually… a lot of work. When I say a lot of work – even though we are really ready and organised – the Sun went out on the Monday morning and I think on the Sunday night we worked till midnight and we were back here at 5, here till 11 pm Monday night, back here at 5 again till 11 the following night. And it is mostly because of these little bits and pieces that everyone around the network wants, so yea. I think that’s the new world.
I believe it’s part of it. And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you do?
103 Pfff…uhm. I think really strong editorial skills firstly, and I’m interested in – there’s a lot of investigative units, like at the New York Times and those places that have a real mix of people who are kind or really experience who have that deep editorial skill and young people that can bring innovation – and that’s why I’m quite excited about this role. I think to run a kind of investigative unit you need very strong editorial skills, very strong media knowledge, media law knowledge, strategic knowledge about how to investigate a story, where to find the information, when you go to the target of your investigation, how you deal with legal threats and when to take them seriously and when not to, how to refer up to the management at the ABC. I think you need to be quite calm, open minded, I think particularly now that we are doing so much multiplatform, I am really excited about learning. Learning from the really young ones actually about different ways of producing a story. I am a very experiences television produces but I am very excited to learn more in the digital space. And also, you know, you need to train people because nobody – I have just advertised now – and there is no single applicant who has all the skills they need to be that journalist.
It is a hard position to fill But, a lot of people have applied, so it is a matter of seeing people with the potential to learn the things. So if they come from newspapers they might have great investigative skills, and good writing skills, but they’ve never done any broadcast, it is a completely different way of writing. Completely different way of interviewing, a completely different way of using your voice.
So they all have to be on television as well, as a presenter? As a reporter, yes. So we get them from TV and train them in writing or usually they come from newspapers and we train them in broadcast. ABC is tilting to digital, but some of our big broadcast still get a much bigger audience than a piece of digital content would get. So you know, a piece of digital content is doing really really well if it gets over a 100.000 right? Our primetime television programs get close to a million.
So it is still very much TV here… It is changing, the audiences are declining and our digital audiences are growing a little bit. Not as much as we’d like. We are still number two, but really would like to be number one. But you know, at the moment we haven’t completely tipped digital. And I don’t think we can until, you know, while you still have a Four Corners that can start a royal commission, or can start an inquiry, or bring down a government because of the massive impact that it has. You can’t tilt completely. There are other people who only do digital in this building, but before big investigations I have been told I cant just do them for digital if it’s a big thing.
Yes, so you have worked together with a lot of different team, so you have already answered that one. Do you generally work alone or with colleagues on a day to day basis? Is there anyone assisting you in your role, are you working with anyone in particular?
104 Well there are two supervising producers, Stephen Hutcheon is one and there will be a supervising producer for the investigative team so they’ll be the ones I will primarily work with. But also there is the journalists themselves.
Do you ever contact the head of the ABC or anything? Uhm. Head of news mostly. I have a boss: head of long-form and investigative that is John Lyons, and he is in charge of my team and all of our long-form programs like Four Corners, Australian Story, 7:30, radio and current affairs, so he is my boss and above him is the head of news and I have quite a bit to do with him. Sometimes with the managing director depending on if it’s a really delicate story. When I was at 7:30 we produced a story of some people accusing cardinal George Pell, he is a big cardinal in Australia and he is now also second in charge in the Vatican, of sexual abuse and he was then discharged after our story, so that one went all the way to the managing director.
Do you always meet them here at the office, at the ABC? Yes. Not contacts, I will meet them somewhere else.
Is there a reason for that? Uhm, I find people feel intimidated by this place. If they are a contact sometimes they don’t want anyone to know they are talking to journalists. And I like them to feel a little bit more relaxed. I always find and this is I think one of the things that old-school does better than new-school, everyone does everything by e-mail and to do investigative journalism there is nothing like face-to-face. And there is nothing like face-to-face where they feel comfortable. So, I always try to teach the young ones. Have you get onto that person? Ah I’ve sent him a message on Facebook. And I say to them: if I got a message from a strange person on Facebook I’d just ignore it. There is no reason for them to answer you. If someone turns up at your door, most people aren’t rude and invite you in and at least have a conversation with you.
How many hours would you say you work a week? In this job, depends on the week. Depends on if we have a story out or not. Somewhere between 40 and 60. A normal week is about 40, a busy week about 60. When I was running 7:30 it was about 75.
How many stories do you do a week or a month? Is there an average? Well we are not going yet, but I would want a story from each reporter every couple of weeks, unless it’s a massive investigation that goes for months and months. It usually takes a couple of weeks.
And when a production comes together and you want to do it on television as well, do you fit it into one of the existing programs or will there be a different outlet? Both. And that’s where the kind of, this is where it gets really interesting, team coming together and pulling apart, which I think again apart from outside production companies, that’s how things I think really work. So we, a lot of them
105 will be geared towards existing programs, particularly if you don’t have a lot of time because to get up a podcast or documentary or something like that you need to pitch, you need to have a commission, you need to build a budget around that, you need to build a team around it. At the moment a reporter on my team is working on a documentary proposal, she has been asked by the television division to hand in a proposal and if that happens there will also be news coverage and lots of digital coverage, but it’s a doco proposal, same with my digital producer who is also writing one and they have until Christmas to come up with a documentary proposal each. But mainly particularly if its something that needs to be reported on reasonably quickly it’s easier to do it with the current affairs shows, because what we can do is – let’s just say okay we have done the research, we can do this great interactive for digital, but there is actually some really good vision here some gradient views, whatever, we think it would make a terrific Four Corners let’s say, I go to Sally and say, look: here’s what we are doing, we think we can make it work for 45 minutes. Then she brings her production team to help us to make the television. So she’ll bring a producer and a researcher on to work with them to make the TV and still work with our team to do the digital. Sounds really complicated, even when I am talking about it I think pfiew!
Yes it is! So I guess you don’t have any other jobs on the side? Just being a mother.
Yes and that’s a job in itself. What do you consider free time? Any committed journalist usually spends their free time somehow associated with what they do, so I watch a lot of documentaries, a lot of Netflix series, a lot of film, I read a lot. Apart from spending time with my kids and doing housework, that’s really what I do. And you know, going to the beach and all that kind of stuff, but really, and every journalist I know is the same, because you can’t really be switched off these days.
And how many hours of free time would you consider you have in a week? That’s not including looking after my children and taking care of the house I presume?
It’s whatever you call free time. Ahh if I am not going to include those, than maybe about 15 hours.
And do you manage to earn a living from doing this? Yes.
How exactly? I get paid a wage by the ABC.
And that is enough to comfortably get by? These days it is, when I was younger it wasn’t.
106 Right okay. What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? Uhm. I think the most difficult is that really experienced journalists don’t really have the skills to, yet, for the media landscape that we are in, but the young ones that have digital and social skills to a high level, don’t have the editorial skills.
So there is a huge gap. There is a big gap. And it’s a really really monsterous gap when you have them working together because with the senior ones they get a bit frustrated at the kind of explaining that they have to do about the editorial and legal issues and the sort of checking they have to do around all of that. And I think the young ones get really frustrated about the seniors not getting it and that they are resistant to change. And I think for me, you know, when we hire our digital journalists into these teams I don’t like the way that digital journalists and producers have only been involved in the production and not the journalism. So I have been a television producer all my life, I haven’t been a reporter, because I don’t want to be on camera. But I was involved with the reporting of the journalism, making research calls, finding stuff out, I have won a number of journalism awards for what I brought to the table journalisticly. I didn’t just direct in the field, and sit in the edit suite, I did all that too, but I also did the journalism. And what I want to do is try and help the digital journalists get much better editorially, and I think every media organisation has the same problem. I was talking to the editor of the Australian New York Times, asking do you know any digital journalists. And he goes: what type do you need? I said: Someone who is really innovative, but someone who is also really really good editorially. And he said: ahhh it’s so hard.
Where do you work most and how much time do you spend there? Here at the office mostly, and at home. I make phone calls at home in the evenings.
And how do you get to your main workspace? How do you get to the ABC? Train or bus or walk.
How would you describe your main workspace? Noisy. I don’t like this workspace, I am looking forward to moving upstairs.
Is it different upstairs? It is a little bit better. Not all in a row. It is fine if you are a news journo, if you are someone who is just cutting up vision and you can put headphones on that’s fine, but for investigative work: you are talking to people on the phone, you know, we were talking to women who had been raped and sexually assaulted and all that stuff and you can hear people in the background yayayaaa – you know partying or chatting about lunch or Friday night drinks. We used to have, when I was at 7:30, I used to have an office, and there are no offices at the ABC anymore which is fine, but I just think this environment doesn’t recognise that different people do different kinds of work.
107 Do you have any silent rooms or anything? These kind of things? Yeah. I’m always in here, I have my laptop in here.
Okay haha you have claimed this as your office. What kind of facilities do you have in your workspace? Wifi, kitchens, pretty much everything you need.
But you don’t have a café. We have the take-away coffee with sandwiches just there in the foyer. We used to have a proper canteen, but we don’t anymore. Which is a shame, because that was actually a nice place to meet contacts, because it was a bit more relaxing. You can’t bring people in here, especially if they have never had anything to do with television you think about just your ordinary person. They get intimidated. Anyway, they are saving money.
What kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential? A telephone and a laptop. I have one of those, and a bit of quiet space.
What kind of hard- and software do you use in the workspace? E-mail obviously, webbrowsers, we use Aurora which is the editing system that News uses, that is where our vision is stored. We use Inews, which is where we write our scripts and various bits of content, that is where our wires is. We use, what else, I use Core, to check the digital content. Uhm, I can use Premier Pro to cut little videos with. I don’t really use Datarep or anything. Oh gosh… Skype? The Ipod facilities, I use Telegram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. Depends: different people like to communicate in different ways, so we use most of the social platform. I use LinkedIn a lot to find people, uhm… loads.
And do you use all of those when you work from home too? Yes.
How important are these technologies in your work? Oh very. I remember I was a journalist before we had the internet. And no e-mail. We used fax and phone.
And this has made it easier? Yes. Ah absolutely, it has made it much easier to find people and much easier to set things up and that sort of thing but it has also made it unnecessarily busier. So…you know people who CC you on things that you don’t need to be CCed on. Bad hygiene. I call it bad e-mail hygiene.
I wrote an article on that once. Did you? You know there is only two reasons why people CC you. One is to boast about how fabulous they are: ‘I’m doing this and I just need everyone to know about it’, or two: if they are ass covering and they are worried about not including enough people. So I get, because I am a manager I get loads. I get hundreds of e-mails a day.
108
And what do people wear in your workspace? Oh anywhere from suits to casual clothing.
You can wear anything basically? Yes.
And do you feel comfortable in that environment? Yes. I think so, I like to create a positive workspace, so…
Well..do you share your workspace with others? Well obviously. Yea.
What kind of support is available in your workspace? For me or for anyone?
Both. We have IT support. It depends on which outlet we are producing for, some are more supportive than others. Some are more demanding than others. When you are a multidisciplinary team then you are working with a whole bunch of people and some are more supportive than others. The sort of general IT support, is fine somewhere like here. So yea, and I have a manager who is very busy, so I mostly do it myself and only go see him if I need to.
And then you’ve got legal Legal yes. A fantastic legal team, that is still in-house. A lot of people have gone to outside council, but its actually in the long run cheaper to have your own in house lawyers. They are excellent.
How many lawyers do you have? It is hard to say because they do different things. So we have about half a dozen pre-publication lawyers, but we also have litigation if we have to go to court. So at the moment, this year I’ve had seven court cases. So that is quite stressful and quite a lot of work.
Is it all fully their responsibility or do you have to come to court? Yea, well the information all comes from us. So at the moment for example that cardinal that we did the story on, his committal hearing is early in the new year. On the criminal charges the reporter of the story will be one of the witnesses. So they have come, the defense has come to us with all their material relating the story, so we have to try to have some of than exempted and we have to, she needs obviously to be prepared for her testimony and all that kind of stuff. So yea that is quite a lot of work. And we have editorial as well, editorial policies manager and then there is one that goes all the way to the managing director. So that is to make sure that we uphold the ABC charter about impartiality and fairness and all that kind of stuff.
109 And what would you like to change, if anything, about your workspace? Uhm. Sometimes I think I would like to go five years into the future.
To when the transition has been made? Yes. I think the most difficult part of where we are now is that it is in such a transition and for some people, that can be really scary and I think – one of the things I’m trying to tell people is look: change is constant, don’t just think it is changing now and then one day you will get to where it stops changing. You just have to get comfortable with change and I think that’s a very difficult thing, you know, because there are lots of people who are very very good at what they do and who are being told suddenly actually the way you have been doing things, you have to change that. And what you want to do with people who aren’t very good or who are stubborn or whatever, that is fine, they may need to go, but the people who are excellent at what they do, you do want to bring them with you and you do want to help them. And a lot of that is, you know, it’s about putting the right people around them, it’s about mixing and matching skills and constantly thinking about well who or what team should I put on this story so that we are not ripping them apart, but we are kind of helping the story. So I think I probably find really the toughest, the personal, the managerial side of the job, not the editorial side. The editorial side is much easier.
So practically what would you like to change in that respect? I think I would like there to be more training and more discussion all the time. When you are changing something you don’t just tell people once, you tell them again and again and again and again. And you give them a sort of a good, a reason, why they should do this – other than: it’s going to be more work for you. So I think, I remember when I was at 7:30 and I was trying to get my reporters to be much more engaged on social media and I was saying to them look: you know, one day the 7:30 program won’t exist, but if you as an individual can build a name for yourself, as a journalist with this particular expertise or this particular knowledge, that will transcend the program. And I think a few people got it and that was great, and then some people suddenly then thought ‘oh they are doing that, and it is really working for them, I might do that too’, but I think it needs to constantly be a positive reinforcement and constant training, training, training.
Training from outside or training from you or…? Both. On the job.
Do they get trained on the job right now? Yes. We do we have investigative training, we have CMS training, editing training, but what tends to happen is they do it once a year and 10 people will go.
Ah it’s voluntary. Yes. And then, they don’t use it, so they forget it.
If it is not part of their daily practices then it’s hard to… Exactly, and they really need to be targeted and focussed on what it is they are
110 doing to help them reach their next level. And I mean we do that day to day in the workplace but there are some things that formal training really helps you with, you know. Why did you start working as an editor? In this job or originally?
I think originally would be interesting. I started just in normal television, commercial television and then I’ve always wanted to be an investigative journalist, I love investigative journalism and I loved the power that television had to not just break a story but to make people feel emotion and I still think, and it’s changing, but I still think there is nothing like that power. And then, as I progressed through the producing, I liked the challenge of actually running a team, I think that is a really interesting challenge, mostly a managing challenge. To make people work together. I like seeing people achieve something that they didn’t think they could achieve at the beginning. You know, it is really quite fun. The woman who just did the Don Burke story, I don’t think she thought she could do it at the beginning and she really did a fantastic job. That is really pleasing.
And has your motivation changed over time? Yes, I think uhm. Yes. Because I always wanted to be the best television producer and EP I could be and now, even though I have been doing digital for a while, in terms of all the written pieces and social media pieces that accompany the television pieces, I am really really interested in learning, and looking into commissioning for digital that might end up on television. Like I really want to do a crowd sourced investigation, that is my big ambition for the next year. So yea.
And what does that mean for your daily work, if anything? It means that I have to change the way I think about a story, really. For television, it is amazing how many stories I throw away on 7:30 and Four Corners because I can’t find good pictures. I’ve got to think differently and engage much more with some of the DSI team people and get them to challenge my way of thinking about a story.
Okay. And what are your professional goals? Where would you like to go next? Uhm, I don’t ever think about where I’d like to go, I just take the next opportunity that comes along. I think I still want to, whatever I am doing, be involved with content and stories and investigations, I don’t think I would ever want to do purely management. It’s what make me happy, finding stuff out.
And what are the most important values that inform your work? Uhm. Fearlessness, I think a lot of people actually are not doing journalism, they are just reporting on other people’s journalism. Curiosity, uhm, compassion and accuracy. You’ve got to be accurate.
111 Do you feel your work lives up to these values? Uhm, we try to be. I don’t think we are always as fearless as I would like to be. When you work with someone like Four Corners, you do have to be fearless. You look at people like Sarah Ferguson and Maldramat Mahana and Lisa Jackson and Chris Masters. You know, these are people who, Chris was 10 years through the courts of being sued and he had people trying to kill him and you know.. and I think we are in a very very fortunate positions to be journalists and the public has the right to expect a lot from us. Which is really to get to the truth and I think there are an awful lot of people who are interested in being on television or having a by-line or, and I am not saying everybody needs to investigative journalism, I know some people like to do sport or entertainment or whatever, but I think whatever you do, given you have such a responsibility you are so lucky to have some of these jobs, I think you need to do it absolutely to the very best of your ability and without fear. That is just…and organisations are really becoming corporatized, even the word ‘content’. I hate it! Hate it! It is journalism, it is stories, content is just someone who gives me something and I put it in there, you know?
And does your work make you happy? Yes, mostly.
What makes you happy? Finding something out that nobody else has found out makes me happy and also going and meeting people. When I finished school all I ever wanted was a job in which I didn’t have to do the same thing every single day, and I think we are so fortunate because one day we can be with the prime minister, the next day with a family who has lost everything. So for me, that makes me happy. This ability to be able to just go into any area of life. Because if you call yourself a journalist, you can just walk in anywhere. It’s an extraordinary privilege, I think and people should always remember that.
Yes, for sure. Do you ever get angry in your work? Uhm. Not angry, frustrated yes.
What makes you frustrated? Uhhh. Mostly if I can’t do something. If there are roadblocks to something. If we, when we had all those millions of pieces of content and you know somebody asks you fore more, write us an introduction and some questions and you just think: well what do you do?! Things like that, sort of little things that are frustrating, technical roadblocks, or in a corporation like the ABC it is quite hard sometimes to get things done quickly. When I first started here somebody told me: if you want things done, find an ally and crash through. And sometimes, you know, we are trying to set up a secure drop, so that people can contact us securely. So I started that process when I was on the National Reporting Team a few years ago. When I came back here, three year later, I go: where is it? And it has gone around and around in the building, sitting on all these people’s desks and it still hasn’t happened. And in the meantime Washington’s Post has got it, New York Times
112 has got it, Al Jazeera has got it and so it took me a week to find whose desk it was sitting on and what the holdup was and then we had another meeting and then we had another meeting and then I get an email that says it’s going to take 12 to 18 months to do it. So that kind of thing makes me really frustrated. And then we talked to a technical person who said you know I can do it in a week but it’s more about the prioritisation about everything else that is going on in the ABC. And I get that, I understand that, but it’s very frustrating.
I can imagine. And is there anything that scares you in what is happening in your field of work? That people are not going to invest in investigative journalism. I think that is actually the scariest thing of all. It’s expensive, it takes time and I see more and more people just not doing it. And sometimes I will look on all the news stories on my feed an everybody is reporting the same story. You can look in a Swedisch paper or a Dutch paper, and everyone is reporting what Trump did on Twitter. Which is fine, presidency is remarkable and all that, but actually what Trump does on Twitter is really to distract you from all the bad shit he is doing. And I do worry that we are just becoming more and more in the business of being distracted.
What is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing? To stop that happening.
Which communities would you say you belong to? You mean in terms of social media communities or in general like Australian, Italian, migrant, mother, an investigative journalist, and a woman in a traditionally male workplace environment, and yea.
Do you have memberships to any trade unions? Yes. The journalist union.
Do you ever use it for anything? Yea, they run seminars so I just went to their storyology conference they do every year. They also run awards, so I go to those, uhm, they negotiate our pay and pay agreements as well, so they come and talk to us to see how the negotiations are going.
How useful are these professional communities to you? Uhm, you mean the union? It is not too bad, it’s good in terms of. The storyology conference is good in that it brings, it’s all about the changing media landscape and it brings people from all around the world together, so the last one had the senior person from Facebook who was quite interesting and an amazing woman, who I knew from when she was a Reuters reporter Marissa who runs this extraordinary news site in the Philippines that keeps getting into trouble with Duterte and it is very much a kind of community focussed site, and some other investigative journalists from around the world and that was really interesting. About the future of investigative journalism around the world, and how they are
113 trying to reach new audiences and… so the professional development stuff is really good, uhm yea.
Is there any community you would like to belong to and don’t yet? There is a women in media group that I would kind of like – that are not really doing very much. I have been thinking about actually trying to get involved and reenergising it a little bit, because I think there is still quite a lot of work to be done on women in media. Not so much numbers of journalists, like that has changed a lot over time. But women in management in media, I think there are still not very many of them.
What about the pay, is it equal? The pay is equal here. Depends on where you are. When I was at channel 7, all the female reporters were sacked when they were 35, none of the men were, but all of the women were.
Because they were going on maternity leave and stuff? Because they are too old to be on television in the view of Channel 7. So that has changed a bit, but not very much. I mean if you look at commercial television, there are very few older women for example and very few in management. All the commercial television is run by men. In fact, most of our news division, most of our senior management are male as well. And I really think. Like anything it does better when there is a 50/50 mix of genders. And for some reason, I don’t know what happens to them, there’s lots of women in the lower levels, I don’t know what happens to them. Yea, so there are a couple of women who I am personally mentoring here, who are sort of younger in their 30s and trying to kind of help them navigate through. But I was thinking I could do more, in a more structured way and that I would like to get other senior women around. Because I look around and I think, ohh who’s gonna do my job when I leave? Who is going to do Four Corners, so…
Yes, interesting. Who do you see as your main competitor? Depends on where. The other people who do really good investigative journalism in Australia are mainly Fairfax and a bit the Guardian and Buzzfeed is slowly coming into the game, and a little bit the Telegraph and the Australian but not as much as Fairfax, they do a lot more investigative journalism.
So there is more investigative journalism in television you would say? These day yes. Because 60 minutes, have gone a bit more tabloid I would say and same with Channel 7. So the ABC really is the only one doing investigative journalism on television, in the digital space it is Fairfax mostly I would say and a little bit the Telegraph and the Australian. So they would be our competitors in the digital space, in TV I don’t think we have got any.
Has this changed? Do you have new competitors? The ABC does generally, but not…our competitors, depends on what you mean. So investigative journalism it hasn’t changed, what really really changed things for
114 the ABC was the entry of Netflix in Australia a year ago. So up until then, our broadcast platforms were doing really well and newspapers were declining for quite some time. Whats happening in media is huge audiences for digital, but advertising revenue is much lower than it used to be in newspapers, so newspapers are kind of having to downsize a lot. Broadcast was fine, television was fine, no problem whatsoever. So we thought, hmmm okay. And then Netflix came in, and that has just completely…I think so far has shaved 10% of our audience. And I get it, I mean, that’s what I do. I don’t watch television anymore.
So they really watched real time television, they didn’t watch it afterwards on the Internet. Can you rewatch the episodes and everything? Yes we have ABC Iview, it is terrible. I know the guy who designed it and it is about 90 years old. So one of the priorities for the network is a redesign of the network and it’s the most important thing they’ve got to do. Like, it has no recommendation engine at the moment. So for programs like for example Four Corners, that’s it’s future to turn itself into some sort of documentary style video on demand proposition.
That’s interesting. Who are your audiences? Well you know, it depends on… we are mainstream outlet. Depends on what you are looking at. So the audiences for broadcast are quite old. 50 plus. They tend to be about the same gender-wise, about 50/50 for news and current affairs. Our digital audience is younger. Even on a program, like when I worked at 7:30, so the broadcast audience was older, but for our social media content the same stories were reaching a much younger demographic. 20-35 was our biggest, not super young, not 16, and really eschewed female. Really female, so that was interesting in that it taught – we sort of started eschewing our social media a little bit more to that audience, which is a big audience. So yea depends.
And is that also the intended audience of the DSI? No, I think their idea is essentially to reach audiences that wouldn’t come to the ABC normally. Obviously younger. So interestingly with our Don Burke story, the same audience that normally would have watched 7:30, would have watched it but in terms of the digital audience and Michael Workman, who does all the social stuff, he has some stats that I am sure Stephen can send you if you want them. So 70% of the people who went to that piece were not usual ABC audience.
So it worked! How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? Uhm. Firstly, in a number of ways. Starting at the top, Stephen is – even though he has been in newspapers for a long time, he was the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald – so he is a very experienced editor, and he moved to digital quite early in the late 90’s. So he is almost like a native, even though he is…Firstly, having someone with that experience to help us with our writing is a start, because a lot of our content on the ABC, because they are all broadcast journalists who are writing it, I don’t think their writing is all that good and I think that needs a lot of work. Also, the innovation in terms of the story treatment. They did a really great piece on – Four Corners did a piece on the paradise papers which the DSI had a
115 bit to do with a couple of the pieces – the one that was most interesting to me was, they had some information on how little tax Nike pays. So the DSI team basically decided to tell that through the life of a shoe. So the pretty dry part of the television program, the way they did it in the digital space kind of really brought it to life. Here is your shoe, it cost a hundred dollards, 30 dollars goes here, 40 dollars goes here, how much goes in tax: oh this little tiny bit over here. And that did really well. So I think just the kind of approach that they have which is the digital as their primary platform. Four Corners didn’t do much with the Nike thing, because they didn’t have anybody talking, didn’t have access to the factories, didn’t have anything other than this little bit of information. So the digital team was actually able to fully flash that out into a great interactive. Their ways of thinking I guess, they are kind of younger and they are digital natives and they really think about, they don’t bring the kind of – some of the conventions that I suppose people here have – and also the different types of expertise. Having developers I think is amazing for us, because we haven’t had developers before. I mean we have in other parts of the ABC to crack our CMS. But even things like auto-rolling our video we haven’t been able to do, so that’s been really good. And having the graphics capacity has been really good as well. So yea, they are an exciting new team. The challenge has been integrating them with our really also exciting traditional journalists.
What do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? Firstly, you’d have to actually grab someone’s attention because they are not sitting at home as a force of habit. So whatever the form is, digital…I mean, sometimes people say digital, what do you mean by digital?: do you mean a platform-based, do you mean social media, do you mean video on demand? That’s all digital. Do you mean an Instagram story? Look the key thing is find the audience where they are, you have to go and find them rather than having them sit there as your captive audience, you have to capture their attention and you have to try and keep it. And that is actually the biggest challenge. It is engagement rather than pageviews. If I have a Four Corners and you watch 35 second of it. It doesn’t matter if 45 million people watch 45 second of it. It’s engagement and keeping them through.
And do you think the ABC has a better position then other digital start-ups, because you have got the big name backing you up? We have also got deeper content. Look it’s a challenge, and that is part of the DSI’s challenge is the engagement, not just about clicks its about how long can you keep people on the page and I think their numbers on that Burke story was about 7 minutes on the page, which is pretty amazing. If you get to 4, is fantastic. With our videos we are still struggling to keep people until the end, with our 7:30 social videos we had a target of over 30% engagement, that means over 30% of the people reaching the end. That is pretty tough to get to. Look at all those Al Jazeera videos that get 4 million views, but I would love to see their engagement numbers because I had a look at them when they’ve shown them to us and its nothing. And you know, for journalism survive, it’s got to be more than people doing that.
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How do you plan to attract new audiences? Again I suppose its such a nebulous, such a big question. It’s about making original content, about reaching them where they are, it’s about trying to make it engaging, looking at everything from you know potentially from how you are going to send them from one piece of your content to another.
Do you mean on different platforms also? Yes, on different platforms or even around the platform. So yea.
Last one, a biggie. What do you see as the most fundamental challenge for the field of journalism? I think it’s the, for me because I am not a hundred millions clicks person, I think we need to sort of keep fundamental in that we are the fourth estate, we have to question the government, the state, you know we have a public duty. The money that is needed to do that and the increasing losses of revenue in all the places that are supposed to do that. I mean, I am not that anxious about new players in the market you know, I get depressed about some of the new players in the market, because all they do is write analysis. Which is fine, I like good analysis it’s great, but how much analysis can we have if there’s no one actually gathering news if there is nobody the in courtrooms, ringing the police, you know. That’s what I’m scared of, that we are all just going to become these echo-chambers of each other, all talking to each other about the same three stories a day and that no one is going to have any money to, in each country and each community, go: what’s going on here. And one of the things that I really notices in my time is the death of localism, you know, the Internet is such a global thing, which is fantastic, you can send news from all over the world. But what happens to the communities where their river is poisoned and their children are sickm you know? And it is really really important. Who is covering that? Who has got the resources to invest in something like that, which is actually the fundamentals of journalism. And I feel like often, as I said and I feel like I keep repeating myself, we just all kind of everyone in the world is pining about what Donald Trump has done, which is fine, but we just also have to remember our obligation to the public and the communities. Because we really ought to be out there, because I think otherwise we will lose them. We will lose them as an audience, we will lose them as people who trust us, as champions for them. Thank you very much!! Alright, I hope that was useful.
Do you have anything else to add or any questions? Not really. I’d be interested to sort of know at some point, I’d be interested to find out from your research as well. I’d be interested to read your thesis and see what else you find out and also what might be happening in Holland that I should know about and people I should talk to.
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Interview Stephen Hutcheon
Let’s start with you job title, what’s you job title? My job title is supervising producer.
And how long have you been doing this for? For almost exactly 6 months.
All right and what were you doing before this? I was the digital editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and acting editor, and so I had been there for 35 years and unfortunately…so Sydney Morning Herald is one of Australia’s leading newspapers and unfortunately there has been a round of redundancies, Americans call them buy-outs. So uhh..the terms of these buy-outs are quite generous, so when you get to a certain age its quite appealing to take one of these even though there is a possibility of, you know, maybe not finding the same work afterwards and things like that. But, uhh, I decided for a number of reasons that I should take it this year. So I was hoping to go into semi-retirement, do some fun projects on the side but them Kim approached me just before I left. And she says would I like this opportunity to head up this team, and uhm, so I thought what do I have to lose? I have known Kim for a long time I used to be her boss and we’ve kept in loose contact over the years. I saw her in Washington about three years ago, but it sounded like a good you and I know a lot of people at the ABC and then Jack, Inga, and Nathanael all come from Fairfax. Jack and Inga I have all worked with quite closely at Fairfax at the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), so it was a pretty easy decision to come. Even though the pay was somewhat less than I was on, but as I was planning semi-retirement it was a bonus anyway. So that’s how I came here.
Nice, just out of curiosity, were you her boss at the SMH? Yes I was.
Interesting. What is the DSI’s mission? Well I guess it is multidimensional, but it is to create compelling digital longer form content. But that can have a variety of things, I guess it’s to use model storytelling techniques to try and steer away from conventional video-text-pictures kind of treatment. Uhm and what it’s not meant to be is just a means of presentation. I think this is a key part that Kim insisted, and it took me a little while to get my head around it, but I understand that you know what we didn’t want to do was right at the end of the day for someone to come and say ahh we’ve got all this stuff could you make it look beautiful? And the team that she’s hired have a multiplicity of skills and lend themselves to being involved from a
118 very early stage of the story development. So that example that I showed you today, the cult thing, came from a suggestion from someone. How do we do this? And then it was my suggestion, why don’t we make it an illustrated article that is quite different from the piece that will go on air tonight? So generally the ABC has been: ‘here’s a TV piece, let’s turn it into a text piece and then use the text piece to point out: watch the show tonight.’ Now I don’t believe that works. I believe that has very little result. TV is a habit and people watch it, I mean there may be a bit of buzz sometimes created online, but generally speaking for 90% of the cases it’s completely almost a different kind of audience. So it does lend itself to treating the online as something different, as something more natively mobile in particular. Because roughly half, more than half if you count Apple News and the ABC has an app, plus the mobile web, more than half of the audience comes through a mobile device. So you want to really craft an experience that is really tailor made for the app and not just a text facsimile of what is on TV.
Right, so it is all on the ABC application? Yes, there’s an app, but the irony is the app is terrible. Many of the fancy elements we create for mobile web, do not render on the app.
Really? So they would have to access through the website? Yes, often you will get, one of the pieces that we do on the website, say for an interactive chart or something there will be a line or something that says: ‘see the website for full experience’, so you are supposed to click there and it will lead you to the website. Of course most people will just give up. The thing is, the app provides in general about 30% of the traffic of any online story, it’s quite a bit, but the app is generally an older demographic of user who either don’t care or don’t know about the rich experience on the mobile web and they are quite comfortable in general with seeing stories on the app. It is much more uhm, it’s a much smaller subset of the overall number of stories and you can tell there is a completely different user experience from the app to the mobile web. So the classic case is the story that might have up to 5 minutes of engagement on the mobile web, will have sub 1 minute on the app, because people are just sort of flicking through and they are not really engaging with the content as much. And I put that down to a demographic thing. The mobile web is obviously where you are able to share it on Social and it to be found on social, so we try to really tailor our work to work best on mobile web and then do what we can to make it work better on the app. But it is never perfect on the app.
How does the DSI fit into the ABC’s innovation history? Well Jo told you probably a bit more about that because she has been here longer. Her husband has been head of innovation here for a long time, I used to be an innovation leader at the SMH. But I think where we fit in is that, there has been a bigger realisation in recent years that for the ABC to grow its audience and meet its charter obligations, the best place to do that in is the web because uhm appointment radio and appointment TV audiences are either static or more likely slipping. This is exactly the same with newspapers, right, so their funding and again I am not an expert on ABC politics, but the funding is linked obviously to
119 reaching a broad audience of Australians, if you don’t then you may have problems getting the funding you need from the government. I mean the trend in recent years especially with a more conservative government is to cut funding to the ABC because they feel it caters much to the left city elite. So I think with the realisation of the web as a potential growth engine, the ABC started looking more into bespoke digital skills. Now this happened first I believe with Matt Liddy team in Brisbane and they’ve got a similar name to ours. They have a team of data journalists and developers and designers and things like that. So they really set off this momentum to create mobile friendly bespoke content and where I understand, but you will get more of this from Kim, but there was a big demand from some of the current affairs programs to get a slice of this action, this assistance. But Brisbane, for whatever reason, were not always able to give that care and attention to them, probably because like us they want to create their own content as well. And the geographic distance also made it more problematic, so the idea was hatched I don’t know say a year ago or whatever for our team to start in Sydney and to do a very similar job to the team in Melbourne [Brisbane red.], but particularly to work more closely with the current affairs programs. So that’s what we have been doing these six months since we came on board and that’s how we fit in.
When will the mission of the DSI be successful? We certainly have a set of benchmarks for everything we do and apart from one piece, pretty much every time we have exceeded the benchmark. They both reach traffic, page impressions, social benchmarks and Michael will be good to talk about that about, he has more of the detail. But we have done extremely well, but what I don’t know, and no one ever told me is is there a benchmark on output, on quantity of pieces? Now, it is even in my old job, it is very hard to mandate you must do X amount of pieces a year because we can quite easily do that, but it might not be up to the standard you might expect, so because of a combination of factors including the complexity of the content management system, these projects that we work on take some time. They typically take some 2 to 4 weeks of development work, to make things happen and that may or may bot include some pre-work on assembling the data. And that in my understanding is pretty consistent with what Brisbane is doing, I think Brisbane is a little further advanced than us because they have now got a system running that works more specifically on… I get a lot of pitches from a lot of people and I don’t take on more than we can take. I do that because some of the pitches I don’t think we can add value to it or I sometimes – I don’t say this to their face – I don’t think the story has got much potential. It’s not my job to work with the current affairs shows, to tell them not to do a story because it might work particularly well for TV right? But I can’t tell them this is not going to work on digital, plus you are never sure right, you don’t want to be too smart to say this will never work and it may end up working, but for us really the key things are: have we been involved from the beginning and can we add value to the story? And then I guess finally, has this story got the element in that we think will make it work. So we are trying to pick winners for sure, we are trying to pick things that can help us hit those targets. But
120 at the same time we are not just knocking back stuff because we don’t, you know, because we want to hit our targets.
Do you have a daily work routine? For myself? Well, it is a little bit of a work in progress. I guess there are, it’s a very cyclical kind of work-flow, when we are on the cusp of a project I will be much busier, when we are in between I don’t have as much to do. I am generally a person who has always sort out more things to do than actually is in my job description. Actually I think that because I am new here I haven’t found those avenues to extend my interest into. Whereas back at the SMH I was in all sorts of plans, committees and teams. I had much more of a roving role. Here my title and my job is my role, I don’t have many work related extracurricular activities, so I must say that at times I have been a little bit bored. I am being very honest here. Part of it is because we haven’t hit what I call a cruising altitude. When we hit a cruising altitude we have a nice balance of short and long-term projects, evenly spread and not all clumped together and then nothing. And I think, I am hoping the second six months attached to Jo’s team there will be more opportunities. I am already fielding a lot more opportunities from people we are supposed to work with. Good ideas. But I also have to balance that out with, to be honest that is a lot easier than doing your own ideas, when people come to you with ideas it is a lot easier. But you know, we would like to do our own things as well. I have to balance that out, things we do and things other people want us to do. A lot of my role is being the diplomat. Talking to teams and quite a few of the teams have enjoyed my advise as an outsider on not just, largely on the digital component of what they are doing, but maybe sometimes even the way the stories are written because I think it is fair to say that writing for the web has not been a strong part of the ABC they are a visual organisation. Where I came from is a text organisation, so I spend quite a lot of my time training people to write better and to reach that storytelling aspect of it, which is probably not part of my core mission but I do it because its where my skills and interest lies. So in the long run to answer your question, the daily routine is basically, I generally work 9 to 6. I usually come in, there is a network briefing conference a quarter to nine, I haven’t been doing them a lot as of late because it is very TV focused and everyone else there of the team is responsible for daily content and I don’t have daily content. And so I am still confused as to why I have to be in those meetings. So what I started to do in those meetings is give my ideas on story ideas, so if there’s lets say an event coming up I will say oh let’s do this or that and I have found that while people are generally polite nothing has quite been done about those. Because maybe they are more text ideas, you know digital ideas maybe they are more newspaper ideas than TV ideas. I Mean I try to think where are the pictures coming from to meet the TV idea, but that was my job back at the other place. And I have to say I am much better at sort of more short cycle news than long cycle news, I don’t come from an investigative background but I love sort of jumping on current news and finding new angles to news. I don’t like big news stories because I find everybody piles into them and there is very little opportunity to stand out. What I do like is finding a unique angle to a particular story and to pursue that angle. So, conference, and then we have the meeting with the team
121 twice a week where – you heard what we did today – we digest current programs how they went. Maybe we would speak like tomorrow we don’t have any real time analytics so I cant tell how that story is going today. But I am pretty sure it is not going to hit what I thought it was, I was very diplomatic in the meeting as you might have heard, but I am convinced that we missed an opportunity by not getting it out earlier. We missed the morning newsletter, we missed the very early morning peak. Sometimes especially at the ABC, you need that to build momentum looking at where the story lies and the traffic numbers today at this moment. We might scrape in our target, but that’s pretty disappointing for a project that we spent so much time on. So, that’s the first time that that has happened on that scale and, you know, if I have my way it won’t happen again. So the other part of the day is attending other meetings. Today has been particularly busy, I’ve had a meeting as you have heard about the Foreign Correspondent stuff, with the digital guys, I had another meeting with a radio executive producer who has just got on board and she’s kicking off her new program – it’s like Four Corners but for radio. She has just been employed and used to work for Fusion. Do you know Fusion in the US? They have done some interesting stuff. She is Australian but worked over there. So she gave me a few ideas about what they are working on. Same thing: I will take some of those things back to the team. I think this is good, do you think we can add value to it? And then it will be a bit back and forth. Now to be honest because I didn’t hire the team, Kim did, it created a different dynamic. If I had hired the team it would be a different dynamic. I am quite aware of that, and actually it’s not a bad thing because I feel the better way for us to work is in a more collegial way. I might like something but if the rest of them say mehhhh..then maybe we won’t do it. I think in the old style of journalism, the boss’ views always reigned and that is not necessarily a good thing. So I am quite happy to engage in a discussion or a collective agreement. And I find what happens normally in our discussions is that, you put up a normal idea or an average idea or sub-average idea and other people pile in with – either it gets knocked back and I’m not saying just by me, but by others – and sometimes you get a good, or better idea out of that. So I love putting up stupid ideas because I know someone will come with a potentially better idea to execute that. I like working that way. So there’s meetings. If we are working on something – like the cult-thing there was a text piece that accompanied it at the bottom – so we row- tested the cult piece with multiple people who loved it, but they said they wanted to find out more. So I ended up writing a piece that was linked to at the bottom of that, that was more about the cult and the leader and who they are and things like that. So I wrote it, I produced it, so I can do those sorts of things. I also keep an eye on, sort of generally on what – we tend to communicate through Slack channels because our two developers are in Melbourne so you can see the thread of the discussions upcoming, we create a new thread for each story, so you can see the discussion and Melbourne will say this that and often I will buy in at some stage with: you know I don’t get this, or maybe we should test it again, or we are on the right track. And that happens more and more as we get closer to the launch day. I get more involved. Ultimately prior to launch, so for instance on Wednesday next week while I’m in Melbourne I will do the final check on text for the story on birthdays. So there is a bit of editing/sub-editing role in that and then
122 sometimes often I will suggest the headline or image we use and things like that. Often I leave that to Mark Doman, who is effectively my deputy, he has been here longest, longer so he knows the system quite well. But, you know obviously everything that gets published I am responsible for so I have to be happy that it works. There is the classic example, our last story was on millenials and jobs and Inga and Ri had developed a visual animation for what would happen basically the data would show at a certain age, the gender of the people in those jobs and wether that was in a ascending or descending phase. So for example fitness instructors are generally younger of age, but what they had developed was these series of charts, moving all the time, and this was in place right up until it almost got published and I said: guys guys, I just…there is too much happening. I don’t understand what’s happening. Test it against other people who haven’t been so close to it as you. And in the end what we did is we turned off the animation and made it a manual. You slide the slider up to a certain age and then it shows you the profiles, the two graphs. I think that is an important part of what I do is offering a perspective on what others are doing. Again I would convince them or suggest they talk to other people. Moving forward, I will check off all the social posts, just to make sure that, just things like grammar and the cells are right, pick the images we use. I am a very visual person, I know the difference between a good thumbnail and a bad one. Those types of things.
And is that all this team as well that puts it out on social? Or is there a special social team outside of this one? So Michael Workman, who is our audience development guy, has access to the main account. So he will post them directly, but we don’t have access to post things directly on the website. So we have to liaise with Brisbane and Brisbane will put them up. So often, you know, we want them – and I think they’ve been good to us, to put our stories up high, to give them as much opportunity to work as possible – we will give them everything packaged, in a way, and they just have to put it up. And we’ll usually have a fall-back position in case it doesn’t work, so here’s a second image, or a second headline in case that one doesn’t work. So it gives them the option to swap. We don’t have A/B-testing here although we are soon going to get it. We had A/B- testing back at Fairfax. The current management system here is very antiquated in my opinion. And also the style of presenting of stories on the homepage is a bit pedestrian in my view. That stems from the fact that the ABC doesn’t have a paywall or anything like that. So people are more likely to click on a story. I found back at the SMH, which has a paywall, that in order for people to click we had to use creative methods, which some people call click-bait, but I call reek bait.
Just earlier you were saying that you didn’t select the team members, is there any kind of profession or skill that you are missing right now? Who would you have employed? Ah, no I was very lucky, I am very happy it is a very talented team. I think Kim chose very well because they are all great people to get on with, you know, as I said two of them I have worked close with at Fairfax. I think Mark is great, Michael Workman – they are the two ABC people that are really talented. And I
123 think that we get on pretty well. I am by far the oldest of all of them, but I find that we connect very well. I hope they say that as well. Would we have hired someone else? I don’t know… I will tell you when we hit our cruising altitude.
What kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your position? I feel that’s largely what I am supposed to do. I am relatively new to this particular environment and the expectations of supervising producers. But as far as I know I am doing what I’m supposed to do. I guess my, as I said earlier, I wish at times I was doing more of a wider variety of things. I think I have the bandwith to do more than what I’m supposed to do.
Outside of this job or inside of this job? No inside of the job. Well inside of my employment here but outside the job. So I do think in my experience at Fairfax has taught me that it’s advantageous to know a wide network of people within the organisation, so you can go to them for either help or advise or vice versa they can come to you. And having a wider network of contacts within an organisation allows you to I was going to say expand you power which makes me sound like I am power-hungry, but expand you impact. My interest at this stage of my career is doing good things that resonate with other people and providing some sort of template for how people will be doing stuff in the future. I wish I could do more of that.
How many different tasks do you have on an average day? Look it varies widely. I’d have to say it is meeting-based, and I am one of those persons that don’t mind meetings – because you get a sense of what other people are doing, you get a sense of being able to have your input and get input back. Do you want me to count the number of tasks?
If you want to, yes, if you can. I am sure my job description lists them, but I am not sure if I follow all of those out. I mean it might be story ideation, it would involve interactions with my team and other teams – there’s obviously a bit of administration involved in that, you know, who is going on leave, who is sick etc. – there would be a writing role from time to time.
Do you write yourself or do you mean editing of other people’s writing? Both. I guess general oversight of every aspect of what we do. So I would if we do a video I would look at the video and made sure that the video made sense and especially if things are more complex and potentially legal I would take it to a lawyer and things like that. Intra-team-liaison.
Do you do all of those things every day? No.
So it there an average of things you do on one day? An average number? Three maybe.
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What are the skills that someone needs to do what you do? Uhm.. well I think, you know, I’m sure you could probably have someone else do this job who had more specific skills – say around potentially video. I think it does call for an all-rounder, and I think as I mentioned before, the particular deficit at the ABC in good writing skills that it would work better – it does work better with someone from a text background as we are largely digital focussed. Maybe a bit more understanding about the coding side – which, I mean I can understand when people talk about it but apart from HTML I couldn’t code or anything to save my life, I wouldn’t know what any of them are doing in D3 or anything – but I have a working understanding of what they are doing. I don’t get bamboozled by tech-talk, and that’s important. What else..you know maybe someone from a more video background, that might sort of have more of a say in short-form. But as I said I don’t come from a television background, but I have a visual sense of what works and what doesn’t and that has worked for me for many years.
What have you learned since starting this job? Ahh haha that is a good question. What I have learnt since coming here is maybe the television side. I’m not awfully involved in it, but for me it’s been a great experience to come to another organisation after being the bulk of my working life in one place – to see how another organisation works. It’s not all excellent; there are certainly many things that could change here in my view. But I’m thankful for the experience of seeing how another organisation works. And I am looking forward to working with Jo because, and this is nothing against Kim, Jo is sort of more hands-on in the newsroom, Kim is more sort of upstairs in strategy and other areas. So, I feel I am closer to the stories, or will be with Jo.
So coming back to what you have learned it is that it is different in a new organisation… Yes it’s different and also I understand the particular issues that ABC is facing in terms of the changing landscape of media. How they are tackling it. In general I feel that the newspapers – we had where I came from much better buy-in from the whole newsroom, it took many years, about digital first and digital primacy. At the ABC I feel they are about 6 to 8 years behind on that. I feel that digital is still a very much second class citizen, compared to TV especially. And especially in Sydney, because this is where all the current affairs shows are head-quartered, it is the TV epicentre of the ABC empire. Brisbane, which is the digital empire, there is certainly more of a vibe of a digital primacy, but overall I feel the ABC is about 5 – 6 years behind.
And do you work together with other teams within the ABC? Yes. Not all the time, but in particular with current affairs shows. The thing we did today was with a team called the National Reporting Team. We are looking at something with Sport. I think that’s another great thing, it gives you a wide variety of content. It allows you to deploy many different ways of executing a story. And so that is the other part that I really like, I feel there is an experimental part in
125 what we do. We always try to approach something a bit differently from the way we have done it in the past. So yes, we do, to answer you question.
Just for my understanding. So part of the story ideas come from different newsrooms, or other teams and then part comes from the people here at the DSI? Yes. We make our own stories too.
Do you generally work alone or with colleagues? Is there anyone you work closely with aside from the team members? Oh aside from the team members?
Yes because I am guessing you are working with all of them. Well I think the team I probably had more to do with during the year is the Australian Story team. I found them very easy to get on with and very receptive to ideas. We haven’t done that much with them, but they have kind of embraced us a lot more, invited us to meetings and being less secretive about what they are doing. I like that open attitude. Whereas some of the other teams we have dealt with are being a bit more secretive.
They are sceptical towards the DSI or about going digital? Yes some of them are. I won’t name the team but I had one interesting meeting early this year after we did some work with one of the teams and the feature we did, in fact still is our best-rating feature overall, it did extremely well and it was a data-driven feature of a story they were doing. But we were invited, some of us, Mark and I. And Mark was away when the story was rolled out, but we were invited to the post-production debrief and I call it the red wedding meeting. You get the sense right? When I went to the end of the year briefing that was the best online story they have had all year, but they were not happy with their level of control over the story. And they proceeded to pick holes in every part of the story and it was quite unwarranted – certainty in terms of the success of the story. But, I’m used to these kinds of things. It shocked me because I wasn’t expecting that when I went into the meeting. But we still work with them, you know.
And has it improved since then? Yes it has. We worked on a big project with them towards the end of the year and that was very successful in their view and we were very happy with how it went overall.
Do you mostly work with your peers and colleagues here at the ABC? Or do you work at home? Do you meet outside of work? For work purposes?
Well both, you can answer both. Well I come in everyday. I allow some people the flexibility of working from home. If they are on a particular project. I try not to make that the default because I still believe that this is a team effort and you get more benefit out of it when you
126 are here. But I understand that sometimes you just need to be distraction-free. So I would say overall 90% of the work is being done at the office. I don’t do any work from home, unless… ah once in a while when stories came very late and I worked on a Saturday to get it ready for Monday. Under our contract we are supposed to do that when we work normal hours to work on weekends, that is part of our contract. And then socially, yea, we usually go out for a lunch every couple of weeks. Usually to celebrate our successes. I should have brought a cake for Jack today, I forgot about it, but I will make that up to him. Occasionally we will go for a drink after work on a Friday or something.
Because there are no lunch facilities at the office right? There’s no, well there’s a little place where you get coffee they sell some sandwiches and things like that. But I mean I don’t know..some people like to bring their lunch in, other people like Jack doesn’t eat much, he is vegan. I never see him eat, I don’t know what he does. But occasionally we will go out for a bowl of noodles or something, yea, it’s just not something we do everyday.
How many hours would you say you work a week? I would say, so we are contracted to work about 38 hour a week. I used to easily work 50 or 55 in the office, in my previous job, and then I was always you know, on the email and things from home after work. It has taken a bit of an adjustment to get to basically 9 to 6 Monday to Friday. I am quite unused to that style of work. I should be happy right? Those are generally my working hours.
How much of this time would you say you spend on journalistic work? As apposed to administration or?
Well that depends on what you call journalistic work… Well there is certainly a lot of time spent – not a lot of time – but there is time spent looking at links from what other people do, reading current stories, just keeping up with the news and things like that. I would include that as part of my work. Obviously if you are busier that kind of other type of work diminishes a bit, when I have more time I do a bit more. Look I hope it would be in the order of 5 or 6 hours a day, I hope? I mean I don’t do online shopping or anything like that. And I guess you know if it is quiet and I do get bored I just read more material.
And I am guessing you do not have any other jobs on the side? I do not, no.
What do you consider free time? You mean what do I do in my free time?
What do you consider free time, as in, part of it is what you do in your free time but also if you have children do you consider that free time, do you consider reading the news as free time? How much time do you spend maybe doing related work that you may or may not call free time? I think the level of outside the office hours, the amount of time, apart from
127 reading – I generally read about between half an hour and an hour in the morning before I come in.
All newspapers? Yes, I go through a whole set of things and after work I do a little bit, but not as much as I used to. So free time has more to do with, yea I mean I’ve got two kids, so I sort of spend time I guess you know at home. This year is a bit of an odd year for me because it’s a transition year and I haven’t quite found how to do things in my free time, of which I have more time than I used to, and I am trying to spend not as much time glued to my phone, looking at things. So and this is why I am taking 6 weeks off from next week. I am going to – when I thought I was retiring I bought a drone, yea, and I was going to spend more time flying the drone and trying to improve my areal photography skills and things like that, I wanted to learn how to play guitar and I wanted to do those types of things that I never got a chance to do because I only had two weeks between jobs. So part of my challenge next year, and next year I turn 60, is to try and build up some more of my hobbies, things to do outside work. As I say, this is a bit of an odd year, a bit of a transition year. I feel like I am talking to a psychologist!
In a way it becomes personal because we are talking about your work and in a way that is part of your identity. Well I want to be as honest as possible.
It is very helpful, thank you. How many hours of free time do you consider you have in a week? Pretty much all weekend. Usually Saturdays kids in sport, driving them there and watching them play and things like that. I haven’t done much with my Sundays I must admit, but you know, that’s going to change. So, pretty much the whole weekend and then after 6 is my free time.
In what ways does your unit earn an income or revenue? We don’t, because ABC being a public broadcaster we don’t earn revenue. So we have traffic targets but there is no monetisation of any content you make. It is a very fortunate position to be in, that we don’t have to worry about that. Where I came from, while we weren’t directly responsible for monetisation or anything, there was always that need to sort of bear that in mind. From time to time we would work with marketing to generate ideas that could kind of be monetised, either directly or indirectly, to promote events that they had ownership of. The classic one was the SMN had a fun-run, a 14 k fun-run. There are about 85000 people every year who sign up and pay about 70 dollars to participate. Its not a huge moneymaking thing, it’s more of a break-even thing, but it’s more of a community thing. In my role as digital editor there, one of the challenges we were asked is how do we boost sign-ups for this program? So I would work with the marketing organisers to come up with ideas. We once did this data thing based on, because we had 20 years of data on people running, so with Inga who is here we worked on a story that hopefully would attract readers and by default would get
128 them to sign up and things like that. But again you don’t have to do that here, so we are relieved of that pressure.
And do you manage to make a living from doing this? Yes I do. As I explained to you I am doing somewhat less than I was doing before. But, so if this was 10 years ago it wouldn’t be ideal. Probably could make do, many people do, but I can afford to do this because I got a very generous payout from my last employer and technically next year I can begin my retirement income stream. But I realise that certainly none of my colleagues…I don’t think any of them have children…no none of them have children, you know it’s an expensive city to live in. real estate is among the most expensive in the world and the ABC is not in general, does not pay as well as the private sector.
And what do you find the most difficult in your current situation? I think as I probably already indicated is trying to achieve a consistent level of work that keeps everyone busy and engaged. It is partly because, without lapsing into daily stuff, which I don’t think anyone wants to do because that’s not what we are employed for, it is finding that balance of being busy enough but not so busy you have to work weekends and things like that.
Where do you work the most? Do you work here at the ABC or do you work at home? No here, all the time.
How would you describe your main workspace? Uhm, you mean in terms of aesthetics?
More how do you experience it? Oh look I’m fine there, I have a seat next to the window. Its quiet behind me because of that big space. Jack is next to me, the planning team is on the other side of the divide, where you sit. And I actually find that quite good, because I can hear them talking about things and sometimes it is good information to know what is coming up. So I find that advantageous. In terms of the building that I used to work in was right near the harbour, had a view of the harbour bridge. Aesthetically more beautiful, but here is more convenient.
How about your desk, you don’t sit with the rest of the team… Yes I do find that a bit of a negative, because even though they are not that far away, you don’t get the kind of buzz from being grouped together. So hopefully when we are moving upstairs we will be able to sit closer together. It is very similar to here it is only one floor up. So I am looking forward to the move. The issue is trying to make sure that we you know can find a suitable space among the desks that we have, that will allow us to sit together, because other people are wanting particular seats and things like that.
The seating is highly political. What facilities do you find absolutely essential here, that may not be here or are here. Things like, coffee
129 machine, Wi-Fi, computers, phones. In terms of equipment I find that we are provided for, you know we certainly got a generous budget when we kicked off that allowed Jack to buy a whole lot of state-of-the-art cameras, which he probably hasn’t used enough. That is one of the things I want to change in the new year. We, you know the ABC is very generous when it comes to all sorts of programs and things like that. So I don’t think, most of us have new computers so there’s no issue on the equipment side. There as you can see they are redoing the foyer at the moment, there is a coffee place outside which is fine. As I said earlier we are very conveniently located near lots of restaurants, small shops that allow you to buy anything. What kind of hard- and software do you use in your workspace? Well when I came, I used to be a Mac person. I really wanted to get my hands on a Mac, because at Fairfax even though the standard laptop software system was Windows, I was one of the handful of people who were allowed to use Macs for the content management system, which is an adobe based content management system. But I couldn’t here. Because you could use a virtual system to access Windows, but everyone told me it wasn’t ideal. So unfortunately I had to revert to Windows 7, I am not a big fan of Microsoft stuff I must say, but it does allow you to get to the content management system. Photoshop. I am not really skilled at Illustrator or Premier as people who use those. So pretty much just the content management system, the Internet browser and Photoshop for me.
What kind of support is there available in your workspace? Tech support is very good here. If you ever have any issues you can call up and they can remote into your laptop or talk you through it, so I would say it is pretty good here not short of anything.
Would you like to change anything about your workspace in particular? No, it’s fine.
Why did you start working as a digital manager? You have already partially answered this… Well because I got the offer from Kim. I think Jack was the last person to join. I was the second last. It was just a good opportunity for me to come on board and see what was happening. There was no risk involved for me, and I always knew that if I didn’t like it for any reason I could just leave, and if they didn’t like me they can get rid of me. So we are all on 12-month contracts, although Jack and I were on 6 month contracts, because with a 6 month contract you don’t have to go through a normal interview application thing, but we have both been renewed another 6 months. It probably hasn’t been described to you but we were funded out of a special fund from the managing directors office, and the idea was, I should have mentioned this earlier, to give us a years contract to see how it works out. And if it was going to be successful it was either going to be funded out of recurrent budgets and if it wasn’t successful they could just close it down. So yea we are here on a temporary visa.
130 And so successful is marked by those benchmarks, and are those very strict? I am not sure how many wiggle-room we have, but I’m sure like any organisation I have been in, there will be an element of gut-feeling. Did these guys work out, did they turn up enough stuff for us? Let’s look at the numbers? Yea what they did was good. I sense that there is a little bit of doubt about what we do, from some members of the newsroom. I on the other hand feel a lot of support from other members of the newsroom. Wether this is a kind of TV vs digital or outsider vs insider thing I don’t know.
Or old vs young maybe? Well I’m old, but I know what you mean. And ultimately it would come down to a gut feeling about wether they think we are worth it. I feel the calibre of people in the team are very employable anywhere, and I reassured them that if anything would happen I would be in a good position to find them work. I don’t know if this is true, because well – my feeling is: I know enough people in the Australian media industry to say you know hey: this person is good for you. But the problem is, some of the people I know of where I used to work they are not really hiring because they are getting rid of people. But I still think that Kim assembled a really great team that would not struggle finding work elsewhere.
Has your motivation changed over time? Over time since I have been here it has gone up and down. So just after the red wedding meeting, really down. But I must admit, as I said earlier, I am looking forward to being part of Jo’s team and seeing what we can do in the new year, when all of our team is on board. I know this sounds..but it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. If it works: great, if it doesn’t: that’s fine also. So I am in a very unique position, but I want to do the best by my team I want to make sure that it works for them and that they have continued opportunities here or elsewhere, whatever happens.
What are your professional goals, you have already answered that one…because I am presuming you want to retire after this? Well I don’t want to make it sound… I am also feel like I’m carrying the flag a bit for older journalists. I don’t want to say ohhh you know just because I turn 60 I want to retire. There are a lot of people that are very valuable beyond that age and I still think I have a lot to offer. But I also want to do things that I can have fun doing, so if I feel like I’m not having fun here then I would like to try other things that I feel I can have fun in. I’m at a stage where I can take that risk without hurting my family or causing hardship. So I have a couple of ideas at the back of my mind and if I do step back from a fulltime job then I can take up those opportunities.
What are the most important values that inform your work? Well look I think I’m very privileged, we are all very privileged to work for one of the leading news organisations of Australia. It is very similar to the place I came from. I love working with great content and there are some great content creators
131 here, including ourselves. I think the values that really inspire me to keep working are because the ABC and SMN have a very large and diverse audience and you can see the impact in real time almost of what things we do. When I say we didn’t have real time statistics, we do have ChartBeat which allows us to gage how many concurrent people are looking at a story, but the actual numbers for a story will only come out tomorrow. So the page impressions that are measurable against the Nielsen ratings which we are part of. So my values are great digital journalism, that interests and hopefully inspires people, for which there is – you know, potentially wins awards and things like that. That’s what I aspire to do.
And do you think your work lives up to these values? I do, I mean again I’m very proud with the ABC we don’t have to cut corners, you know, we can spend a relatively long time on a particular story without having to get it out. So that definitely enables a higher quality of result.
Does your work make you happy? It is up and down. I think that, when it’s busy and we are doing well I am happy and when we are say when things are slow I get a bit bored. I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy, but a little bit bored. The case for this morning where things didn’t go entirely right unfortunately I was disappointed that we should have known better. So that took the gloss off a little about what we are doing. Unfortunately the whole Chartbeat phenomenon ties us a lot to the metrics involved. Especially being a purely digital organisation I think our teams who are not as focussed on outcomes, I presume they have no idea. It is just like when you wrote a story for a paper, you had no idea how many people read it. And you got satisfaction of getting on the front-page instead of let’s say page 13. But you didn’t get satisfaction of knowing that there were 100.000 or 10 people. And I think with many journalists who are multiplatform maybe TV and radio is their primary platform, so they get the buzz out of being on the main channel instead of being online. But because we are purely online our movements are much more subject to the success of the content we do.
And that is always measured in terms of readership and clicks. Yes. I have a theory that online people who smoke are much more data-focussed than non-smokers. We should test this. Because what happens, right, we put a story up and especially at Fairfax you could say tweak the headline, testing headlines you had a certain number of concurrents and then you go out and take a smoke, and this reinforces the success-reward thing. They were much more driven by really manipulating the story so that they could get bigger figures. We don’t have to do that here. And I don’t smoke haha!
Interesting theory! And do you ever get angry in your work? Ahh look I am generally a fairly controlled sort of person, for better or for worse. I did get angry before but I try to keep it in a professional way, I don’t just lose my temper. In general I must say I haven’t seen many people here lose their temper. Over the years definitely people have definitely lost it and gone a bit nuts but I think you know with age comes…you know moderates your temperament,
132 you know. I do get, I mean I told you I got angry this morning, but I’m not about to stamp my feet and you know, but I will let people know that… I haven’t quite done the examination of what exactly went wrong and I think it was probably Nathanael’s misstate of not properly checking out of his elements as he was reminded on Friday, but somebody else who was supposed to be looking after it this morning had their phone switched on silent so didn’t respond to calls about it.
It was a chain reaction. Yea, yes. But you know what? In the end of the day nobody died. So you’ve got to put it in perspective.
What is your main motivation to keep doing what you do? I like to keep busy, I like working, I like the social aspect of journalism. I like to keep pushing the boundaries and I like to keep learning. I’m still learning and yes, all those things.
Which communities would you say you belong to? I am sort of I’m not that active on Twitter, on Facebook I am reasonably active although I haven’t posted a lot lately. In my real social circles, quite a few of my friends are journalists or ex-journalists. I keep in touch with many people I used to work with. I grew up in Sydney so I’ve got school friends here, new friends, family, not just my immediate family but my sister also works here down the other end. My sister and her family, my parents are still alive, so I have a lot of sort of different kinds of social circles. The people in our street, we are very friendly with them…so yea I have quite a few… Do you have memberships to any trade unions? No look I used to be member of the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance, which is the main journalism union, uhm because I expected to go into semi-retirement I resigned when I left Fairfax media. I didn’t take it up again when I was here. I believe, especially in the case of at Fairfax the union was a useful buffer to management. In my understanding at the ABC a much smaller percentage of the employees are members of the union. I must say the other reason I didn’t renew with the union was over the years the union was slow to embrace digital journalism as a legitimate format of journalism. Sounds egotistical but I think also, they didn’t use me enough, given my long-term experience in digital journalism. So I thought well: you don’t need me, I don’t need you.
Is there a community you would like to belong to but don’t yet? I think I will answer this in a more general sense. I think that you constantly need to be reinventing yourself, not just at work but in the circles you keep, because circles eb and go away or don’t become as strong. So I think it’s important to keep renewing and finding new circles. It certainly becomes more difficult later in life, people are set in their ways and things like that. Having said that, I don’t have a particular target of things, but I do look on some friends who have – oh one of our neighbours for example – one of his circles is the Surf Club. He spends a lot of time with them and I don’t really have that sort of kind of circle. So we’ll see.
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Who do you see as your main competitors? I do often see ourselves in competition with the team in Brisbane, in a collegiate sense. If they do something good, or we have done something good, what are the numbers vis-à-vis what they did last? I see also competition with Fairfax, SMH and the Australian. I am pretty sure after that that there are many people that do what we do. The amount that Fairfax and the Australian do is not as much as we do. So even though we currently are number two in the country in terms of overall page impressions, unique browsers. We will never catch, or it will be hard to catch number one. So we are competing against the more high end of the market.
Just for my understanding…is it correct that your team only does investigative stories or not? Because now with Jo heading the team… Well that is an interesting question because it’s a discussion I have to have with Jo. I know Jo comes from a much harder core investigative side and many of our ideas are not such hardcore ideas, as you have heard from today’s meeting. The social reactions on stories are usually on light stories, interesting but light. But there are elements of what we do, so the story that Inga had on the sexual offense clear-up rate that is certainly investigative. But I think what we, I mean I had a brief conversation with Jo about it and she said that she’d like to expand the definition of investigation. But I think what we can bring to her team, well we are part of her team, but I mean the reports side of her team, is a better way to display a certain story. But having said that, as I said earlier we are not a display team but a better way to execute the stories, so they do better online, have a longer shelf- life and a bigger reach and all those types of things. Getting away from the typical long-form heavy on words investigative story, do a bit of a thing like we did with the Nike-shoe. And I’ll send you a bunch of links of things we have done and I think it would also be useful for you to speak to Michael to get the numbers we did on them. By the time you publish, it’s not going to be historical. I mean for your purposes, by the time the book comes out it will be a little way down the track. I mean as I said earlier, I am not an investigative journalist, but I quite like the excitement of investigations and working with other people on investigative stories.
Has your competition changed? Do you have new competitors? Yes, increasingly everywhere. Because of globalisation we are up against like I said New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, they are all coming here to a certain extent. I think that obviously the kind of resources the New York Times has makes it quite unique in the world, maybe the Washington Post, but they are kind of hard to match with the kind of skills and amount of people they can put on a project. But I think it’s always good to bear those in mind because, you know, readers increasingly have unlimited choices and you have to keep, we will always have local advantage, but I think it’s good to bear in mind what people outside of the country are doing. Our potential audience, many of them are also reading those publications.
134 Do you find that there are a lot of people from outside of Australia reading the ABC content? It depends on the story, it varies. Not huge amounts. And the other thing is that people outside Australia are not counted for the Neilson monthly ratings, so a unique browser outside of Australia is not counted, it’s purely local. So it doesn’t really matter, but it is nice for the reasons I mentioned before, posts that go off at Reddit for example, there are all American journalists on there and that’s satisfaction because of the absolute numbers don’t actually matter in terms of the monthly rankings. And then as I said from time to time you do get stories, there was one recently on a nuclear dump in the Pacific, that got tremendous amount of readership from people in the States because it happened on American soil, so it is always nice even when I was at the SMH, to get feedback from readers outside of your own country. Knowing that your story has spread beyond your borders, which is something you could never do in legacy media, you never had that experience.
Who are your audiences? Well largely Australian, our demographic is somewhat younger than TV and newspapers. I think like any media company you always hear about young audiences because young audiences are turning off not just appointment TV and radio but turning off all mainstream media. They are not coming to websites, they access it through social media increasingly, even not Facebook but Snapchat and all that. So I think the ABC is very good at trying to – and they are not burdened by the same sort of commercial necessities that commercial publishers are burdened by – but the ABC is experimenting with many third party platforms. So I see our audience as being general mainstream Australia, probably slightly higher socio-economic and slightly younger than the traditional demographic than traditional media.
Are you satisfied with these audiences or would you like to reach certain people that you are not reaching yet and would like to reach? it is always important to try and broaden your audience and reach in particular younger readers. So we would probably like to skew younger than we are now.
And how do you plan to do that? Do you have a specific strategy? Well, making stories that appeal to them. The whole Facebook-reaction story is definitely skewed to a younger audience, you know, and so was the Millenials and jobs one. So part of it is picking topics for a younger demographic, and part of it is also using whatever means there are at our disposal to distribute stories to places where the younger audiences are located. Snapchat, Facebook and things like that.
How does the DSI team bring about innovation within the ABC? Well I think I have always believed in leading by example. So it’s a much bigger organisation here than where I came from, I think I still believe that you set an example and you pick some champions…we can’t really do that here but at SMH we worked with a few of the journalists to help them make their work stand out
135 and by doing that you inspire others to emulate what the others are doing. I think now we are doing that with other journalists we are working with but we are also doing it ourselves. So the best example is to create compelling content that is mobile-first and by our definition would do very well. If it flops then you don’t have an example but if you succeed then you have got a great way to say hey guys this is what you have to do. I guess the only issue with that is that it’s still very TV-focussed and I feel I can’t really reach as many people directly in my role here as I could in my role at SMH. Partly because it’s a bigger organisation, partly because I am not in the same position I was.
And what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? I think I would say the key elements are first of all, there has to be a good hook. You can have the best story of the world, but if no one clicks on it then no one will read it. So it starts with a compelling way of getting into the story without resorting to click-bait or anything like that, good picture, good headline and things like that. And often I forgot who’s advise this was, but I will often write a headline 20 times until I get the right form of words, because the theory is when you get to 15 you start to get desperate and then you start thinking outside the box. But often, traditional headline-writing has sometimes summarized the story or things like that but I often find that very boring and readers do as well. So every great story starts with one element of interest or curiosity, so you bring that to the top of the homepage and social and I guess the rest of it depends on the nature of the story. Great visuals, I think it’s increasingly important, without dumbing them down, to make it easily to read and understand. That means anything from shorter sentences, to shorter paragraphs to better images, more contextual images, but certainly when it comes to the work we do with graphs and interactives and things like that it comes down to really dissecting the story into its atomic parts and recombining them in a way that makes it sink in better. Because a lot of people are just skimming a lot of the time. Unless it is, it doesn’t have to be dumbed down, but it has to be accessible.
And has the DSI learned from possible mistakes made by earlier innovative attempts within or outside of the ABC? Look, always. We learn from mistakes. There is no such thing as no fails and that is why I like coming along to – and this is one of the benefits of my position, it told someone today it is not a very good analogy because of the reputation of priests, but my understanding I feel like a priest in a confessional. So one team will tell me something which I’m not supposed to pass on to another team, I pick up a lot of intelligence of what works and what doesn’t in the teams and in doing so you learn what worked and what didn’t from them as well. And we can apply it in some cases to what we do. So yea, you definitely are learning all the time from both successes and failures. Okay I have one last question. What do you see as the most fundamental challenge for the field you are working in? The most fundamental challenge is a combination of readers falling off traditional formats, that can be newspapers that can be TV but that can also be the inverted pyramid style of reporting, which often is translated into online articles. I think
136 there is so much choice and content available, that the problem is attention and increasingly you are fighting for attention, to get a fraction of a second. And that is not only because of journalism but also online games and Netflix.
So were you saying that the inverted pyramid is not working for online content? I would say that if you would only rely on the inverted pyramid, it would not always work. The inverted pyramid was created for newspapers, because you had to chop off a bottom, you didn’t know how long the space was. That doesn’t make sense for digital, which is bottomless. But at the same time you shouldn’t be writing only 2000 word articles, because you test the attention span of the reader. All I am saying is that if you apply the inverted pyramid to every bit of online content you write, you set yourself up for failure and you lose your audience. You have to customise the content, you can’t customise all the content, but you have to customise a lot of content to present it in a way that is more palatable to read an to share. Because increasingly it is a sharing thing as well. And I like that challenge. I like the challenge to come up with a new way of telling a story, but as you know there are multiple challenges that journalism faces if you are in commercial media there is no money in online advertising. So many competitors now are doing the same or a similar thing, breaking news has become ubiquitous. And there is what I call the stale-content challenge of trying to create a different experience for audiences that need that kind of stimulation.
One more: out of my own curiosity. Are all team member writing as well? No, some of them are. So the only people who write are Inga, Mark and me. They I mean write in the conventional sense of an article. I mean Jack can write a script for short-form video, I don’t think the others write as such. They are certainly not employed as writers. The only three people I would expect to be able to write are those three.
That was it. Do you have any questions or anything to add? No, I have to say these were very good questions and I know that may come across as flattery to a journalist, but I mean it. They were very good. And as I said I am in the unique position where I can be open and don’t have to protect my butt as much.
Yes thank you for being so open. I am very happy with the team that Kim has assembled but I am also looking forward to working with Jo. Can I tell you something off the record?
Yes, I will turn this thing off. [Tells me about reorganisation and tensions that came from that. Kim being angry etc.]
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Interview Kimberley Porteous
Let’s start with your job title at the moment. What is your job title? Senior manager future audiences and content strategy. It is hard, I didn’t make it up.
Alright that’s a mouthful. And how long have you been doing that for for a living? For a living? Uhm…I suppose, I think my first job in journalism was around 1999. I was a [inaudible] reporter for a few years. From about 1995 I was a data journalist researcher person from ’95 until about ’99. Then from ’99 I crossed over…I was working for one of the big prestigious newspapers here, and crossed over to work for its news website.
What newspaper? Sydney Morning Herald, which is where I met Stephen. So I started working there as a digital producer, night editor sort of job. I was there for a long time so I did lots of different jobs, like entertainments and arts editor, travel editor, lifestyle stuff. Uhm… but I am more of a news person, so I liked the news stuff. Then went to the US for a year in 2005-2006, sort of that academic year and listened to a lot of NPR radio and realised that radio could sound different. And I had a bit of an epiphany thinking: why aren’t we doing this for digital? Because audio…you know, it makes sense, particularly if you are from a newspaper newsroom there are a lot of photo journalists there, in the heyday, all going out shooting a lot of stuff and if they are lucky one will end up in the paper or on the website. And I thought well why don’t we let them shoot photo essays and we can experiment with audio storytelling and match that with photos? So I came back and did a lot of that, which was very exciting. Taught the photographers how to shoot narratives, rather than what they are really really good at: summing up an entire story in one frame. They do that so well. So train them in that, and then a lot of them wanted to learn how to record audio and do interviews as well. And then a few more of them, a few of them wouldn’t want to hand over the audio to me when they came back. Usually I would do the audio, but some of them wanted to record audio and actually learned how to edit and from their 50 or 60 photos put together a story. So they were trained to do that, but I put them together as well, which was fun. And then we gradually went onto video as well. So I suppose I spent around four years or so, doing what we called at the time, multimedia storytelling or non-traditional storytelling I suppose. So I was covering breaking news, a few stories a day plus always had longer term projects on the go wether it was an investigation or a feature story, thinking: what’s the best way to tell the
138 story? Does it need interactivity, is there a database we can search. We built a look-up table for that. Does it need interactive graphics? Is it video? Is it stills? Is it audio? So making all that stuff, which was my most fun job. I have never had a job I loved as much as that. I did that until the very end of 2010 around Christmas.
That is pretty early…for this type of stuff. Uhhh…I guess so. There was some interesting stuff happening. Yeah I guess there was. There was some good stuff happening in Denmark, Bombay Motorcycle Club I think they were called. New York Times was doing great work, and we were. We were at the forefront. So for a very brief period of time I was a name in international journalism. My byline. Uhm…then for family reasons my husband got a job in Canberra, which is our capitol city here. I went to Canberra, so I stopped doing that job, went to Canberra and did a digital transition job, I suppose, where I walked into a newsroom that weren’t really doing anything digital. They would put up maybe four or five stories a day from that day’s paper. They’d put those up in the morning when they got around to it. So like 11 am and only the first two paragraphs and then a sentence saying: ‘to read more of this story, buy the Canberra Times’. So I walked into that newsroom in January 2011 and obviously completely changed everything, you know. We started putting up the full text, basically changing everyone’s job. If you were a subeditor you would now be a multiplatform subeditor, if you were a reporter, you know, I would call you or someone on my team would call you and you would file over the phone and we would write the story straight away. So we broke news, photographers went out there and started shooting visual narratives. And then we exchanged websites, because we were on this dinky little website, so we moved the business case, convinced the local publisher ‘hey we really should move on to the Fairfax network’, so the Sydney Morning Herald was the big one in that group. So we can be the fifth city site in that one, which means all of a sudden we were giving Canberra sport, entertainment, lifestyle and travel and all well-rounded stuff, not just a few breaking stories. But also importantly for a commercial newspaper news publisher we had all these adds that were massive, we could have display adds for the first time, you know, massive and classified. So that was a big project, transitioning, moving onto the site now. So did a digital transition project there. And then, yet again, my husband decided he wanted to move. He was headhunted to go to Washington D.C., so I went over there and worked with him for a little while, sort of setting up his – he is an investigative reporter – his investigative reporting team ICIJ, The Panama’s Papers people. So I built their website, their online presence. They didn’t have social media before that. I did a lot of multimedia and video for them, did some data journalism with some of their stuff. But then I thought: I don’t want to work for my husband because…So I was just looking for another job and the parent organisation, which is a domestic, mostly political, Whitehouse coverage investigative journalism outlet, digital only in Washington D.C., was looking for a chief digital officer. So they just poached me, so I worked there for a few years. So it was doing digital journalism, a lot of it was fundraising, even marketing, migrating the CMS, and integrating the editorial CMS with our fundraising database and also with our e-mail newsletters that you send
139 out to people. So that was all integrated so we were able to tell Livia really all the stories about environmental justice because she doesn’t like these stories about money and politics.
So you could see your audience preferences? Yes, we could see what you were interested in so we would only send out those stories in those email newsletters that were tailored just for you. But there was also a bit of fundraising. So if we wanted to have a fundraising appeal around our environmental justice stories, the fundraising department knew how to contact you and knew where you were clicking on around the site.
So a little bit of activism almost…? Not so much activism, but just asking for money. But we could also put a, like when you are on the site we could have an add that would pop up in the middle of the story, not so much pop up but inserted in the middle of the page, just for you because you are interested in environmental justice. So that was not really journalism, but an interesting I guess digital application of projects, but a lot of it was journalism as well. It was a newsroom of a lot of older men who could come to that place from big newspapers like the Washington Post, probably to run away from the digital revolution that was happening around those places. So they just loved the fact that they could just go dark for 6 months and then just publish 15.000 words of just text and press publish and then ‘my job is done, hey world, here’s my story’.
And you had to deal with them? Yeah. So I don’t think we have completely changed everyone’s mind, but got them thinking who is the audience for your story? And they’d be like…’oh I don’t know…everyone.’ No really: who is the audience, where are they online and how are we going to reach them? What different bits of storytelling can we do? So like, look, hey there is a Facebook group that is really interested in this, or an advocacy group who are really interested in this so let’s reach out and let them know that the story is coming, tell them what it’s like. They can then send an email to all of their members, constituents, whatever. But also try to tell the story in different ways from multiple entry points. With the best will of the world, who wants to read 15.000 words on something that is pretty detailed? It could be quite sexy, hopefully it is. The vast majority of journalism is sexy. So try and find a way to get them in. It could be as banal as a video explainer or a video interview when we are sitting down with the journalist saying, here just ask them questions and we get a lot out of them that they can’t really say in the story. Not so much that they can’t say it in the story but they are suddenly speaking to us in a relatable language. Why should we care about this story? Or it could be almost a listicle of top 10 things we learned when we were investigating this, or…and really good video. We did some high-end, longer-form, documentary pieces that did very well, one of them was nominated for an Emmy award.
Oh fantastic! And some of that non-traditional digital storytelling that I love doing, when you
140 have got a mix of interactivity, a mix of video, a mix of stills, a mix of audio. So there is a few online documentary pieces. So that was all that stuff…and then I wanted to go home and then this job was advertised. They wanted someone to come in and do digital strategy for news and help work on the digital transition. Because it’s got a big footprint. Everyone has heard of the ABC in this country. Pretty much the whole workforce and a few of the TV people and radio people and they don’t think digital yet, apart from a few people we have around the place, the digital people. And you know, they joined the ABC or went to uni knowing they were going to be on television doing stories and that is quite different to computer storytelling. Plus the world and audience environment has changed too – how we can reach people, how we can try in the fragmented attention economy we have. So I am just trying to work on various innovation projects in the place, almost just pilot projects. Working on a few different podcast ideas.
Alright, so you have got different projects going? Yes we have got different things. Setting up this team, hiring for them, doing the business case, convincing the bosses they need it, convincing the boss that they are here to change the way we are working, trust it will be a success. They are still being treated as presentation people. But yes, I have handpicked everyone on the team except for Alex. I didn’t know Alex beforehand, but everyone else just contacted them and brought them on. So they really are a super team.
They do look like a super team from the few days that I have been here… Yes, they really are. They are fantastic. There are some Melbournians who you will hopefully get to meet.
Yes, I have met them very briefly on Google Hangout. That’s good, that’s a start. Do you know when you are going to go down?
No. I wanted to talk to you about that as well. I don’t know what would be a good time for them? Talk to them. This is a time of the year when everyone starts disappearing, because the whole country is winding down now. Which is lovely, but frustrating for you. So they might be working from home or on a go-slow soon. I don’t know if they are or not.
Alright I will email them to see what they are up to. But it sounds like you are hanging around Sydney for a few months is that right?
Yes I am going to be here at least until the 6th of March. Oh good! Is that when your thesis is due?
My thesis is due the 1st of February, so it is pretty busy. I am going to be working very hard. So if for some reason…they said they were going to be around a few months ago, but things change. If for some reason they are not around this week or next week they will be back in January.
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Yes. I can come back in January. But they are both really creative people, the two in Melbourne. They are amazing. The way they think about stories and storytelling is fantastic. Nathaneal has got such a long history of doing this stuff. He and I would worked together, when I was at the Syndey Morning Herald, the sister newspaper in Melbourne that is where he worked and some of the best stuff I did was some of the stuff he worked on. He made it amazing, made it look good, made it work. We always had a really good idea. He probably doesn’t call himself a journalist but I see him as a journalist. He is working, helping to translate the journalism into great storytelling for so long, I consider him a journalist. He has got so many journalism awards. He is a superstar.
I think they all are. Just having the capacity to think of a story and having all of the skills there to make it something fantastic is such a luxury. Yes it is terrific; I mean that’s how spoiled I was working with a lot of great people at the SMH for so long that could do that. And then you come into a newsroom like this and there is no one here…so I was like alright I am going to have to make a case and try to get in a small team. And even Jack, he is only a few years into his career but he has great instinct.
Great. Okay so the team was formed six months ago? Yes it was around June I think that we got them all in.
Can you tell me a little bit about…so you are doing all the different projects, you are doing the podcasts and the DSI team… what has been happening with the restructuring? Honestly I don’t really know. There is stuff you may not want to record. I will tell you now, but I don’t have a lot to add because I wasn’t consulted with the restructure.
[Off-the-record story about restructure see diary]
That is my viewpoint…maybe it’s not true, but it is what I believe is true. I am sure you will run across politics in every organisation, particularly if you want to change things because it is threatening to everyone. It is threatening to people who have been doing this for a long time. They feel like their platform isn’t respected anymore as the platform of the future and it is really challenging to the people that have been running digital operations now and we are trying to change the way we do it and improve it. It is very challenging to them as well.
It would be challenging for everyone. Okay, so do you have a daily work routine at the moment? No, not at all. It is hard at the moment because we are trying to hire people around the country. And we are trying to do it as a national picture as well, so doing it all at the same time is hard. We if we have got good candidates, maybe place them in other parts of the country. No not at all. I try to have two constant
142 days that I am in the office, but people just keep putting me on meetings so I am here a lot more than two days a week. I am also a lot on recruitment panels looking for a state director or a state editor. I have interviewed about a dozen people and I keep getting called in for these things.
Do you do them by yourself? No. There is always at least three people at a recruitment panel here. And I am usually there as the digital person of the organisation. Because we shouldn’t be hiring someone now who can’t answer digital journalism [inaudible].
What kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your role right now? Uhmm..my role is very undefined. They still don’t know what to do with me. I have said I only want to work two days a week so I can work elsewhere.
So you are thinking…is this like an in between job? Yeah, pretty much. I am continuing on the projects that I was working on before the change when I was still the news executive, the podcasting has been going for a while. Putting digital officers in each newsroom and transforming all of our capital newsroom project has been going for a long time, so I want to see that through. I am focussing especially on those for the moment. And the DSI team, they are all in. Getting them all on board and ready so that is all finished now.
So I guess you average day is very scattered, but could you point out how many different tasks you have on an average day? Oh god, well let’s look at today. I wrote up a report about how the digital improvement is going in every state because we have got a few dilemma’s we have to sort out, some people acting in the roles that we need to decide if we want to keep them acting in those roles. We want to get in an outsider. I’m with you now. At 11:30 I have got a meeting with the marketing team from news about our podcast launch with all the tasks that we have to do with that. Make sure we get good placement with Apple and in the Itunes store and things like that. Also, what cost promotions we can get with the podcasts and things like that. A lot of the afternoon what we spend with the podcast crew, this is the first time we can get them all together. There is still controversy about the name. People don’t like the name. I need to point out to them, well…this podcast is probably going to outlast all of us here, so we don’t really introduce the name.
And just out of curiosity, what kind of podcasts are these? Morning news podcasts, 25-35 year olds which is a segment that we don’t hit, the ABC, like a lot of public broadcasters. We miss people after school and then we get them back when they are 60. So we are trying to get them and there are a lot of people in that age-group that wouldn’t come to our website because they would be seen for old people. But they are on podcasts so we want to get them on there. We want to tell them, not really the day’s headlines, but the one or two interesting stories of the day that you need to know to feel informed, that talk to you as if we are sitting at a café or glass of wine. This is what’s really going on. This is what
143 happened. This is what’s going to happen next. Sort of that ‘in the know’ kind of feeling.
Interesting. And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you are doing now? Uhm… you have to have been a digital journalist. You have to have been on that forefront of change management at least at a couple of places, if you weren’t the boss driving it you were at least part of it and you were working with digital colleagues side by side helping them transition. So yeah, knowing how to be a journalist and having all of that is useful. What else? Uhm…really understanding numbers and performance measurements. How to know if something is doing well, how to know if something’s a junk metric. I feel like I am always battling with people that say ‘well this has had X amount of downloads, and this video has had this amount of views’, and I am like ‘that doesn’t mean anything, you should be looking at this and this and this and that’s how you know if something is successful.’ We are trying to do more, the government is saying you are not getting an extra cent but you have to do better on digital. So some things are going to have to be stopped or at least the priorities have to change and that means making decisions and looking at audiences, seeing what’s working, what might need a changing strategy, what really should be stopped. So a knowledge of that.
And what have you learned since starting doing this job? Hmmm…that it seems, it is an unusual environment. I think it has reinforced things I have often thought about culture. Culture is more important than strategy. People are always going to be loyal to a culture not a new strategy. If you are saying ‘this is our new strategy, we are changing things’, you have to change the culture for a change or a transformation process to be successful. And that can’t really happen by having one or two digital advocates in the place, which is what their hopes were for me. You can’t really do that in an organisation of 5000 people unless it is coming from the top down and then that middle management layer is also starting to change their behaviour, reinforcing that we are going to do things differently, we are going to revalue these skills as much as we value our skills. It is in all the day-to-day conversations, it is in every single commissioning conversation. All of that has to happen before all of our teams, who are willing for change…but they obviously have to do what their boss is telling them, and that boss has to do what their boss is telling them, and that boss has to do what that boss is telling them and that’s where it is all breaking down. A few of us are saying change this, but the rest has been told to still prioritise this, don’t think about this…
So it has reinforced your idea about culture. Yes and that for any transformation to be successful you have got to have that leadership by you, filtered down to all layers of management otherwise it is not going to work. There people will just be off on their own and they will probably burn out and fail.
144 And do you work together with other teams within the ABC? Yeah, with a lot of other teams. I have been working with a team who until recently have been called Radio, that has now been split up. We had radio and TV divisions, but a few weeks ago they have broken those down so that we have multiplatform divisions around. So that has been pretty massive, a big change from the ABC from a few weeks ago.
Are they sitting together in the same space? No, they are all different. It is going to take a while for all of that to shake down, so people are reporting to different people now and working with different people.
So literally everything has changed? If you were a radio person and knew who your colleagues were, now if you are sport you work in TV sport, radio sport, news sport, digital sport.
So it is centred around topics or divisions? Yes, which makes a lot of sense, but the implementation is key, how that happens. But yeah to answer your question, I am working on a lot of podcast projects, which has been working with people outside of the news division. But yes within news, working with different programs, different television programs of news, different units. I have put together and hired the team that is doing the morning podcasts, so they are all from other parts of the organisation.
You hired all of them from within? All of them from within, yes. And then with me working with all the different state directors and editors and those teams in those newsrooms like in Darwin or Melbourne, Adelaide. So yeah a lot of working with other teams.
And do you have any peers and colleagues you work with on a day-to-day basis? Uhm…well there would be the other member of the news executive that is running, that manages all of those state newsrooms. I work with her a fair bit, who has been frustrated by the change of direction. Working with her a lot when I was doing the transition project for her. Day to day probably not as much as I would like. I usually, until very recently I went on holidays, I had a project manager who was, is fantastic. She would help me implement a lot of projects and changes I was trying to put together. But she is not with me anymore, she went with the change. Sadly not working with her because she is awesome. And a lot of people in the podcast team, units outside of news, working with them pretty much day to day because we are hiring and building a team there as well. So we are setting up a True Crime podcast unit.
Nice. And do you usually see them at the ABC or outside of the ABC? My colleagues? Yes, but they are all around the country. So I often see them on a Skype call, or I get on a plane and go to see them in their newsroom in their city.
145 Also, you just said you had a meeting. I do at 11:30.
What is easy? It is a long interview, but I will be here for the rest of the week and next week so if you have the chance… I am not around so much next week because I am doing so much unpaid days at the moment. This afternoon I am around say after 3:30. I am hoping to work from home tomorrow, working for another organisation. But I am in for lots of interviews on Friday morning, so shall we try for this afternoon?
Yes, this afternoon. Why not?
[Continuing the interview later that day]
Are there any skills that you are missing in the team? I think we are doing okay. Originally we were going to have two designers and two developers. But Ri is a developer and a designer, so that is fantastic. And also, we had someone for a while but then his redundancy payout was blocked from his employer and he felt he couldn’t afford to leave and walk away from 60 years plus redundancy. So we have left that position open thinking, let’s run the team for a few months and see what’s missing and then we’ve got money there to hire for an extra person. So I don’t have a sense right now that we are missing anyone in particular, but I talk about that with Stephen a fair bit, saying well we really need to look at what we need before I went on holiday we thought what another all- rounder production person like a Mark would make sense, rather than getting a specialised person in there. I don’t think so, but I am not particularly hands-on with them at the moment. But we have sort of built that in, let’s not hire the ninth person yet and let’s see where our bottleneck is in our story. So I think the wise thing to do is to wait and see what the team is going to be asked to do now it is under a different person who doesn’t understand digital storytelling very much. The team’s mission will probably change a little bit, they will most likely be more of a presentation team rather than digital transformation people who were to come in here and change the way everyone worked and thought about stories and commissioned stories and did their reporting and news gathering etc.
Because they do have a bit of an educational task there right? Right. Which everyone has been resisting and probably won’t happen to the same extent now.
And how many hours would you say you work in a week? In this job… Ohh…when I was still fulltime I would say probably 60?
And how much of that time would you spend on journalistic work? It is all related in this job? A lot of it isn’t directly related with what I was here to do. So a lot of it will be sitting in meetings about corporate restructure and stuff like that. So…
146 If we were to give a percentage to it? Well it depends. Do you count strategic planning and thinking of how a newsroom should transition…is that directly related to journalism or not?
Maybe not in a traditional sense, but I think it has a lot to do with it. So a lot of it is that forward planning. Most of my job would be that, so it’s not hands on how are we going to respond to an investigation coming up next month, so if you use that definition then 90% I suppose. Or 95% of my job is not hands on how we are going to tell a story.
It is more strategy. What other jobs do you have and how much time do you spend on them? Oh, as in my non-ABC job?
Anything else you have got going outside of the ABC. Oh alright, I guess about 8 to 10 hours a week at the moment on the other one.
Would you care to tell me what it is? Oh, yeah. New York Times. I am doing stuff at the NYT.
Interesting. What do you do there? Product strategy, some forward planning and digital strategy.
And what do you consider free time? Well when I am not working. When I don’t have to think about work. Sometimes your brain doesn’t allow you to stop thinking about work. But yeah, if I am offline. Because if I am online it is always work of some sort. Shutting the laptop down and leaving the house, or leaving the building would be free time. I am trying to be outdoors now that I am back in Sydney, back in Australia. Go to the beach or do yoga. I have sent you an email about Qi yoga by the way in Freshwater.
I saw that. Beautiful. I am definitely going to check it out. Oh, lucky you! It is a nice school.
And how many hours do you consider you have in a week? Uhm…I should try to take one day off. One day on the weekend and some days I’ll do half a day or a bit more than half a day on the Sunday.
Do you manage to earn a living from this? Yes.
Do you take on assignments that you’d rather not take on if you’d make more with other work? Ah no.
What do you find the most difficult in your current situation?
147 Uhm…to change the decisions or lack of decisions or lack of understanding about the current state of media in my management.
Where do you work most? Do you work at the office or from home? Yes in the building.
Do you spend any time not working in the building? Like at home? Yeah I do, from home. The ABC is pretty family-friendly like that, I can work from home. If I can compartmentalise the day if I don’t have meetings, particularly when I was doing a lot of research and data analysis and writing of the strategy document it was much easier to do that from home. You know, turn the email off in two-hour block and just to some writing and thinking.
Would you say though that you are primarily at the ABC? Yes, for sure.
How would you describe your main workspace? Oh the one that you’ve seen upstairs?
Yes. It is quiet, it is very quiet up there. It is a temporary space. The news management and the news executive used to be right down here, exactly straight out there. And then the Friday before Christmas they moved us upstairs and took all the walls out here and made this new long newsroom. So they moved us upstairs, we are 5 floors away from a lot of our teams to be honest, so it is really quiet. Some of them have decided that they don’t like it here, so a few of them have gone back down and some people are going elsewhere, so it is really quiet.
I heard the team is going to move up next week…? Yeahhh, yeah. We have put so much effort into making sure that they are sat here so they could be part of things and not like off in a corner somewhere. And it just all has been dismantled.
And were you trying to get them to sit with different teams downstairs or all together? I preferred them to sit all together. And because this newsroom was designed for that building work that happened around Christmas last year, we didn’t know that they’d be here then. So Gavin Feng who runs the newsroom here worked really hard, and was quite good to find some seats here and there, so that’s why they are split up right now. We did like the idea of having Alex our designer on the design desk, and the designers really wanted that so we could have a bit of skills transfer going on. But apart from that it would be nice to have them sit all together, that’s what we’ve been trying for. They will do that upstairs.
Yes but then they won’t be as much part of the rest… Yes, they will very much be under the investigations editors.
148 Are they all upstairs, the investigations team? Yes, I think if they are based in Sydney that’s the idea. A lot of them won’t be Sydney based, we try to have people spread around the country if we can. Political reasons, politicians don’t want us all here because we are a national broadcaster. We should not be in Sydney.
And how do you get to work? I take a bus from Bronte to Bondi Junction and then a train from Bondi Junction into Central here.
What facilities do you have in your workspace? I have a laptop pretty much like that, a Macbook Pro. It plugs into a larger monitor so I can have a dual-screen set-up. That’s about it. There is a handset there, that I never use. I have a company phone but I pay for the bills. So this and the laptop, that’s pretty much it.
What about coffee corners, wifi etc.? I am on corporate Wi-Fi, which is helpful. I pick coffees up and take them to meetings. You and I haven’t done this yet, but there is a little couch area pretty close to where my desk is so I have a lot of meetings there, just for a change of environment. I was talking about the paperbag building before, how I like, I respond to being in really nice spaces, just to change the way you think I move around the building a little bit. But I have hardly ever…I really like working in cafés but I’ve hardly ever worked at that café, that really noisy one that I took you to this morning, just because, not because it is noisy because I can concentrate in that, I am used to that, but it’s always really busy, so you’d be taking up a seat.
And what kind of facilities are absolutely essential to you? Wi-Fi and a laptop. I like having two screens but I can easily just work on one screen and I do quite a bit. Oh and the phone. You know, when I go interstate I just take this with me now, it is not ideal but you can do so much on it.
What kind of hard- or software do you use? Oh well see I don’t do much exciting stuff anymore. I don’t edit video I don’t code in Flash and all that stuff that I have done in the past. I do a lot of stuff in Excel, because I manipulate data and look for trends and look at our performance. And apart form that email and Word, browser, Slack. That’s about it.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Not so important. I am really happy to use Google sheets for my analysis, so I really don’t care. It’s just for compatibility with other people I suppose, I work with Microsoft product and Sharepoint so you can have collaborative stuff. Quite often I will Google Doc or Google Sheet with people. I don’t understand that…mind you, a lot of people don’t understand Sharepoint either, but it makes it a bit easier.
149 Do you share your workspace with others? Uhm…no! no… I have got a constant desk. I am pretty much the only one there.
What kind of support is available at the ABC? Technical support or psychological support?
Can be anything… Well we have counselling lines if you need to speak to anyone.
Is that on the phone? Yeah, I am pretty sure it is on the phone, I haven’t used it. But it doesn’t have to be work-related, it can be anything that is going on in your life. If you just need to talk to counselling, they have that here. There is IT support. Obviously there is good legal support. We have an HR department that can help us out when we want to move people around or hire or fire or performance management. Marketing people if we want to launch new products and figure out a good rollout plan. This is all that comes to mind right now.
Would you like to change anything about your workspace? Workspace...uhm...Yes it would be nice to work in the Frank Garry building. Well I actually wanted to move down here and sit exactly where you are sitting now. I wanted to sit on the window and have Stephen and someone else, because I wanted to be a bit more hands on, but they couldn't. There used to be just two desks there, and I think that they've only just added the third one quite recently. So, but yeah, things are changing now anyway with people moving upstairs. So I would have liked them to be in the newsroom.
So are they going to be sitting close to you then? No, they are going to level 1 and I am on 5. We are a long way away, we are quite out of touch.
Why did you start working here at the ABC? I wanted to come back to Australia and I was looking at the news organisation, the paper, that I used to work for and it has gone through various, yeah..it is getting smaller and smaller, much has changed and it's strategy seemed very unclear, they made a lot of mistakes, a lot of friends had left. I always thought I would go back, but it didn't look as attractive a prospective to me. So I always used to look at the ABC and think: there is so much potential, they really need to get their shit together because they are so weak digitally. So I thought that would be a really nice challenge, to come back and help make it a more dynamic and digital-thinking place. So I had that in mind and then I saw the job add open up, so I applied.
And has your motivation changed over time? About the reason why I wanted to work here?
Yes.
150 Not really, I have always been motivated by wanting to make the news more accessible and understandable and also more relevant. So, you know, I was 20 years young when I started and I felt the news didn't really talk to people my age, that the news judgement was wrong or wasn't doing particularly well. And as the world got more digital and technology has helped us tell stories in different ways that desire has pretty much stayed the same. Still driven by trying to make stuff explainable and understandable and accessible and relevant.
What are your professional goals. Where would you like to go next? Oh! I...this is, I actually said this in my application that that's my last unrealised professional ambition to come here. I have won all the awards I have wanted to win in Australia and in America. Not that awards matter, but yeah I have worked everywhere I have wanted to work. This is it. I am done!
Okay, great. What are the most important values that inform your work? Hmmm...honesty. And a lot of that is not in what we produce, but it is how we deal with colleagues, and how we explain to our teams about exactly what we are hoping to do and what our missions are and that is something I can't stand when I feel people are not being honest with us. That would be the most important. Obviously I really believe in journalism and that journalism does good, so all of the qualities associated with that. You want the truth out there, wanting to expose wrongdoing, having a bit of an activist streak in me, so I like to try and fix things if I see them to the limited extent you can do as a journalist of course. But, honesty is the most important one to me and mostly that is in how we deal with our colleagues in the organisation and with people who work for us. Always be honest and trying to make sure our managers are always honest with us.
And does your work live up to these values? Uhm...I think I do. I really try to. But no, not everyone in the organisation is very honest or transparent.
Does your work make you happy? Yes, it can. It is a period of upheaval here now, and I don't think we are going in the right direction. But yes, it has made me tremendously happy. I love nailing, particularly when I was very hands-on and creative, I love nailing and know that I have told the better version of the story. It is something that has been beautiful and a really enriching experience, to actually tell a story that has been enjoyable for people. So it might be a serious thing about rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I like to think it was a beautiful experience for people and I have told to them, I have found the right way...I love nailing it, think that that is the best way you could have told that story through a combination of text and pictures and video and audio and interactivity, in all of the ways you can explain a story, knowing that that is the best possible way. And if I have raised emotion in someone that is a beautiful thing. That is what I love the most.
And do you ever get angry in your work? Yes.
151
What make you angry? Uhm...see above I suppose. When decisions are made that show a lack of respect for the management team here and for our other teams, that just don't have any reason behind them. They are the wrong decisions. If I can be arrogant I would love to say that it is the wrong decision.
Is there anything that scares you in what is happening in your field of work? Oh...no I think it is all quite good. I suppose the only things that would scare me would be when you hear about people, generally younger people, but it can be older people as well, disengaging and feeling like they didn't want to follow the news anymore because they didn't trust us anymore, or journalism is biased. So then they go and self-select their news so they can watch something that is quite false on YouTube and then YouTube will keep suggesting that false misinformation. This has probably existed long before the Internet, listening to shock-docs on the radio that just get people angry. So I suppose I don't want to live in a world, I used to live in America and it's, you know, they are further down that path where people are very informed and choose not to be informed. That makes me concerned, but as...oh and it is also a concern that the business model for journalism has changed and I can't see a good way around it. I want to live..I am very competitive and I want to, obviously don't want to be beaten by competitors but I want to have lots of strong competitors around me, because the kids are better at what we are doing but it's better for us if we have strong media and not just a failing newspaper, that no one reads anymore, that people thing journalism is not worth paying for. You know, TV that is not great anymore but only a few old people listen to. I think that is bad for all of us so that concerns me. And while I am really optimistic about our capacity for telling stories and reaching people all around the world with great technologies now, that will be fewer and fewer of us because people don't want to pay for journalism. You know, they have never paid for journalism, it was always advertising. Their advertising model has broken so it had gone negatively unfortunately.
Can you think of any good business-model for digital journalism? No I have thought about it for a long time and I did a three-months sabatical, a couple of Christmasses ago and I tried to sort of study that and figure one out and I don't know what a good one is. I think public funding is a pretty good model, but that still won't give you a lot of diversity, because the taxpayer will generally fund the organisation. Wether it is the BBC or us or, DK in Denmark or whatever they all are. What is the public broadcaster in the Netherlands?
NPO. It is really good. Is it strong?
Uhm...yes. There are budget cuts but they make really good stuff I have to say. I really like the media landscape in Holland. Of course there is a lot of
152 crap, but the NPO really generally makes very good stuff and are free to do this. So they don't have it in the States...and they call it State media too...which has that taint of, you know, China.
Yes, very much… You know, Moscow. State media. Because they don't trust it, they think if it's public funded, therefore it's bad.
And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing? Uhm...wanting to, I feel like I am at a national institution now, or at a national treasure and it's an honour to be one of the custodians, so I want to see it become more relevant and do a better job. Because if we don't turn it around we will reach fewer and fewer Australians every year, which means our funding will minimise every year and will die. I would hate to see the place die, for lots of heritage reasons because it does a lot of good work, but also it is one less strong voice in Australian society or democracy which is not a good thing.
Which communities would you say you belong to? Hmmm... the journalism community, Australian community. I really like the little village where I live, so I feel very connected with that community. I think I am a person who loves the natural environment in Sydney. I think I am a good compassionate Australian, who cares about people and the underprivileged, but also about the environment. So I do thinks like never own a car and don't drive, silly things like that that are soft feeling but you know, it is just personal principal I suppose. Wanting to keep the air fresh and neighborhoods and villages car-free.
So the environmentally conscious community I guess? Yeah. I guess so. I have become part of a yoga community. Uhm...that's probably it. And then obviously your group of friends.
And do you have any memberships to trade unions? I don't currently. I was for a long time member of the journalism union here the EMAA. Then I have moved, left the country and since I have come back I haven't taken it up again. I am executive level here, I wouldn't be covered by the union anyway.
Ah so you have already answered how useful these professional communities are to you, so unless you have anything to add… Yeah, look they are very useful to me. There is e-mail, there is Slack channel, the fact that you can get inspired by, and see what’s going on in the world and you can sort of reach out to people individually…Twitter makes things easy, if I ever had questions…
And is there a community you would like to belong to but don’t yet? Uhm…I would like to be in the community of people who have waterfront property. That would be lovely. I would never ask for anything else in the world,
153 but just for an ocean view. I would never spend money on clothes or anything ever again, I could just be sitting there, happy, looking at the ocean change everyday. That is all I ask…that’s a flipping answer… I don’t know. I don’t know. How would you answer that one?
I find it a very hard question too. It is funny how everyone reacts to it. How are other people answering without telling me who said what?
Most people said I don’t, others said if I did than I would have already and some said the community of women in media. Ah women in media that is actually an organisation here, it is fantastic. I spoke at their conference last month. But no, I suppose I can’t think of that. If I wanted to live in London, I suppose that would be an answer. I love London, I love Amsterdam. I would love to live there.
You would love to live in Amsterdam? I think so. It is really liveable.
It is a very liveable city, definitely. You can walk everywhere. It would be great for you without a car. No one has a car in Amsterdam. I know, I feel like people there share my values.
And who do you see as your main competitors? It’s everything. It’s Netflix, it is games, it’s chat apps, it is anything. Anything that is competing for attention on a smartphone. Don’t look at news competitors only. It is all of the different ways that people’s attention can get fragmented now.
And has this changed over time? Do you have new competitors? Uhm…yes, probably. The arrival of the smartphone changed everything really. I was working at the market leader for a long time, so we were never really looking over our shoulder because we knew what we were doing. We were so far above what everyone else was doing in terms of audience, but in terms of creativity and what we were offering for digital products, so I never felt that feeling when I worked here before. Now at the ABC I am not the market leader, so we look at news.com.au which is the market leader, or sometimes channel 9, they beat us some months or even the SMH, my old workplace has beat us a couple of months. So you look at them and think what can we do to beat them? I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that because I can see so many things that we should be fixing here first, so it’s alright. I look at them rather than elsewhere, and think: do I need ideas? Our main competitors are all the myriad ways people can spend time on their phones.
And who are your audiences? Well we are the national broadcaster so it is supposed to be all Australians. Realistically it is older Australians. But we were trying to do a lot of things, like the DSI team, and like some of the podcast projects I am involved in, and basically some of the transformation projects that make sure that newsrooms such as this
154 one become mobile-first, to change that audience so we are reaching younger and more relevant Australians. People younger than 60 would be good.
And you said would be good…meaning you don’t reach them yet? No we are not reaching them…not in large numbers, they are still old…We are trying to appeal to everyone though, which is hard, because you don’t serve any particular niche well.
Are you satisfied with how you are trying to reach younger audiences right now? No I think we can do a lot more. Look, I have only been here it’s over 12 months but not yet 18, so somewhere in between. And I wrote a plan, it outlines exactly what audiences we can pick up if we were to shift resources here. Things like digital-only or a mobile-first unit that just tells stories for younger Australians, knowing they will be watching them on the phone, so shot differently, the story- choice is different, the structure of the video piece is different. There are lots of things that I think we can do to…small pilot investments, to test and see if we can enlarge the numbers. There is a lot we could be doing.
Then the last couple of questions. How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? Well ideally, best case scenario, in lots of ways. By being involved before anyone even starts reporting a story so they can think about ‘have you thought of telling this story instead, or telling it in a different way? Or okay: let’s do it for TV, but let’s do this for digital-only.’ So really changing the way people think and commission what stories you want to tell, hopefully telling…involving people in…’let’s think about the audience, what are their questions about this?’ Because I think we still do too much journalism for other journalists and someone at the Four Corners who I will not name, when I’ve been talking to them about that they said ‘we never talk about the audience at all in our discussions’. And I think that is a mistake. So, the DSI team is brought in to change the way we fundamentally operate here. So that is, you know, probably not going to happen now since it has been restructured and is given a smaller mandate and less power.
Do you feel like that might change again? Yes, of course, hopefully it will.
Are you pushing for that to happen? Yes I am pushing for that to happen, but I don’t have that role right now to affect that change, but I am confident, you know, these people have all heard me talk enough about I want them to come in here and be change-agents. They are all really positive people. No one is cynical or depressed about the change. They are all really good at what they do, so I think individually they will chip away at people on a small individual, person-by-person level. And get that change happening.
And what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? Uhm…using the strength of the digital medium, and that is all sorts of things:
155 there is that scope for interactivity, but not using interactivity for interactivities’ sake. You can be very creative, audio will work or video will work, but sometimes just text works. And you can reach people on digital platforms as long as you create stuff for all those platforms and be respectful of how people use those platforms and what the audiences like and what the audience-profile is on those platforms and communities. And don’t just do promos, actually deliver stuff of value.
And has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other innovation units within or outside of the ABC? So the DSI team was formed, so we have a unit in the ABC who are based in Brisbane who do pretty much the same thing although they are not as senior as these people. I don’t think they are quite at that level, although the person that runs that team is very good, but generally they don’t have the experience that these guys do. So when we were first talking 12 months ago about bringing this team in, news management were very much of the line that that Brisbane team, they didn’t say failure, they don’t see them as a failure…but there wasn’t enough transparency about how they chose the stories they did. Which possibly isn’t true, because I am a big fan of that team and the man who runs that team and I know that they’ve got thousands of people contacting them all the time, that’s not an exaggeration, everyone at the ABC is saying ‘my story is really good, can you work with me, can you make my stuff like this?’ And of course they have to be selective and can only say yes to one percent of the pitches that come in. So there was that thing that lead space here to where most of our team are and let’s make their work accountable so that we know what they are working on, so they don’t just disappear and not answer emails and come up with their own projects rather than come and work with our teams to make sure that our best journalism…you know there is an arrogance there that digital journalism isn’t our best, our best is our TV program, Four Corners for example. They might be an element of truth there, but there is that bit of arrogance there that I don’t like. But yes, so they can work here with our journalists and work on our best stories and help to bring them to life, so it wasn’t necessarily a mistake in setting up that Brisbane team prior to my arrival, but there was a feeling in news management ‘let’s not do that in that way again, let’s have them here where most of our people are and let’s make them accountable.’ If that makes sense.
Yes that does make sense. So I was quite mindful about setting up the team. When they came in I made sure all of the stakeholders around the place, like the people from Four Corners for example, knew that they were coming and they were here to help them and this is what they look like, and we had this three day information session I suppose when they all started work here, where they all had to do a song and dance and say ‘I am Ri and this is what I have done in the past.’ And there was a slideshow, and this is the sort of work we want to do…because we were talking to a lot of TV people, that don’t see what good journalism has been done around the world, so there was a lot of that education. But also showing everybody, this is the name, this is the face, this is the person that is going to be doing our development or our design.
156 So we had this torturous, I suppose, three-day session where everyone had to do digital 101 for our decision-leaders here, so I could see the way how everyone around here talked about that Brisbane team that is quite similar to DSI and we are here to make sure that none of that happens.
How do you plan to attract new audiences? From the work of the DSI team?
Yes. By telling more relevant stories, by telling them in a way that makes them more relevant and relatable and explainable and engaging. Telling stories in the way that people want to consume them. No one wants to wait for 7 o’clock and turn on the news, or wait for top of the hour and turn on TV or radio news. We want news in various formats, at various times of the day on different platforms. And make it almost enjoyable, and surprising, like ‘ah that’s a really nice way, I can choose my path in the story or hey look I can see this person talking about you know, this person has a voice now rather than me reporting about it or writing about it.’ Trying to reach them that way and staying at the forefront of how people use phones and their platforms and what is available. And trying to be really creative most of the time so that maybe it will create a buzz. One of the first people to do it in a new way might be word-of-mouth factor. Not a lot, because we are news, we are not fun, but you know, hopefully a bit of that will happen as well.
Yes? So you make this clear division between news and fun. Can news be fun? No not necessarily, but we can make news a bit more fun. Yes, for sure. Look, the team is really brought in here to make our teams collaborate more and not to treat digital people as the kids, or the people that come in last-minute to pretty or beautify a story. To work with them from the start, look at them as professionals, learn how to give away a story or share a story, like: ‘I don’t get to make all the calls on this story, maybe this person in the DSI team will have a better way to tell this story.’ And there is someone you should talk to. Here name is Dee Porter. She is one of the managers and stakeholders here. She runs what is currently the investigations team, but of course that’s changing, it will go onto Jo soon. She has been, of all the managers here, she has been the one who has really used the DSI team best. She will sit down and say hey we are thinking about doing a story on cults, or inland rail. She’ll say: ‘you are the experts, how do you think we should tell the story? How can we make it more relatable? How can we tell it best for phones?’ She has been the only one here that has done that. She has been a pleasure to work with and she’s smart and a lot of the best DSI work has been working with Dee and her team, because they share the story instead of saying’ no, no, no this is my story, I am going to give you the data, you are going to make the story the way I am going to tell you to and make it pretty’. So that is really what this team is brought in here to do and it worries me that it is not going to happen now. They have picked it up and put it under the worst offender really…who treats digital people badly.
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So it would be easier to implement it from the top down, because there are probably a lot of ego’s involved… Lots of ego’s in the way, yes. And I am not saying that people at the ABC are egotistical but in a change situation there is always a lot of fear.
When you care about a story it is hard to share… Yes, when you are a professional and a really good journo, yes. But they will get a better result and it will be seen by people under the age of 60 if they involve these people from the start. That is really all the team is brought in here to do and that’s just what worries me, that that may not happen now because they are going to be working under someone who is one of the biggest offenders. But they are all good strong people, they will all win everybody over by charm. They will get there in the end.
Last big question. Also, before I forget, so I should talk to Dee Porter, is there also someone of the non-believers I could talk to? Just someone from the other side, I would be very interested to talk to maybe two people outside of this team to see how they react to the team being here. Have you talked to Jo Puccini?
Yes I have. Uhm…yeah she’d be one. See no one’s going to admit that they don’t understand or value digital. Uhm, I will get you time with Gavin Morris, who is the director of news. Uhm…a non believer? I don’t think the woman of Four Corners is around at the moment, but you can try with her. Sally Neighbor.
Thank you. Last question. What do you see the most fundamental challenge for journalism? Oh uhm… it’s funding, it’s the business model. So we don’t have to worry about advertising revenue, we still have to worry about our ongoing funding. We learn every year I suppose wether they are going to cut us or not. There are some Australian politicians who don’t like how we’ve reported about them, and they hold the balance of power in some cases in Australia and so they put a lot of pressure on the government to cut our funding.
Are there any plan B’s for if the funding gets cut? From what I can tell at the ABC, and I am just a newcomer here, things change like this all the time. Funding stops and things close down all the time, and then you get a good budget and you can grow again. So a lot of us here aren’t ongoing, we are all on year-to-year contracts now. So it makes it easier.
You too? Yes, I am on an annual contract every 12 months, because our funding is precarious. But outside of the ABC funding for journalism anywhere is precarious. Sort of things you can’t afford anymore, the expense that suffers is the most valuable, like the long term investment in investigations.
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And are there any rules here when it comes to contracts? In Holland for example after your third one-year contract they need to offer you a permanent contract. They do go around those rules, so they will fire you for three months and then they’ll make you come back and do it again. So they find ways around it. My honest answer is I don’t know. I know that if someone’s been part-time for long enough then we have to offer them something permanent. I am not sure for people like us that are on year-to-year contracts. I think it is made quite clear to us when we sign the contract that there is no expectation of further contract and we sign it and just know that hopefully you will be continued. But it is on a year-to- year basis and you can’t expect anything beyond that.
How do you think that affects people working here? Uhm…it has made it a little hard to recruit people, but it also seems to have become the new normal in Australia, or maybe globally, which is a shame. And I hated the idea of it, but what do you do. I wanted to work here, I wanted a job.
Alright thank you!
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Interview Mark Doman
Let’s start with your job title. What is your job title? I am a journalist, a digital journalist and producer. Do you want me to explain the role a little bit?
Yes, why not. I guess it’s kind of a combo of – or combination, I will try not to shorten things haha – of, it is kind of two roles. There is the one side of coming up with stories, bringing our own sort of original ideas to the table for teams to work on and to sort of try to tell the stories in unique ways and the other side of it is working with other teams. So you know the broadcasters and those sorts of people to help turn their ideas, stories and investigations they are working on, to help turn them into sort of innovative stories, I guess. And working out what the best way is to tell these stories and if we need to do anything with them.
How long have you been doing this for? With this team it has been 6 months. It is a brand new team. Working more broadly in digital with the ABC probably five years I think.
What team were you in before this? I was working as the sort of digital person, producer, with the National Reporting Team. So that is a team of about 18 investigative journalists and producers across all of Australia. So they would work on investigations and I would come in at the start of those investigations and would work out, okay what is the digital component of the story – because they are working towards sort of, you know, broadcast, digital and radio. So those are the platforms they are all sort of working towards. And I was there guiding them in what the story needs, how it will appear, how we tell them and that sort of thing.
Was that the team with Jo or a different one? I am so confused. A different one. It is difficult, a lot of people have moved around. Jo used to be the boss of this team and then she moved over to 7:30 and then another guy started as the editor there and he was fired after two years and now Jo is the head of this new investigations team which takes in a lot of the people from that team, but also people from elsewhere, like other organisations and elsewhere in the ABC. So it is confusing.
So you were there when the other guy got fired? Yes, there was about a two year period when I was there. It al functioned essentially the same as Jo’s new team functions. Reporters pulled out of the daily cycle and the team is working with them on investigations. So it is now the team that we are part of.
160 Can you tell me a little bit about the difference between the new investigative team and the DSI that is now part of it? You will have to work together but it is sort of separate still right? Well, yea, well yes it is. I mean we have Hutch [Stephen Hutcheon] who is now are supervising producer. So they will still be pitching stuff to us, it’s a bit unclear as this stage because it is all brand new and no one really knows. Because there is only two teams like us in the whole of the ABC and no one really knows how it functions, but in saying that I think the process will be how we fit into that team is that people will have their investigations. Reporters, I think there is about 20 of them, they will have their long term investigations that they are working on. We will come in from the start and probably maybe work with them on the story, if we think there is some better way of telling the story. Do we need our developers, our designer or Inga our data journalist to get involved and help out? And we don’t only do that with the reporters in that team but also with like Four Corners and 7:30 and all those other teams as well.
So they are more sort of broadcast and radio oriented? Yes exactly they will have their own digital producer as well. So the day to day stuff will get done as well, they will help with that sort of stuff and if there are bigger projects, ones that requires developers or that sort of thing, that’s when we will come on board. If we think we need to do that.
Yes so you just cherry-pick the stories that you find need enhancements in some sort of way? Exactly. Sometimes there are ones that we can’t really turn down. The massive organisation stories and we have to then go: all right let’s see what we can do with this, as opposed to being not obvious but sometimes there will be stories where you can go: this is what we can do, but other times there are like big investigations that you know will work well as a written piece, but the organisation will want you to do something bigger and then that is when we will have our brainstorm sessions to find out what we can do with them. I know that is super confusing.
It is starting to make a bit more sense. It is only confusing because this has all just happened in the last month or so, and we have only started with this new team on Monday so we are still a little bit unclear of how it will work. But I think it will work itself out over the next couple of months. I can draw you a map or something like that haha.
And how old are you? I am 31, almost 32.
And did you get a job at the ABC straight out of university? Yes, so I started in 2007 or 2008. I was a reporter for, uhh I don’t know maybe 4 years before I started doing the digital reporting. So yea I worked in regional Australia and then in Melbourne for a while with their international team, the Asia-Pacific service, and then moved into doing state news in Victoria and then started with the digital team in Victoria when that all started up a few years ago.
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Ah so they have a digital team as well in Melbourne? Yes but they are not like us. They are just straight producers and journalists. A team of 4 that cover the stories of the day of Victoria and Melbourne. There is one in each state sort of thing. Sydney has one, Perth has one etc. So if something big happens in state politics, than they will cover that story. So I was doing that for a couple of years before I started with the National Reporting Team and moved up here.
How does the DSI fit into the ABC’s innovation history? I think it has always been. In the digital space there has always been an effort to be innovative, but has not necessarily been backed up by a lot of funding. I think that is changing now. I think teams like us that is the priority, to be innovative and tell stories in a unique and innovative ways. There is a new team in Canberra that has a designer and developer, so you know, they would have wanted to do all of these things but for a long time it was only the Brisbane team. The Interactive Storytelling Team. They have two developers and a few reporters working for them and a designer. That was the one source of innovative storytelling for the most part, which was come out of the ABC. Which was hard because there were a lot of people who wanted to do a lot of things and it was sort of getting bottlenecked into their team. And they constantly had to say no to so many projects because there is only so much they can do.
When were they formed? They were probably up and running at least 5 years ago. So that is quite a while ago for that type of team to be running in that type of space in that time. There weren’t that many people doing it, it wasn’t really a priority but to the ABC’s credit they stuck with that team and have invented lots of interesting stuff. So I think there has been a want to do innovative stuff in the digital space, but it’s hard, you know, it’s a massive organisation, shifting budgets. Getting a team like us up and running is difficult, it involved making people redundant to do that. That’s what we’ve been told for the whole time. We want this equal digital life which, I am not sure if you have heard of that term. It is a mantra I suppose of the news director Gavin Morris. So he calls it equal digital life: so the stories that we are telling have the same effort that we put into them as we put into broadcast for example. So and example of that was we recently worked on the paradise papers project that came out, so we were there from sort of day 1 of that story, working alongside the more traditional broadcast reporters. Working out what are we going to do with the story, how are we going to tell it, how is this going to work in a digital space. And that is kind of the essence, making sure that our stories have this equal contribution in the digital sense. Which hasn’t always happened.
So not digital first but equal digital life Yes, exactly. I think there is a negative connotation that goes with digital first. Because people put up their guards when they see that. We are working with a lot of people who have spent 30 years or whatever working in legacy media and all of
162 a sudden their news director is telling them that we want to be digital digital digital, and they are like wow. And there is a certain amount of tension there, but I mean I understand that. A lot of these people are being asked to now do something extra on top of all the other commitments that they already have, and they are all of a sudden expected to have all of the other skills that they may not have had before.
What type of skills are you talking about exactly? Well just like writing, general writing skills. It makes sense to you and I but for people that have been working here for 20 years plus in broadcast and writing television or radio stories it doesn’t. it’s not always the same type of writing, there is also the expectation of photos and things like that, juggling that sort of stuff. And if you take that a step further is when you go, I’ve got a big story, how do I tell this story in a unique innovative way, are kind of the skills that not a lot of people have. But maybe a lot of people want them, so anyway…
And what do you think the DSI’s mission is? It is in my mind and this may differ depending on who you ask. So one would be to be working on the ABC’s biggest stories, to ensure we are telling them in the best ways for the audience. So you know whether that is straight write a straight news story, we can give that advice to people, we can say ‘that is probably the best approach, why don’t you go off on that’. Or is it, okay we get all of our developers involved and we have a unique, creative way of telling that story. For example with this paradise papers project we worked on, we had this one big story about how Nike basically avoids paying tax in Australia and it does that by paying tax in the Netherlands, where it traffics all of its money. So essentially broke that down and did a little animated scrollyteller kind of thing where you go through it and it splits apart your hundred dollars for you shoes and that initially was a 3500 word story about you know where money goes and that sort of thing, which was super dry and super dense and that was kind of like an opportunity for us to say well let's break that right down I think the story was about 700 words max in the end and was a lot of animations, just really breaking it down with audiences in mind, it was all about what the best way is of telling that story. And that to me is the key part of what we are trying to do is to identify those opportunities to go, alright there is a different way of telling a story that is better for audiences and is creative and sets us apart, I guess, from other organisations who are doing similar innovative type stuff. The other part of it is to come up with our own ideas to be told in unique creative ways, so not necessarily trying to work traditional stories into an innovative format, but to have sort of a different way of thinking about stories. Telling stories that wouldn't otherwise have been told. You know, with the skills of our team kind of thing. So for example this Facebook reaction story that we are working on, it would make a pretty dry kind of story about numbers and data and that sort of thing, but because we have the skills of the developers and Inga, who is a data journalist who can tell interesting stories from datasets and that kind of thing. And there is not a lot of that going on here at the moment so it is kind of bringing those skills and then, I guess, I don't know there are two parts
163 and there is probably a third: to share those skills with other people in the organisation so we can raise the bar of digital literacy across the organisations.
So you have a little bit of an educational task as well? Yes exactly and that's, you know, Inga does workshops for people about what to look for in data and when you know you've got good data and how to find it and that kind of stuff. Which I am sure she can tell you more about. So yea, there's a bit of that and Michael does his audience insights and shares his in-depth look at how stories perform, what we need to be looking at on social, so that. Having us on the ground floor of the news room is to sort of have that idea-swap between people, so people can ask us questions and we can ask people questions when we need help, the skills-transference is another part of the work.
Just out of interest, the story you were talking about before the 3500 word one. Is the end-version only 700 words with visuals and all of the rest of the words were dropped or is it put somewhere else as well, the full story? So we cut it all. Which is hard, it is a difficult process.
It is super hard! Who wrote it? Was it someone from a different team? No, so it depends, sometimes we take on projects and we take on the writing and everything but in this case it was a collaboration between Steward who is one of the reporters at Four Corners, and he was great about it. It is not easy to cut 2000 words from a piece and then there are the conversations we have and sometimes you know, we get a byline and sometimes we don't. But to their credit, Four Corners were very supportive of this process and placed a lot of faith in us to be creative with it and to try something different. Which, you don't always get that support. So yea, that was good, I mean you never 100% know you are making the right decision. All of us had gut feelings that it was the right decision, but you are kind of like...ohhhh no.
It is so hard, you have to be super good at communicating. Well that's the thing. And that's the, I mean, I think they all got it in the end because when we got the end product they were all like ahh yea, that makes so much more sense now, it is more digestible, and I think it worked a lot better than what that story would have been otherwise.
Okay. And when will this mission be successful? As in the DSI team? I think we are already making, I mean I guess it depends on how you define success, but I think with the projects that we have worked on so far we have shown that we can be successful. I think there is still a way to go in terms of getting, I think we are pretty clear about what we want to do, it is sort of getting that across to everyone else that we are trying to work with that these are the kinds of stories that we want to be telling and I think that will come with more examples of what we are trying to do. So you know, we had the paradise papers, we had mortgage stress, we've had Inga's stories that we have done about the Australian population and all that sort of thing. So we are starting to get a good suite of stories and different approaches of stories together, which really helps
164 when you are sitting in meetings chatting to people about what it is that we can do. Because a lot of the time people we are working with people who think from a broadcast perspective. A lot of the time, not always. There are some people who get it, I guess, what we are trying to do. So a lot of the time they are thinking visually about stories in the sense that how can we make our online pieces look like our television stories, kind of thing, whereas we definitely don't see it in that way at all. A lot of the time people will see us as sort of a presentation team and we are trying to go 'well this is not what we are at all'. There is an element of that, yes we want all of our stuff to look great, but I think our number one thing is how can we tell the story as apposed to how can we make the story that we are telling look great. So that's the key hurdle, I suppose, that we need to overcome. And maybe with communication and skillswap between the people...So yea I guess there is a little way to go before we succeed in achieving that, but I think we are sort of chipping our way to achieving that.
How long do you still have for that? Is there some sort of deadline? Yes we are only funded for a year at the moment.
Is there a certain amount of articles or things you have to churn out? No, they don't have that, they used to have that and that was for when Matt's team, the Interactive Storytelling Team in Brisbane, first started. They had all of these quotas that they needed to make, so they had to do a piece a day, one medium-term piece a week and then one longer-term piece a month. So they were just pumping out stuff and it goes agains what you are trying to do. The success so far of this team has been the ability to not get caught up in that stuff and actually just work on bigger long-term projects. I get the importance of the weekly stuff or the medium-term stuff, maybe that's what we need to sort of have a think a bit better about how we integrate with everyone else to achieve a few shorter term projects. But I think it is working well at the moment not having those quotas because it kills the creative freedom and it is kind of like just pumping out stuff and you take away from the other projects that you are trying to do really good things on. So you would only get a half baked project in the end instead of getting a great sort of story with more impact.
How long do you usually have for a story? It depends what the story is. This one that Inga is doing at the moment on birthdays has been probably two weeks. So that is probably in the short-end of the time that we would spend on a story. I did another one that was kind of like a football finals calculator, using the mathematical model to predict who is going to win the finals. That was another short-term thing that you can just punch in and you can get your results and that was like one or two weeks. On the other end of the scale our longest story has been probably the paradise stuff which was maybe two months. We were split between doing some reporting on that and then moving from the reporting into the visuals and we then told our stories and that sort of thing, so that is definitely on the longer end of the scale. But we are trying to keep a balance between the short, medium and long term without setting any quotas, it's more internal, we know that we need to produce stuff to be successful
165 and we are trying to do as much stuff as we can but you know that's one of the issues with telling different stories, is that they take time. I think people see that, but we will find out in 6 months when we find out if we are funded again.
That is interesting. Do you have a daily routine at all at the moment? It's not a routine really, because it is not a very routine job it depends on the project. There are similarities between projects. We will go through the working out what our story is and how we want to tell that story, then we go through the journalism side of things - this is for stories with other people and with us as well we kind of work out what the story is that we are telling - a lot of the time we always ask well we need the story so we can go from that basis and work out how to tell that, if it is ours we will write the story we will then come back and have a look at 'here is what we said we would do, is it still the same?', and then we say well how are we going to achieve that and we work with the developers in Melbourne. We are on Slack a lot, so they will send us their prototypes for interactives, or we will send them our drawings of what we think things should look like, and then we will move into a roll-out type phase, working with Michael our audience analystics, to make sure we are targeting the right audiences on social and we have got all of the elements we need like videos and created a spreadsheet for all the different social cells that we can pick throughtout the day to keep sending the story out to the masses. A lot of it happens at the same time, it is not sort of a set layout. That is how we work, normally we create big long lists of what we have to do and we go off and tick them off.
So there is no daily routine? Not really, no I get coffee in the morning and that's about it. haha.
Are you always working on different projects at the same time or is it mostly one after the other? Uhm..we try to have them double up, I suppose. Just to increase our productivity. But in saying that, with the developers it is a bit harder to do that. Often they will just be like alright I’m gonna spend a whole day working on this or a whole day working on that. But we do try to have a few projects going at the same time, and you know, juggling that can be tricky and we would love more developers and designers and everything to help increase our productivity, but you know… we work with what we’ve got. We try to have a balance in taking on enough so that we are producing good interesting content, and not taking on too much just to not do a half-job at everything.
What kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to do in this job? Uhm… I think maybe coming up with stories, helping other people mould their ideas into better ways of telling the story online, is another big part of it. And I feel like it is a pretty creative process because you are trying to think up how this would work, or you are trying to get your inspiration from what other people have done, or it is just something completely different. So there is that, and there is also just straight journalism as well that I am doing. Calling people, doing interviews, writing stories, writing scripts, checking other people’s scripts, doing all that type
166 of stuff. And there is also the production side which is getting stuff into our content management system and there is the cutting videos type of stuff or you know that sort of thing. So there are a lot of different pieces, which I like. That is kind of what we are all like, everyone can kind of do a few different things. It is nice being in a team that have very mixed skills.
Do you do any reporting still? Yes, it is a different type of reporting than what I have done before. With this Facebook data story it is kind of going through and analyse this data and generate stories from that and then it is going out and speaking to people about it and finding the right contacts to speak to about that. So you know, it is not like the traditional sense of investigative reporting or anything like that, just a different type of reporting. But there is still the interviewing and calling around and reporting and, you know, working out how to tell a story, that comes into it.
Writing is that new to you? No, I have always written. As long as I have been a reporter, I have been writing. I was doing radio to start off with, but we still had online so for the most part I’ve been writing online stories. Since is started in 2007/2008. So yea, you are always learning and things are changing in the way we would write. Five years ago is not the same way that we would write now, I don’t think – I mean there are still the same ways of writing cops and robber stories but I think it has become more refined over that time.
And how many different tasks do you have on an average day? It depends. There is always a bunch of stuff to do, what they are varies wildly depending on the project we are working on. Sometimes I would just be on a story and won’t do any reporting at all, it will just be production. So I will be helping getting stories in, being sort of the middle man between liaising with reporters and our developers and Hutch and Alex the designer. And then I will pull everything together at the end and package it all up. Other days I will just be doing reporting, which is what today will be. I have got a couple of interviews lined up for this afternoon, so I will be doing them and then finishing off writing a story.
Do you do interviews by phone? It depends, this one I will do over the phone, just because people are overseas but yea for the most part it is over the phone. That is just easier, generally.
How do you experience having these different tasks and juggling them? It is fine. I mean, I guess being a reporter in an organisation like this, you learn very quickly that you have to be able to juggle lots of stuff at once. So you know like when you are out reporting on the stuff, you are doing all of the different platforms, you are trying to get interviews all that sort of stuff. Yea, it is fine. In terms of this new role, again, it is probably easier because you are working towards one platform and it is kind of nice to break it up between stories – doing
167 the reporting on one and then just going into straight production, it is kind of like a nice relief.
What are the skills that someone needs to have to do what you do? Uhm…that’s a good questions. I guess probably the ability to adapt is one of the biggest skills, I think. I am sure there are a lot of skills that I have now that I wouldn’t use in three years, or whatever, when systems change. Things like working within our current content management system, which is a lot of what I do at the moment. I am sure that will be replaced and updated with something else, so being able to learn those new skills is a big part of it, but there is also the traditional skills which are important as well. Good editorial judgement I think, being able to know what will make a good story, they are probably the key ones, aside from general reporting and production skills, video editing skills. I think those are probably the ones that are most important and the ones that will stand out over time more.
Do you do the video editing yourself as well? Yes, I don’t do as much of it in this role, because we have Jack who is a video producer and we have Alex who is also really great in our graphics, so I am more sort of where I can or where they need help I can jump in and do that. So that is probably like two percent of my role currently but it is a skill that I have and we can use whenever. So yea it is being skilled in a lot of different things at the same time, because it is kind of like what these roles are going to be in the future. You will just have to be able to do a lot of different things.
And what have you learned since starting doing this work? Uhm…I have learned a lot about the priorities of other teams, I suppose. And that what we think of how to tell a good story is not always the way other people think of how to tell a good story. Which is fine, that’s alright. So I guess it is probably a learning experience, trying to manage the expectations of other teams and what we can achieve. Sorry that is a terrible answer, let me think about that.
You sort of answered this, but maybe you can elaborate. Do you work with other teams within the ABC? Yes, all the time. A lot of what we do is working with other teams.
Both radio and broadcast? I would say it is mainly broadcast, although in saying that we have had chats with Radio National about a longer term project they are working on about class and society and that sort of thing. So, yea it is all forms. A lot of the time we are working with television because they are the bigger teams and they have the big stories. If there is a big story in the ABC generally it will go on television, you know, that is the main place that is ends up.
Are there no current affairs, or Four Corner type programs on radio? Yes so there is a team called Background Briefing. But we don’t have anything to do with them at all.
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Interesting. Yes, I don’t know why that is. I guess they have their own digital teams and maybe there is a bit of a…we are funded by News, and they don’t sit in News, I don’t think. I think they are funded by Radio National. So there are all these complex structures, which they are trying to break down, because I think we should just be working with whoever has a great story. And I think a lot of people would think that, but it is not always the way it works. Maybe people don’t even know that we exist. I don’t know, it is a massive organisation. Sometimes things slip through the cracks.
And do you generally work alone or do you work with colleagues? No, most of the time we work together. So we are all separated, so a lot of that working together is happening on Slack. We are sort of chatting on there, or sending stuff back and forth, or having little video catch-ups or conversations here. So most of the time we are working together, but obviously there are days where you just have to do what you have to do. And that is the same for everyone. There will be days, you know, where I will just be writing or producing all day and the same goes for our developers. Sometimes you won’t hear from them for a day, but they are just finishing off something they were speaking about the day before. So, yeah, for the most part it is collaborative and I think that is the best way to do it, because when we are talking we are coming up with other ideas. We have a channel in there where we swap stuff we like, so we share stuff other people are working on. So yea, it is a very collaborative process that we engage in.
Just for me to get it clear because I think the terms in Holland are a little different to the terms here. Writing is clear to me, but what do you mean exactly when you say producing and when you say reporting? Okay, so reporting is just getting the story, writing it, researching and doing any interviews and that sort of thing. The production side comes pulling that stuff in our content management system. Say for example if we do a big visual treatment of a story with looping videos and all that kind of stuff, there is a time consuming element of production that goes into that. Cutting your looping videos, getting all of your photos in the system, putting that in there, getting the correct tagging and all that sort of stuff. So that is the production-side of things. When I am doing the reporting it will be me researching, writing the story itself and anything else that goes with it like taking photos and doing the interviews. I haven’t really taken any photos yet in this team because we have better photographers here than me. Jack and Alex. But if it was just me going out on a shoot, I would take photos.
Do you always see you peers and colleagues at work or do you meet outside of work too? Uhm…not very much. I think we just work here. The thing is, we have only been working for a short period of time, and most were hired externally. So we didn’t actually know each other. Not so much at the moment, but probably in the future. I don’t hate anyone on the team. Hahaha.
169 I have noticed that a lot of people take their own lunch and sort of go different ways for lunch. Do you ever have lunch together? Sometimes. We are all on different wavelengths sometimes, depends on what we are doing. Once or twice a week some of us will get lunch, because we are separated as well across the team. So, you know, Inga and I might go up and have lunch, or you know maybe Alex will do that. But it is being separated, you kind of just go off and do your own thing and come back. But every now and then we do that. There is a social element to it I suppose.
Are you missing any skills in the team? Certain people? Do you need more people? I mean, we would love more people. Probably…what would we need? To be honest I think we are pretty well-rounded in what we can cover and if we need anything else we can often outsource it, like we did with that… I mean obviously it would be awesome to have an illustrator, but it is a pretty niche role. To be able to fund someone full-time, you would be doing a lot of illustrated things. The piece that we did yesterday, we just hired an illustrator and paid him a certain amount of money to produce that. So I think we are pretty well covered. Maybe another designer like Alex, because his time is precious. He is often quite busy with a lot of different projects. We have two developers, but we only have one designer. He is well-worked, so maybe another designer. But we do have those skills in the team and Alex is really good at it.
I suppose you don’t have any other jobs next to this one? Uhm…no. One is enough haha.
What do you consider free time? Like…what do I do?
Yeah..what do you do… or what do you consider free time? A lot of journalists will basically do journalism work outside of working hours… Ah yeah, I get it. I guess my day ends at the end of the day, whenever that finishes. But you know, we are a pretty connected team. We communicate via Slack so it is always on our phones. We are always sending messages or emailing each other, we have got our laptops at home where we can jump into the content management system and change stuff, so I guess in the sense of being clocked off and out of there. We don’t do that, there is a lot of that going on. In life as a journalist you are kind of constantly sourcing stories.
So you are constantly checking the news? Yeah, and you see things through a prism of a journalist, I suppose, as opposed to just being a member of the public. You see things through the prism of potentially being a story…you know? So there is that element to it. Not to a crazy degree, but you can’t avoid that. But it’s not like consuming or anything, you can still have free time and a normal life, but as much of a normal life as you can have I suppose.
170 How many hours of free time would you consider you have a week? Does sleeping count as free time?
Yes. Let’s start with how many hours you work a week. I would probably do 9 hours a day on an average week. I reckon, not including checking emails at home and checking work from home, which doesn’t happen that often, I would say 9 hours a day. When we are getting to the point where stories can blow out to 12 hours a day kind of thing, getting big projects finished off and that sort of thing. But on average 9.
And would you consider the rest free time? Well free… in the sense that I would also be doing the other things like taking calls. I was chatting to someone, interviewing someone last night at 7:30. So you do that kind of stuff, but it’s only half an hour out of your day kind of thing. So I would still consider that free time, but I am chatting to someone on the phone, or replying to a message or doing that sort of thing.
In what ways does your team earn an income or revenue? Well I guess we are a not-for-profit, so we are not forced to generate profit for anyone. But I guess the profit is in the reach of our stories, that is how we are measured – in the success of our story, in engagement and page-views as opposed to money brought in. Which makes us unique, we are a public broadcaster.
Do you manage to earn a living? Yes. Yea yea yea.
Comfortably enough? Yes, it’s comfortable. I survive.. hahaha
And do you take on any assignments that you’d rather not take on if you had more work? I guess this is more for people who have other jobs as well…which is not the case with you. Do you take-on freelance things? No, it’s not that hard but the ABC makes it hard for people to work externally. Not that I necessarily want to, I am busy enough here. So, no.
What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? It’s probably working with that sort of tension between the expectations of legacy broadcasters and what we want to do and what we thing are the best ways of telling a story. So, like I was saying, I understand why that exists, but for me it is a source of frustration trying to constantly have meetings and you get the sense that people just want you to make their stories look nice. We really just want to go so far beyond that, but sometimes you feel like you just have to take on those projects just to make people feel happy. So, that is probably the toughest part. Getting good stories for the big projects that the organisation is working on, and telling them knowing that you only have six months to prove yourself and do all the stories you want to do.
171 Yes, that must we quite stressful. I mean it is always at the back of our minds. We know, and we have known from the start that we need to get runs on the board so to speak. Doing that within a year, projects where you are like ‘yea this is a great story for our team to get their teeth in’ don’t come along that often. So like, I would say the mortgage stress story that our team did is a rare example of another team coming to us with a really good dataset where we can just kind of go like ‘yes, we know exactly what to do with that.’ So, yeah, that is a tricky part as well. I think it then falls back onto us…
Yes, because then you can’t really shine and show what you are made out of. Yeah, which is okay because I mean we are not relying only on their stories, we have a lot of our own stuff that we want to do. And I would say in an ideal world it would just be our stuff that we would do and if we would get a good one we would take that on. But that is not the way we’ve been set up. We have been set up as the team to serve other teams, kind of thing, that would occasionally do their own stuff.
Do you think it is 50/50 or 20/80? Uhm…well it depends. Like this time of year, because a lot of those programs aren’t working, a lot of the stuff we are doing are our stories. So that’s great, we have got a lot of stuff backed up and ready to go. So when the other teams are back on it is probably like…I would like to say 50/50 but it’s probably more like 70/30. The majority of the stuff would be their stuff and then we’d be working on our stuff in the background.
Where do you work most? Do you work at the office mostly or from home…? Yeah here, mostly.
Also if you record? Record interviews? We have a lot of radio booths upstairs so we just jump up there and record.
And the studios, are they all in this building? So they’re all on the first floor up there. Well not all of them, but that’s where the closest ones to me are.
So you don’t work from home or anything right? I do, if I have stories going out over the weekend or we have early morning roll- outs, I take my laptop and then just roll it out from there because we can work from where ever. I will just get up early and ensure the smooth roll-out of the stories.
What facilities do you have in your workspace? From coffee machines to laptops…
172 Well I’ve got my laptop, my phone…
Do you get a company phone? I was offered one, but declined to do that because they put on an app on your phone that can track where you are so I decided not to do that. I just claim some back on tax at the end. But yeah, we have got the kitchen, we have water and hot water…there’s not much provided at public broadcasters unfortunately. There’s milk and coffee and tea I guess…what more could you want? Haha.
And what kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential? Uhm..my phone and my computer, the rest I could probably live without. Water… haha. No but yeah, I could be anywhere if I had my phone connected and my laptop I could do my job from anywhere.
And what kind of hard and software do you use? I am using our content management system, I’m using the Adobe creative suite, so a lot of internal systems we use for getting the videos into the system, cutting videos and that sort of thing. I have started using Tableau a bit, for data analytics and that type of stuff. Yeah, that is about all I can think of.
And does the content system support what you are trying to do? No. Not at all. A lot of what we do is hacking our content management system to make it do what we want it to do. We embed fragments that allow us to change the CSS of the website, we chucked our own Javascript that is not integrated at all in the system. So it is a matter of try and see. Our developers would resign outside of core-media into their own space and then try to bring it in to see if it will work and it is sort of like a guessing game if it will work. So yeah and then beyond that we also serve the app and Applenews and all that sort of stuff. What we do is not supported there at all, so we work our ways around that sort of thing.
Because you are mobile-first right? Yeah exactly.
And…stories don’t work on the app? hahaha yes you have sort of nailed the ridiculousness of the scenario. We go mobile website first. All of the organisations working in this space would face similar frustrations. If it is us or Washington Post or New York Times or whatever, their stories don’t work in Google amp, or they are finding ways to change their stories to work in there. So that is a lot of what we do and it is a time consuming process. We will often have to do our whole stories and then inside that content management system remove a whole chunk so that won’t display in the app and then have a straight text story within that that is hidden for other users on a desktop or on the mobile website. And then just have a word and picture story that still works okay on the app but is not the same experience that you would get on the app or Applenews or Google amp or anything like that. So we are still sort of trying to navigate that a bit. We are conscious that that is a ridiculous scenario that we work in, but the app is out of our control.
173
What about your own app, would that be possible or is it not allowed? Uhmmm…well I would say that would be a hard sell for us to produce our own app just because there is so much traffic on the main app. Like how are we going to get people just to click on that app, you would be diverting traffic away from the main one. So yeah, the ideal scenario would be to allow the current ABC app to allow to read the Javascript that we create, which was always promised. But again, it is always the difficulty of working for such a massive organisations that decisions aren’t made with the developers on our team or the developers in Brisbane or Canberra. To actually go, well hang on this doesn’t really fit with what we are trying to do.
Are there any meetings about that? There was a meeting, that I was in. But that was after the new version of the app was already developed, and they were like: ‘this is what it looks like!’ So they are trying to get better, but again it is just another frustration that we have. So short answer is we design for mobile-website first. That’s our main game and then everything else we are trying to make work. Desktop works fine most of the time, but yeah, that is kind of like the converted pyramid of the way we function.
But just out of curiosity, if people click on a Facebook article would they then go to the mobile website? Yes.
Well then it’s fine right, most people access news through Facebook anyway… Yes exactly. It can have, it is always an unknown, but for the most part Facebook does work and then I think there is another browser within Facebook messenger as well which is slightly different to the one that you would use opening an article in Facebook. Because we don’t use instant articles yet, so yeah, anyway, it is basically a lot of the time we are trying to guess. We think this will work, we know with our own site, with all of the standard browsers how things will look on mobile, but once you hit go on it, it ends up in so many different places that you don’t know. We might be seeing through a straight text RSS feed kind of thing and I shudder to think what our stuff looks like in there. It would be terrible I’m sure. But anyway, we try to always make sure that there are at least words in there. If that is hidden within the story, that’s like, within a version of the story then that’s fine. As long as you can get to it, and you can read it, that is – not all that matters – but at least we are telling them a part of the story.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Uhm, yeah essential. Without them I wouldn’t have a job I suppose.
What do you wear in your main space of work? What do I wear? Well I am wearing shorts today, but this is very rare. Of course I get asked what I am wearing the one day I am wearing shorts haha.
174 Is there any policy or can everyone wear what they want to wear? Well I would say it is rare to wear shorts. Generally I would wear pants and a shirt, but you know…it is one week before Christmas, so you know…fuck it.
And do you feel comfortable in this environment? Clothing-wise… Yes, I think so. It is such a mix in here, because you have, again, the people hosting a nightly show have shirts and shoes and ties on. And there are other people, like me who would never go in front of a camera, like me who work purely for digital and for them it doesn’t matter that much. So I think it is just, you work in such a massive organisation that everyone, sort of, just ends up doing whatever they want. But it ends up on the more formal side of the spectrum than not.
What do you think, what’s your sense? (Mark) Yeah same, I have worked at a newspaper in Holland and it was much more casual than here. In Holland people are very casual, so I was very stressed about ‘oh what am I going to wear’. (Livia)
Yeah I was like that when I started and now I’m like, ‘oh it’s okay.’ (Mark)
What kind of support is available in your workspace? I think the ABC is great for support. We have great lawyers, who we can go to about advice for stories all the time, tech-support is okay…mainly because when we run into tech issues it is normally stuff that people don’t understand. Well not that they don’t understand but it is just not things that they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. People call up and their phone is not working and we call up and say well we have broken the entire website or something like that…So they are different issues, but they do help most of the times. Other support, like emotional support, that exists. I have never used it personally. I know people who have peer support who help out reporters when things are tough. The ABC works with DAAT I think they are called, they do a lot of trauma-counselling for reporters who need that.
Is that and outside company? Yes and they are very well regarded. And the ABC was one of the first people to sign up with them. So that is kind of like a big priority, to make sure that reporters are doing well in the workspace. Not just reporters, but everyone that works here. Not everyone feel that they are supported but…
Yes because it sounds like you would go there in extreme cases…what about the day-to-day stress things or if you would want to speak to someone? I think you would do that with colleagues. I would do that with Michael or Inga or Hutch. We are supportive in that we are friends working together, beyond that I don’t know how supportive it would be. No one would ever ask you, beyond our circle of people, but there are services if you need to. One of my former colleagues was a peer support person who would help people if they had troubles
175 at work, or you know like any kind of issue. So they would be your support person, so they do exist, but you wouldn’t know they existed until you are crying in an office saying you are about to quit.
And what would you like to change, if anything, about your workspace? Uhm… I guess I would like us to be funded beyond six months, but I get why we are not – because we are new and people don’t know what to expect. But I guess I would like the perception of what we do to change, what other people see us doing to change. And that is on us. I think that is up to us and I think that we are in part already doing that. The biggest thing I would like to change is the reason why people would come to see us, or why they want to collaborate with our team. As apposed to saying ‘alright I have got this story that I think is the best story ever and you guys just do something with it’ to shift that to be ‘alright, how can we tell this story that is going to be really useful to the people reading it, we reach new audiences’, that kind of thing, as apposed to it being the other way around.
And maybe to come earlier as well…because I was just thinking: cutting a 3500 word piece…Could they have come earlier and would this have not happened then, or was it very helpful that it was already written? Yes, so that was on our advice. Because on that particular project, and you are right, we do want to be in at the seed of an idea. To be like…‘so this is a story that I am about to set off’, I mean it doesn’t have to be right at the start… but at the very least before any production effort going into it. Before the main interviews that are going to be in the piece we want to be involved from then. Because then we can give advice and be like ‘alright write the story, and then we will see what it is. Because a lot of the time we will get a sense of what stories are, or people say things and make it sound better then what they are and then we think ‘oh we can do this, this and this.’ And then you see a story and then you are like, wow, that is totally different to when we spoke about it. So a lot of the time we will be like ‘alright this sounds like a great project, I think there is a lot of stuff that we can do here, why don’t you just write it or show us what you’ve got, or we can sit down and go through it and then we can sort of come up with where to go from there. So this is what we did with that project, we were not like ‘okay write a 3000 word piece and we are going to cut it back’, we were like ‘you write what you think is the story, if we have got time we can take a look at it and give advice based on that’. I think that’s the best way of doing it. Definitely that has been the most successful way, unless there is the source material, you know like the mortgage data. We had that data from the start so we don’t need them to write the story, we can just take it and write our own story and present it from there. There are a lot of cases coming in where people just have these really airy-fairy ideas, or don’t have an idea they just know they want it to be different, they will be like ‘alright we have spent a lot of money doing this so we want a good digital component’. Even though they don’t know what that is and they think that by talking to us that automatically guarantees this great interactive story, where we are just like ‘oh my god…what do we even do with this?!’
176 And what about the workspace, the physical space, would you like to change anything about that? Ohhh, sorry is that what you meant initially?
It can be both, anything you tell me about your work is interesting to me. Okay well, we are moving…which you know. Which will be a lot better, because obviously in the current setting we are all separated across the ground floor newsroom, which is…I find terrible, because we are only 20 meters apart maximum between the whole team but I don’t know, it feels like a divide in terms of that ease to be able to swap ideas or to be like ‘hey what do you think of this’, you know? I think that can be undervalued at times…In this new space we are all going to be working together in a team and you know, we can all just bounce stuff off each other, which I think is really important especially when you are trying to be creative, which we are and I think that helps a lot. Maybe others think differently, but I think working in a unit within earshot of each other will be more successful than having us spread out. They said we were spread out because of the idea that anyone could just come up and, you know, we were sort of integrated across different teams. I think they just couldn’t get the space that we needed, so they just made up a reason why. But yeah, I mean it is what it is, but in an ideal scenario we would all be sitting together in close proximity.
You said earlier about the six months, do you have a plan B? What would you do if this team disperses? Personally? No, well I have sort of been told that if this doesn’t work out that there are other positions…
Within the ABC? Within the ABC, but I am very open. We work with the skills, maybe I am being deluded, but the skills I think our teams have are easily transferrable to other roles that exist at the moment, so I am not too worried. I am pretty confident that we will be funded again. With the stories that we have done so far, it would be hard to not give us that funding again. But maybe I am wrong, oh well we will work it out. They have to give us some notice I suppose. I am not super fussed.
Just out of curiosity. What did you study? I studied journalism.
Here at UTS? No I studied in Melbourne at RMIT, there is a journalism course there.
Is that a bachelors? Yes. Bachelors, they do masters as well in journalism there. I think it is a pretty good uni to go to, very practical. They teach you all the heads on skills of a journalist, so yeah.
Why did you start working as a reporter? That is a good question. I am not really sure. We were chatting about this in the
177 team last week. I sort of…well I didn’t fall into it, but I grew up in a country town on a farm basically and I just wanted to work elsewhere, live somewhere else and do something. I enjoyed the outdoors and being outside and I thought this would be a good position where you would be actually getting out and doing stuff and talking to people. And the more I did it, the more I realised that I loved it because I loved asking questions and working out why and answering stuff, you know like, answering questions that people might have. So it sort of happened naturally.
And did it live up to your expectations? As in..outside and talking to people? Yeah. I guess it has morphed over time. When I very first started I was working in remote country South Australia and I had a four-wheel drive and went out into the country. It was brilliant. I was going into the outback to talk to people and when I moved back to the city and working in Melbourne as a reporter I was going out a lot and I did enjoy that a lot. In this role I do that less because I can do everything on my phone and on my laptop and there is also the production- side of things that is inconducive with the outdoors. But that’s okay that has changed over time. I think I valued that more when I was younger then I do now. I guess I still like going out and going on interviews and doing shoots and that sort of thing, it is always enjoyable, but not as important to me as what it was when I first started.
Okay so you have then also answered the second question, which is has your motivation changed over time. Is this your answer or do you have anything to add? Well I guess when I started I was always interested in online news. It was around, but especially at the ABC it wasn’t a priority for the organisation. But I was always taking photos and writing what I thought were interesting stories. They were probably terrible if I ever read them now. So that was always, I always enjoyed doing that but it wasn’t a priority for me. I had radio commitments, and sometimes television commitments but it wasn’t until five years ago that that sort of shifted. And then my focus became this digital news, whole time and trying to change attitudes towards that and now I just kind of go deeper and deeper into that. And now I am here at the very end of that trying to do stories that otherwise wouldn’t have been told I suppose.
What are your professional goals now? I sort of asked this question before but is there anything you would want to get into in particular? Uhm well I think for a long time this kind of reporting is where I wanted to be. So, for now I am where I want to be. I have a lot of interests. If you look at my history of employment it is kind of like two year, two year, two years kind of thing but I think that is kind of the nature of this job now. You don’t stay in things too long, but in saying that, this is what I have wanted to do for a long time. Working in a team like this where we are telling stories in different ways and being more creative than just kind of like churning stories out, to spend bit more time on working with people who have really great skills and I have easy access to them.
178 In terms of having goals I am goalless at the moment hahaha which is terrible. I am where I wanted to be.
At 31, that’s impressive. Well yeah but I am sure that will change over time.
Yes you will probably get new goals. Yeah but I am happy for the moment and then we will sort of, we will see what happens.
And what are the most important values that inform your work? I guess, I mean in terms of the stories that we are producing, telling stories well is probably at the top of my list. And well in the sense that you know, there is always this pressure with going too far with this type of…and you hear about that instantly. As soon as they go online you know. There is that tension between wanting to do stuff so far out there that you think is really creative and interesting but no one gets it…so yeah I mean telling stories in interesting ways that will make it easier for people to understand. I guess being respectful to the people that we are telling stories about, be considerate of subjects in there, or sort of overall themes of stories is high on my list.
What exactly do you mean by that? I mean it is easy to forget about the people you are telling stories about. Like when we are telling stories about people that are lower class or upper class or middle class and often you can write stories in a vacuum where you don’t really consider the people who are in those positions at the end. I guess that is sort of a tone thing in stories, but I am always conscious of that. Not obsessively, but that is probably more of a personal thing coming through in terms of values in a story.
Are there any ABC guidelines as to… There are. We have a whole suite of editorial policies, integrity and respect is at the top of them. I should be able to tell you them off the top of my head haha but you get the broad theme of them. Don’t be a jerk…essentially. That would be at the top of mine. Being right, being accurate, is always valuable. But I think, also I mention creativity a lot, but we all want to be the once to tell stories in a way that hasn’t been done before. We all want to be, you know, produce a story that becomes the new bar for telling stories. We want other people to be copying what we do. So I guess being at the fore of what people are doing is, something that we all value highly. I would say that would be our team slogan, to be, if not to be at the head to be one of the top sort of teams for producing creative, interesting, digestible stories.
And do you feel your work lives up to these values? Ohh…I hope so. I think so. Again, we are still a new team. We have only been going for six months. So I think, I wouldn’t say we have reached the top of our game yet, I am sure there is still a lot that we can do and probably never will. It is a pretty lofty goal to be the best, the most creative and innovative team that exists,
179 but I think there is still a lot of work to do. We are still learning each others’ skills and what people actually want to do and the types of stories that people want to tell. So that is kind of what I will develop over time on a more personal basis. Everyone has all of these different skills and we are all in these set roles at the moment and are slowly sort of branching out from that. I am a journalist and producer, but I can do these things and Alex is a designer but you know, can do motion graphics and stuff. He is really good at thinking about interactive design, user experience and that kind of thing. So we are learning that about him. All sorts of things like that. It will take time for us to reach those values. Other than that you are always trying to be as respectful as you can as a reporter. It may not always look that way, you know, because people don’t always understand what you are trying to do. So that is hard but that’s okay. You juggle it as best you can, being part of the mainstream media.
Does your job make you happy? Yeah, I think it does. I think so. I am kind of in a happy balance between not being in a mindless churning kind of role, which I have been in before, just kind of doing stuff that you are told to do, just having something places in front of you that you have to report on or produce about or whatever. There is an element of thinking outside the box, but at the same time there is an element…you do have work to do, you are not just sitting around having coffee thinking about the stuff you could do. There is also work involved in doing that. It keeps you busy. I am pretty happy.
And do you ever get angry in your work? I never get angry, I get frustrated. But that comes back to all the things we spoke about in terms of tensions between teams and us wanting to so more but people not really getting that. I don’t get angry but I get frustrated. But I think everyone gets frustrated in their roles haha.
Is there anything that scares you in what is happening in your field of work? Uhm…no. No I am generally excited about the things that are happening. Am I scared? Ah, I don’t know, maybe I am being totally deluded, but being in this field and having, knowing kind of like what makes good stories and what works online is a good skill to have and one that maybe can’t be chewed up. I think that is what scares people is skills becoming irrelevant in the workspace you are in. I am sitting here talking about people who have been sitting here for 20 years whose skills are unfortunately they are now being told that they are no longer as valued as they were before. It is a changing market, you need to reskill. I am not too scared about that, about doing new stuff. I am generally optimistic.
And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing? I guess it is that I always think there is a better way of doing things. I think working with innovation and different methods of storytelling is that there is no end-goal I suppose. We could always tell a story in a million different ways and it’s like we want to tell stories in a million different ways and it’s not like we are ever
180 going to get there. We choose one thing and then we are like ‘okay what’s next, what else can we do?’.
Which communities would you say you belong to? As in ethnically?
You can interpret the way you want. Oh okay. That is a really interesting question. I don’t know, I mean I have strong family connections and that is probably the community around me per se.
What about in work, are you part of any journalism unions or…? No, I am very removed from any of the political nature of work. I guess I try to, not avoid, but I sort of enjoy work and then I have got another life as well. I have a lot of friends who are musicians, so I guess that is a different community that I also exist in.
And I guess on social media you are part of different communities? Yes, I am probably more of an onlooker than being actively involved on Twitter or Facebook even as well. I don’t know I am always just fascinated by it, which is why I am doing this Facebook reaction story, because I find it more interesting from the outer to look at the outrage and the emotions that happen online as apposed to being the one that is super emotional online. Obviously to me privacy is a concern as well, because I think people give away way too much information and live their lives way too much online and don’t really consider the privacy implications and the information that people have on them based on what they say online.
Is there any community that you would like to belong to but don’t yet? haha. Uhm…I don’t think so. I think if I wanted to be part of a community I would just join it.
Who do you see as your main competitors? In a friendly sense I think the other team in Brisbane, the Interactive Storytelling team. I mean, it is in no way, like I am friends with all of them, it is in no way like we want to smash them or anything. But we see what they do, and they do a lot of interesting stuff and we are judged against what they create. So it is a competition in that sense I suppose.
Do you know them personally? Yeah, Matt the main editor I am friends with him, before I started in this role I worked with the developers and the designers there, so I know all of them quite well. We all want to do the best we can and we all see stuff that we want to do and we are like..’oh can we do that? Or what would be have done there?’ and I am sure they do the same for the stuff that we produce as well. Beyond the organisation I look to the Washington Post a lot, I think they are probably producing some of the best content in the innovative storytelling field at the moment. I really love a lot of the stuff they produce and the rate at which they
181 produce it. I would love to meet their team, because it is amazing. I mean there is obviously a commitment to do that kind of storytelling there and they are really going hard on it. So yeah, they are probably the two main ones. Obviously there is much more stuff around but that is more inspirational as opposed to being competitors or anything like that.
And has this changed? Do you have any new competitors? I mean…like when I was working in my previous job our other competitors would be Australian news organisations. We wanted to be the first, we wanted to be out there and have our stories, there was still an element of trying to tell our stories in different ways but a lot of the time it was straight news so we were just trying to be first. So yeah, I guess it has changed from the jobs we are in.
Is there no wanting to publish first in this role? Oh there is, but most of the time we are working on our own stories that other people wouldn’t have. There was a long investigation on news and you know when other people are on stuff because you hear about it. So we do have that for sure, Inga’s story for tomorrow is using Sense’s data, which is being published publicly. So we are prepping everything in advance so that as soon as it is published we can grab their data and put it into our story and publish. So we do want to be first, but 8 times out of 10 people are not gonna have our stories. So that becomes less of a priority, because we don’t have to worry about it.
Who are your audiences at the moment? We are getting to the end of it I promise. Well I would say our target audience would be 18-35 year olds. Are we reaching those people? Probably not. All we do goes through that mobile 18 to 34 prism and I think that the way is to get it on phones to be working well and then maybe the audiences come second. I think sometimes we think too much about the content we are producing, like the subjects that matter to young people. But I don’t know, maybe I am just in a journalism bubble, but for the most part I feel like people are interested in a wide range of things. And if you are delivering it to them on the platforms that they are on in interesting ways, in ways that are packaged to suit them then I think the audiences come with them.
Okay but you said they weren’t there yet? So you would have an older audience now? I think so. I think for the ABC more generally is seen as a legacy organisation where old, the broadcast audience we reach is old. People who tune in for linear television broadcasting. It is not like us, but people who are watching their TV at 7:30 at night on the dot. So the challenge for us is to reach the people that wouldn’t go to the website everyday. We are trying to reach them via other channels, and that is a challenge.
On what platforms are you trying to reach them? I guess on social. The last story we did is we were doing Instagram stories and Snapchat stories, Facebook videos. I mean Facebook is our main game because it
182 is a massive audience and while it does skew a bit older it is in the target market that brings the overall average down. It is harder with things like Snapchat. Reach isn’t that massive and getting click-throughs from there isn’t always intuitive. You can have a story on there and you can stay on Instagram and never have to leave. So that is hard, but yeah, we have tried everything. Testing it out, that is what we are here to do and if we can find a new audience through there that is awesome, but if not I think that is kind of the beauty of it. We can just try it a few times and if it’s not working we can move on or rethink what we do.
How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? I think you have actually already answered this like a million times so I might move on to the next one. What do you think are the key elements to digital storytelling? Having a good story to start off with is important. And I know that seems obvious but I think a lot of the time people forget that. You can have a concept for telling a story but you are trying to pigeonhole another story into you concept for telling a story. And example is, we kind of like have a template for scrollytelling where you scroll over and things animate in the background and you know we have done a couple of stories like that, but now everyone wants to do that. So they kind of like pigeonhole their story into a prism so you will do it like that way. Whereas maybe the best way to tell that story is just to write it with a couple of pictures in the story.
It is hard to get people on the same page, to get that feel for it. I think so, and being comfortable with your story just being text. A lot of the time people get caught up in what they think is a great story. And they get so consumed by the way it appears. I know I have come back a lot on that, but it is one of the challenges that we face. And they just forget that, probably if we do stuff to it you are going to lose an audience, because people will get turned off by some of the stuff that we do. So why don’t you just write it as a story? Because it would have been so much easier, and it’s hard to argue against that sometimes because you are like, well maybe it was…
And has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other digital innovation teams within the ABC? I don’t know about if we have learned from mistakes. I mean we definitely have learnt from the way the in-depth storytelling team functions in Brisbane. You know they had quotas when they first started off, and they knew that didn’t work, so they were never implemented for us. We learned a lot from what they do, not necessarily the mistakes they do. It is nice to see the projects that they have worked on and be like ‘can we build on that?’.
Yes. So it is usually an example rather than ‘oh, they’ve done that wrong, we can do it better.’ Yes, like I mean, I guess we would. I mean we don’t say they are wrong, because it is hard to say what’s right or wrong. We would be like ‘okay we would have probably taken a different approach to that’. Or sometimes they do stuff and
183 maybe it can be confusing, or that sort of thing, and then we think about how we would try to achieve that and maybe the answer is obvious and explains why things can be confusing. So yeah, I would say that we all kind of learn from each other. I mean they are the only ones that are doing the kind of content that we are doing currently. And this new team in Canberra but they have only just started.
In Canberra? Yes, so they have a smaller team to work within the political team. So there is a desginer and a developer working there, and a digital journalist as well.
Ah yes, because Canberra is the capitol right? Yes, not Sydney. You got that! Hahaha Australia 101. That is where all the federal politicians are, so there is quite a big political bureau there and there is a lot happening.
Last question: what do you see the most fundamental challenge for the field of journalism? Uhm…I guess it’s continuing to place a value on in-depth storytelling. Because it is so easy for media organisations to chase clicks and just kind of like do that churnalism, because it’s easy, it’s cheap and it’s effective. For your bottom line it’s effective. But at the same time, in saying that, there is also from what we can see from our audiences is there is a lot of value placed in being able to deliver content that enhances people’s understanding of the world. That sounds so wanky but I think there is still a lot of interest in that kind of explanation and going beyond the sort of ‘he said, she said’, the political cycle for example. I thing that people just get so disillusioned with that, that it is nice that there is an audience that goes beyond that. I see value in both. I love reading shit news, everyone does. But it think striking the balance between having entertaining news, and entertaining is not just celebrities and that, but just having funny, interesting news. Everybody loves the next Donald Trump story, because it is intriguing. We are humans, we love that kind of drama, we are never going to escape that. But then there’s also got to be I think you’ve got to balance the two. You’ve got to have investment in the more in-depth stuff, while having this kind of stuff that people want to read on a day to day basis.
Do you think there is an interest from the younger audiences in the in- depth stuff? I think so. I think that is significantly under…hmmm how do I put that? People just inherently think that young people are disengaged and don’t care. Where I think a lot of the time they do care, it is just not delivered to them in digestible ways. Everyone wants to understand why things are the way they are. And maybe reading, you know, 3000 words on your phone while you are on the phone isn’t your best way of doing that. It is way too much. They are just going to swipe past and consume something else. So, how you achieve that? I don’t know, I guess that is kind of what we are trying to do. Test the waters and try out different ways to reach that audience and I’m sure what we do now will be completely different in 2 or 3 years, or 1 year probably. So yes, that’s the challenge. That is through my
184 tunnel-vision what the big challenges are, I’m sure there are broader challenges for media organisations in terms of how then do you get people to pay for that. I have no idea. You do that. Gosh, yeah that is not my field of expertise. And yeah, I am very grateful that I work for a public broadcaster that does actually value innovation to an extent and is able to put money into it.
185 Interview Jack Fisher
What’s your job title? I am the video journalist. Do you want me to get you like a lapelle microphone?
Oh no thanks, this is fine. Okay cool. So I am the video journalist slash photographer. It is quite interesting the place I used to work we had photo journalists, so I didn’t really call myself a photographer or photo journalist there, I was making videos there as well.
Where was that? At the Sydney Morning Herald, a newspaper with a big website. And so we had a photographic department that sort of always had to fight for its jobs. So I wasn’t really allowed to take many photos there, but at the ABC we don’t have any photographers really, we only have a few people around the place who can take a decent photo and I guess I am one of them. So I can call myself a photographer sometimes but I don’t go around calling myself a photo journalist.
So you call yourself a video journalist? Video journalist, yes.
And how long have you been doing this for? In this team in July, we all started in June/July.
And how old are you? 26
That’s right you just turned 26. Yes it was my birthday.
And how did you get here? You said that you worked at the SMH…Did you do a university degree in media? So I did a bachelors degree in communications majoring in journalism. And that was it. And then I got a job at the SMH.
How do you think the DSI fits into the ABC’s innovation history? That’s a really good question. We had someone say to us recently that some of the programs now such as Late Line, which has just been cut from the roster, were, very very innovative in the heyday. So I don’t know maybe that was in the 80’s or something. 70’s, 80’s I think, in ways that we might not think are innovative today. So I think this is a team that sort of explicitly mandated to explore, try new things, experiment. We know that not everything we try is something that we are going to want to repeat, but I think it comes from a recognition that digital is the space that the ABC most needs to expand into and experiment within, to guarantee its relevance down the track in the future. Sorry everyone probably gives you the same answer.
186 Yes, not it’s interesting to hear everyone’s answer. And what is the DSI’s mission? I think the mission of the team is to collaborate with other teams around the ABC. A lot of broadcast teams, so teams that run the current affairs programs. To collaborate with them on stories that they are working on, to pick the best stories for digital. Stories that we can add the most value to for digital, which is not all stories. There are stories where a television reporter who can write a short, you know, write 500 words, they are bringing as much value on the table on digital as we possibly could. There is not a lot more that we could add, because it is just not that sort of story. That is hopefully a minority of the stories perhaps, I think most stories there is definitely something that we can really do to augment that story and make it better for digital. And then there is some that we can do really really fun and exciting…break new ground with and those are the stories that we prioritise. So that is our mission, to collaborate with those teams on those stories where we can add the most value for digital and sort of experiment with fun ways. And then hopefully out of those collaborations, out of those stories, will come habits, relationships, templates. So that as we begin to sort of, find that balance, of priorities and resources shifts more to digital, that not just us but people all over the news organisation can refer to those collaborations, those templates, those relationships down the track by themselves. So they’ll say ‘hey, this story is sort of a little bit what they are trying to do, maybe in two years or three years, ah it’s a little bit familiar, it is like the one that we worked with the DSI team on’. And then they can sort of repeat that, or take that idea to experiment further.
Okay. So that they can do it themselves and your team doesn’t have to take on those stories…and then down the track if they can do it themselves, what would you be doing? Our team? Uhm, I hope that sort of sets up the members of our team. I mean we are going through a process of learning as well so we are learning about the idiosyncrasies and the hierarchies and the traditions and all of the behaviours of a traditional television organisation that is trying to shift itself. And I hope that I a few years some of the members of our team, with that sort of understanding and having been at the forefront of these experiments, can continue to…perhaps the team as a unit desolves and we find ourselves, you know, people in bigger digital teams, or bigger cross-platform teams that are both television and digital and radio and we are not in a team as such, but doing sort of whatever the roles of the future might be, or even leading those teams. Who knows.
And when will this mission be successful? Uhm. Well I mean there is sort of two answers to that. One, our team has been going for six months and we’ve got another guaranteed six months and then beyond that remains to be seen. Obviously we are all optimistic because most of the things we’ve done so far have worked pretty well, you know, have exceeded expectations and the broad culture is where we are trying to move to learning the lessons that we are here to figure out and to bring to other people. But I guess the second answer to the question would be that the mission never really ends, because it is a constant iterative thing. A lot of what we do is centred around
187 behaviours, user-audience behaviour online, and that is constantly evolving and we will continue to evolve. And so I think our mission just keeps repeating itself as we watch for you know, how are the phones going to be different in the future, how the audience accessing things on laptop versus mobile is going to be different. As these things chance we will need to keep doing what we are doing to keep up.
Do you have a daily routine at all? So our team meets twice a week and besides that we don’t have similar sort of daily routines the way a lot of people in news have them. Which is to wake up and do things that are really reacting and responding to the news-cycle of the day. We have been really lucky in that we have been working on stories that go however much weeks and sometimes months. So our day-to-day is juggling the meetings and interactions we have with the people we are collaborating with and just typing away the next story. Usually balancing two or three stories at any given time.
What kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to do in your job? What are they expecting from you? I feel like I have been doing my job productively when I have written a script, or I have taken some photos, or I have shot some video, if I have arranged an interview, or done some filming, or I’ve done some editing, or I have constructed some motion graphics, or I have planned the roll-out of a video or story on online. So those are the things that I do that make me feel like I am doing my job productively.
You said you plan interviews, do you also conduct them yourself? Uhuh, sometimes.
And do you write the stories as well? A lot of the collaborations I am personally involved in are often with a reporter who sort of wrote the copy himself. Typically what I’ll write is scripts for video and that sort of thing.
And how many different tasks would you have on an average day? Uhm…that’s really hard. I couldn’t give you a number of individual things. A typical day involves one or two meetings, plus…ah no look, a typical week or no fortnight might involve one instance of getting out with a camera. So it’s not been going out an shooting every day. It is hard to say.
Okay and how do you experience having these different tasks? How do you mean?
What do you think of these tasks? Oh look there is nothing that I find uninvigorating or boring, it is all part of the necessary picture and even small things like subtitling videos… When I make a video and need to subtitle it, there is a lot of little things like that that I will take
188 care of personally, like myself, that I don’t hand onto another person. Just because I tend to like to keep things sort of to my vision. So it’s good.
And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you do? Uhm…well I think they need to be able to edit. That’s sort of number one.
Video editing? Yes. So play shots after shots after shots. I think they need to be able to uhm…edit in Adobe Premier, they need to be able to construct motion graphics in Adobe Aftereffects, they need to be able to modify images and graphics in Adobe Photoshop. They need to be able to set up a camera, have a good shot going. They need to be able to light, set up light in a particular setting to achieve a particular look. And that means filming off the shoulder, filming on a tripod, interviews and that sort of thing. Filming on gimbals and sometimes we have even used drones for footage an things.
Cool. Do you know how to operate a drone? uhuh…yes. They need to be able to look after sound recording, so have multiple microphones up and talking to the cameras. They need to be able to ingest that footage, so download that footage off the camera, know where everything is. And I think they need to understand the interplay between motion graphics and photos and video. And so to be thinking about how the motion graphics are going to be made even when they are shooting the video and vice versa. Through to exporting video and making sure that you’ve got all the necessary ingredients, the photos, the words, the video itself…what else? I think they need to ensure the shoot goes smoothly and that begins with being able to give really clear instructions to you talent, if that’s what its about. So securing the right permissions, looking at Google maps before you go outside to figure out what the right….you know checking the weather and all that sort of stuff to make sure everything goes right on the day. So producing sort of things and then when you get out there, looking after the talent and making sure the talent knows what’s happening, communicating constantly while shooting and looking after equipment. So keeping the talent at ease and I think possibly one of the hardest things is knowing how to interview in a way that’s really going to serve you best when you get back to the edit booth. A lot of people know how to interview for instance for a news article or something like that, but interviewing for camera is very different and indeed interviewing for camera for digital is very different to interviewing for camera for television. So I think that’s perhaps one of the most particular skill that is in my role. Knowing how to say, do, ask the right questions and give the right props to elicit the moments that you need when you go back to the editing booth, so that you don’t need to worry about uhm’s and ah’s and jump-cuts and people not stating the question in the answer, so for instance when people not stating the word ‘it’ when the audience does not know what they are talking about. All of those sorts of things so I think having a really clear vision for the end product when you are doing the interview. Obviously not to the point of leading questions or anything, still doing it rigorously as you would do any interview, but just having that vision of what you need to get on camera. That was a very big answer.
189
Well it is very clarifying. And what have you learned since starting this job? I have learned a lot about the ABC, who’s who and all of that. I have learned a lot about how the ABC thinks about its own challenges and that sort of thing. I have learned a lot from Michael our audience producer. I learned a lot from him about the way he thinks about Facebook in particular and the role of video on Facebook. I have learned from Michael that there is quite a difference in the way that…this is one of the first things I’ve learned when I got here: in the very first week I heard from Michael that video is very effective for reaching people in their newsfeeds who may not be a fan of ABC news on Facebook. They may not have liked the ABC news page, but they might have friends who have done so or whatever. Video plays very well in the algorithm of Facebook and so that’s why it’s important and advantageous for us. It is worth doing. There are other things that video is not good for. So it is not good on Facebook for driving traffic, not good for people to click through back to the ABC news site. It is very hard to get a video into Facebook that is going to cause people to click on a link. I think once I learned that, that really informed and shaped how I thought about what a video needs to…I mean it’s not enough to have a video that asks people to click through to the site to read more, a video needs to be a complete entity and satisfy. Do you work together with other teams in the ABC? Yes. So we work with some of the current affairs programs. Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent, Australian Story. We have worked with the News channel, which is our 24-hour channel. Less so in terms of their role in coverage, but they more so in some of the programs that they commission for the news channel. We have worked with a team we used to have called the National Reporting team, that doesn’t really exist anymore. They have been put into a different team.
Was that Jo’s team? Some of the people are about to become part of Jo’s team. So it’s all in a bit of a shake-up, so once they are in Jo’s team we will continue to work with the.
Do you generally work alone or with colleagues? I have collaborated with every single person in my team, but most stories I haven’t collaborated with every single person in my team. So there has been one or two stories where I have worked closely with Inga our data journalist and there’s been quite a few stories where I have worked closely with Alex the designer and Mark the digital producer. And there has been one video that I have worked really closely on with Michael, a stop-motion video about Nike. That was because that video was his idea before I made it. And I have been working closely with our developers on the story we just did with illustration and animation. And of course I am lucky to sit next to, and have constant access to my supervising producer Stephen.
When you work with the developers, how do you communicate with them? Because they are in Melbourne right? Slack. I like to pick up the phone sometimes. When we’ve got a few things to
190 figure out, I’ll pick up the phone and talk to Nathaneal or Ri. I don’t think that our collaboration and relationship has been quite as, I don’t think we have got up to as much as we would have if they were in Sydney, but that’s just how it is. With the stuff that we have worked on it has never been a problem.
Do you know why they are in Melbourne? Because they just live there and didn’t want to move to Sydney and we didn’t need to make them.
Do you see your colleagues outside of work at all or do you usually see them here? Yes, sometimes. On a Friday.
Do you feel like there are any skills missing in the team that would enhance the team? Yes, you know, always. We had to hire an illustrator for a drawing for instance. If that person was in our team we would have a lot more access to that. It’s a skill that we don’t have for instance. Wether we necessarily need that skill full-time, I don’t think so. It’s not part of our plan to be illustrating stories constantly. I think there is a sensible mix of skills that is in our particular team. We often say that we would like another version of Mark, just a clone of Mark, because he is the one person, the only one, who has worked at the ABC news before. So Mark has a good knowledge of the CMS, which is called Core. Which means that everyone in the team sometimes sort of relies on Mark in ways that it would be useful if there was another one…but besides that I think it’s a very sensible mix of jobs. An illustrator, I am trying to think of what else we could use. Nothing really jumps to mind.
How many hours would you say you work a week? A week? This job’s been really good. I’d say 40.
And how much of that time would you specifically spend on journalistic work? Uhm…as opposed to…?
Well that depends on what you consider journalistic work. I guess a lot of people spend a lot of time on administration, answering emails or talking to people. Administration and emails? Oh…there’s a lot of that. So no as opposed to like…so for instance I have just spent a lot of time animating. It will take me like an hour to make a hand move in the right way.
Ah I guess you have a bit of an interesting role in that sense… I mean it is not explicitly journalistic, but look, how much time do I spend producing stuff versus talking about the producing of stuff, planning the producing of stuff and taking care of my own existence and my job, filing
191 expenses and answering to e-mails about whatever…uhm…maybe it’s like 70/30. 70 producing and 30 maintaining. It’s hard to say.
I know some of these are hard to answer… I presume you don’t have any other jobs aside from this one? No.
What do you consider free time? In my job?
No outside of work? What do I do, or what do I consider?
What do you consider… Uhm…like which parts of my week?
Yes for instance, I guess it is a bit of an open question, but I mean it more like: I find a lot of journalists still spend a lot of time watching the news and reading up on things outside of work… Uhm…I don’t set aside time to do that. I don’t watch the TV much, I don’t tend to listen to radio at any particular time of the day and if I do then I am also doing something else. I am constantly reading updates that I get through my phone and I think that might come up outside of work. I spend at least one hour a day reading things on my phone separate to work. So yeah, and that’s Saturdays and Sundays as well. So free time is when I am not doing that. It’s very spread out, in every given hour I would spend 5 or 10 minutes checking my email or checking updates here and there. Checking email is still the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before going to sleep.
And how many hours of free time would you consider to have in a week? I have no idea. Uhm…I mean technically however many hours there are in a week minus 40. But uhm…it’s hard to say.
Do you ever work from home? Not officially. I live very close to work now, but I do frequently work from home. There will be at least one day a week when I am doing something work related on my home computer.
Will that be after official working hours or after? After. And in the last week it has been seven days I have done stuff at home after work and on weekends. That is just due to the timing of things. I didn’t have everything quite ready and we had a Monday launch so I was working on Sunday.
Do you manage to earn a living from doing this? Uhuh…
192 Comfortably? Yes. I mean for my small life, I don’t have kids or health problems or mortgages or things that other people have to worry about. I am extremely comfortable compared to a lot of journalists, for whom maybe it is not so easy.
Just out of curiosity, does salary go by age or experience or both? It goes by experience. Uhm so when you are hired you are offered a certain amount of money based on, not just your particular experience, but your role. They mark a certain amount of money for the role, based on what that role is. So they might say a video journalist deserves this much money because doing that job requires this amount of skill and because the job is this taxing on a person and because the job is of this utility to the company. Some jobs are simply more valuable to the corporation than others. So all of those factors weigh into how much money they mark for a role. And it is quite formalised at the ABC. So a job will be advertised and they will tell you a bracket, a range of money that someone can expect to get when they want to apply for that job. No less than and no more than a certain range and then how much they offer that person depends on the person themselves and generally on their experience and obviously they can negotiate and depending on how that goes…I wouldn’t say it explicitly depends on age, only in that once you do get a role and a salary that salary will be graduated. It will become more each year via a formalised structure that is negotiated between the corporation and the union. And so, I guess by virtue of that the longer you stay the more you automatically are renumerated each year.
Would you mind telling me how much you get paid? uhm…haha, as long as the others don’t mind, I don’t mind. I get paid about 91.000 dollars a year. That is what is called my base salary, and then we have a thing that’s called a buy-out. And a buy-out is an extra payment, and in my case it’s an extra payment of 10 percent. And what I give up for that extra payment is sort of a compensation for any overtime, we call them penalty rates. Extra money you would have to be paid for working 9/10/11 hours. So in the end I would end up getting, and this is not including superannuation, about 102.000 dollars a year. Is that before tax or after? Before. I get that much money but it means that if they want they can ask me ‘hey, can you work tomorrow night, we need you tomorrow night’ etc., and I am supposed to say yes because of my contract. I suspect that a buy-out has been offered to most people in my team and it is something along the lines of that 10 percent extra for those late nights and weekends.
What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? I think work/life balance. I think managing to get everything done by 5 pm and sometimes having that spill over. That can be tricky. Like I said I find it difficult to switch off when I leave, so I will still be checking emails and that sort of thing. And that is not necessarily a culture that I am separate from either. I sometimes need things from people once I have left the office, occasionally. So we are all a part of that in some way. I am guilty of that sometimes. And I think beyond that one of the biggest challenges has been finding our place, finding our collaboration
193 relationships with people who don’t really understand what digital is all about. That is really the big challenge. Sometimes there are misunderstandings and sometimes there is confusion and perhaps some people sometimes might feel challenged because they are quite used to doing some things a certain way. And some traditional hierarchies are upset when people might be very good at their jobs, but they are very good at their jobs in a television context, and we are trying to transform and catch up to our competitors who are, in many cases, better at digital than us.
Where do you work most? Here at the ABC? Yes, like I say I go out of the building for a shoot maybe once a fortnight.
Usually in Sydney or elsewhere? Usually in Syndey, sometimes sort of on the outskirts of Sydney. We have done one thing this year which has caused me to go to Brisbane to film. It just depends.
And then a little bit from home as well… Yes.
How would you describe your main workspace? I have a desk, I have a monitor, a big monitor that is especially useful for video: high resolution video. Mouse, keyboard.
Do you like it, do you dislike it? I love it. We have been very lucky in what we’ve been able to ask for our jobs so that we can best do the job. So we have been very very lucky in that respect I think. And then here in this cabinet I have a whole lot of camera stuff, so lights, sound equipment, two cameras, 3 lenses, tripods.
What facilities do you have in your workspace aside from your own workspace? So like if I want to do sound recording, there are audio studios nearby. Down in the basement there is a studio that I have used to install a backdrop a big paper backdrop that I can pull down and film people in front of. So that’s been an initiative that I’ve done since arriving here, because it is something that was just missing in the building. It was missing because it is just a digital thing. There hadn’t been a need for it until now. So that is one of the ways in which we tried to change the facilities for digital. What else have we got? There is some other camera equipment that I can borrow from other people occasionally. Uhm…yeah great internet, we’ve got…yeah that’s mainly it.
And what kind of facilities are absolutely essential to you? Uhm…so a good camera with a nice big sensor and good lenses to get a shallow depth of field, that I think is important for getting people’s attention when you are making digital video and taking great photos. And good sound and light equipment, a fast computer. If I had to, often when we are sort of encoding or processing a video, it can take a long, long, long time if the computer is not fast
194 enough. Plus if you’re trying to also use a computer to try and use email and Slack and edit motion graphics and photos and surf the internet and upload files all at the same time it can get very laid down and you are losing minutes, hours in the day. So a very fast computer for video is worth its weight in gold, in productivity. Those are the main things and a great sound-proof room with a backdrop that we have downstairs for when we want to do studio shoots.
What kind of hard and software do you use? Personally I like this Macbook pro. It is just a personal preference I have. The cameras is have is a Sony. One of them is a video camera called a Sony FS5 and the other one is a video slash photo camera, kind of like a DSLR almost, which is a Sony A7S. And like I say, tripods, lights, sound equipment. And software Adobe Premier, Adobe Aftereffects for motion graphics, Adobe Premier for editing video, Adobe Photoshop for editing photos, Adobe Lightroom for editing photos as well and Adobe Illustrator and Adobe In-Design sometimes. Alex uses those two more than I do. What else? Uhm…we use Slack to communicate, we have also used a program called Signal, particularly when we have collaborated with investigative journalists such as in Four Corners where they have to be quite strict around privacy. That’s the main software. Obviously your Microsoft Office and Outlook sort of thing.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Oh essential. Adobe is totally essential.
What do people wear in your main workspace? Uhm…shirts, tops, t-shirts, jumpers, a lot of jeans, sometimes trousers, suits.
So would you say it’s casual or formal? It is pretty casual. I sometimes wear a suit. I used to always wear a suit and people think it is very strange. So that gives you a pretty good idea, so not formal.
And do you feel comfortable in this environment? Yes, very.
What kind of support is available in your workspace? What like IT support, emotional support. IT support exists, we can talk to them when we have IT problems, which can take a very long time. We have a human resources department, we have an office manager who can bring us everything like paper and paperclips and pencils and label makers and what have you when we need chargers or headphones when we are going somewhere. Because it is an organisation such as the ABC, they have a lot of services available. So when you are upset or something because of your work there are people to talk to. There are all sorts of departments around the whole corporation that are there to help people in the corporation when they need.
What would you like to change, if anything, about your workspace? Uhm…I would like to change a lot of the technology. I would like to see a lot of
195 the technology that has been in use perhaps updated and have the chance to practice some news tools with the people and sort of build habits so that we are working faster, more congruously and so that things are flowing a bit more.
Are you talking content management system sort of things? Yes, absolutely. Communication and that sort of thing. Some people use email, some use Slack, some use Microsoft teams and all sorts of things.
And you would prefer it to all be on one channel? Yes, I mean I would love if everyone in the whole place would use Slack because I think it would be faster. Other things I’d like to change, well obviously we would all like a little bit of a slower pace, a little bit more time, but that’s just part of the job. I think the ABC has a big problem with it’s racial diversity, but also to a degree with its share of men versus women in positions of leadership. So I would like to see an ABC that hasn’t got this sort of homogenous community of white workers. Especially white workers from a fairly similar sort of culture of thinking I suppose. To see some more non-white media workers supported and helped through the ranks and helped into the place. And there are systems in place that are supposed to help pursuing that but I think if you were to compare the ABC to the BBC, some of the initiatives the BBC has taken in the last 20 years, the BBC is a much better representation of the British society than I think the ABC is of Australian society. I think there is quite a big concentration of men in leadership roles. That needs to change. I think I would also like to see younger people have more say and more sway, to have more power to decide how things are going to be. And again I think the BBC, it is really cute, they have like a reversed mentor program where the older people can be paired with a younger person to listen to them and find out about their habits of news consumption and way of thinking. Because I think it is a big challenge for the ABC that editorial decision making is being led by people of a certain older demographic and basically that means that ABC content ends up looking, and feeling and sounding a certain way. That just means younger audiences just turn off. They are not interested and that is a real challenge for the ABC. A challenge it understands it has, but how to resolve that and how to actually turn the tables a bit so that young people have more to say that is a challenge.
Why did you start working as a video journalist here at the ABC? So I started, I did a journalism degree just because. I thought it sounded interesting. I liked the opportunity to meet and to talk to lots of interesting people, different people the whole time, not doing the same thing every day. It seemed exciting because what you are working on always is relevant and I think it’s a fun job that if you do it really really well maybe you can make a difference outside of your job for the real worlds. So that’s why I studied journalism. And then in my final year of my degree I started to really emphasize wanting to understand camera’s and learning video technology. That wasn’t something I was interested in up until that final year and that interest was informed by people who at that time, and things that I was reading about what sort of jobs the industry really had need for and what jobs it wouldn’t. So I think I came to a really strong
196 realisation during the degree that I didn’t really expect to make a lot of money writing. I didn’t think I could be that good, to be honest. I was getting a lot more positive messages about the industry being in need for people who could make video. So I started experimenting a lot more with videos, cameras and editing and from there it just became quite a strong interest. It became the way I got my first job at the SMH, a place where as a journalism graduate I could not reasonably have expected getting a job if I didn’t specialise in video, so if I was just a general reporter it would have been very very difficult for me to get a job at the SMH and I don’t think I would have been good enough. And once I was in the SMH it was my job, so it became something I got more practiced on very quickly, because it was quite a niche job that I was working around the clock on constant new projects. Three or four videos sometimes a day, so very fast-paced. And getting to try out lots of different camera’s, trying to film with lots of different people, a lot of the time in the editing booth, editing very quickly. So it became very interesting for me and right about that time, so 2015 and last year 2016, I already was but I started paying particular attention to other journalists out there in the world, particularly in the US, doing some really interesting things with video. Once I saw what they were doing with video and what some of the possibilities were I think there was a point at which I really started to decide that this is something that I wanted to keep as my specialty.
And has your motivation changed over time? No, no. There were days where I might sort of feel like super motivated, but I think in this particular role I get the chance to experiment with different stories and different projects all the time and that has meant that I am not ever getting bored. I think certainly I am motivated and my future motivation is going to come not from furthering what I’m doing in video perhaps. It will, but there are other things also that I would like to learn. I would like to learn how to code, the way that our developers do.
Interesting. What are the most important values that inform your work? Uhm…haha it is a good question, it’s just…you feel silly. A commitment not just to truth but explaining, I think one thing I feel very passionately about is explaining things in a way that is accessible. I think a lot of the news is really quite inaccessible for various reasons. And I am really excited about the possibilities for video as a format that can make things more accessible. And fairness and honesty…I mean we all carry biases and preconceptions but I think really trying to be aware of those and leave those behind a little bit. Just the things that anyone will tell you really…I have a commitment to try and do things a bit differently to be noticing what are the ways in which news has been done a lot and how I can improve that.
And do you feel your work lives up to these values? Not always. Mostly, I hope so. That’s for others to judge.
Okay. Does your work make you happy? Yes, always. Not always, but generally almost always.
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And what makes you happy? I think, you know, it’s something I think when this work is done well by other people that is something that excites me. So to do that and to be seen doing that excited me as well and it makes me happy that like I said, I like meeting people, I like making things that are better, look better, make more sense or are more meaningful, that are more communicative, more accessible, more beautiful than anything I have made before. That brings me happiness…yes.
Do you ever get angry in your work? Uhm…no, no I don’t really get angry. Occasionally I will get frustrated at deadlines, or cultures, ways of thinking that hold us back from opportunities or make things more difficult than they otherwise need to be. Those things can frustrate me. Sometimes the news can make you sad. We all know that. And sometimes…yeah…I don’t know, no. It causes me a lot of anxiety more than anything else. Not anger but a lot, a lot of anxiety.
Can you expand on that? I think that is just operating in a high-pressure environment. High-pressure because, you know, uhm…sometimes what is at stake and the speed at which things are expected, the amount of emotions and the conviction that people outside in the real world have about the issues that we report on. Lots of different things that make you feel like it’s a…but I mean I don’t mean to get sort of pretentious about it. I think anyone out there who is having any job that they try to take pride in, if they are doing it in a high speed environment it can create anxiety. And I am quite particular. I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes and so I am not just having to… the anxiety of meeting other peoples expectations but oftentimes it is my own expectations. Finding the balance there, no one else cares about my own expectations and I don’t expect them to. So that is sometimes a bit of an added burden. If that’s not something they are factoring in, they are expecting things quickly and meanwhile you are trying to make them happy but you are also trying to make yourself happy. It all just adds up.
Is there anything that scares you in what’s happening in the field of journalism? Yes, I mean I think we are all concerned for this industry. We always have been. And that goes for us, people who have a lot of reason to be positive, as much as it goes for everyone. I think a lot of things that have happened for this industry in the last 10 years, have been bad for the people who work in it but especially for the public, the people who are meant to be our audiences. So I mean there is a lot of reasons why we are concerned and all the reasons we have to be hopeful don’t always counter those concerns. But, yeah, as for fear for our own jobs I obviously have a degree of self-preservation, but I don’t think I had to deal with or face the fear in the last year that most of the people in this industry face. Because like I have mentioned before, people have higher stakes in their life like children and people are in spaces that perhaps there is less demand for those jobs right now. So
198 I think there are a lot of people that are scared right now for one reason or another.
And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you do? To get better, I think. I don’t think I am really sort of…it takes a long time for your work to be as good as it can be and for your work to have impact. I think I am still just warming up…baby steps. So I think that’s what motivated me to keep going. I think like a lot of people I just want to be the best that I can be. Not just at this but at other things I want to learn as well. So for a time when all of our job titles will sound different and all of the ways we engage with each other will be different. Which communities would you say you belong to? In life?
You can interpret the way you want. A lot of my friends are in media, like, work in this industry. Uhm…a lot of my friends. So a lot of my environment is that. I don’t belong to a big group outside of my work in quite the same way I do inside of it. I think it’s sad to say but it’s probably a large part of my identity and I don’t have, the way some people do like a religion or sports team or even like a gardening group or something. Lately, a lot of things like that that I might have done in the past like play sports or belong to a gardening group, you sort of run out of time for when you are doing this job. All you want to do is just be with your friends and relax.
Do you have memberships to any trade unions? Yes. I belong to the union for media workers MEAA, the Media and Entertainments Arts Alliance. I have belonged to them since I was in university. Since I was first job seeking out of university and will continue to. I have been very involved there in the past. Back at the SMH when we had two periods of industrial action we call it, or like a strike, two strikes back at the SMH that Inga will tell you about, that I was involved in. There is a bit less of that going on at the ABC.
What were the strikes about? Job cuts.
How useful are these professional communities for you? The trade union? Uhm… I very much like the idea of a union, so it’s hard to say. I pay my fees and then like most people it’s sometimes a question of how much you get back in your life but I think for me, it has always been good value for money. I think unions are important. I think it is troubling to see that a lot of people my age or younger really don’t belong to unions. The membership has really plummeted, but for me it has always been good. I have been able to, I think I have made, even when you include the 6 or 700 dollars or something I pay each year, for my involvement in the union in the last three years I have probably ended up making more money, not less. It is important to me, but a lot of it is just the idea of it. It is sort of ideological or political but back at the SMH it wasn’t,
199 because there were people I had worked with that then lost their jobs and some of them almost lost their jobs but then didn’t because of the union. I have friends who have been negotiating a contract with a company and they’ve talked to the union and after they’ve talked to the union they managed to negotiate some better money. So there are some tangible reasons.
And is there a community that you would like to belong to but don’t yet? Yes. Like a gardening group…no haha. Yeah I think I’d like to try a lot of things. Some of my older colleagues, like Inga get’s up to really interesting things on the weekend, like circus stuff and arts and stuff. And I see the importance and meaning that those activities bring in people’s lives. So once I settle into this industry a bit more…I don’t feel remotely settled yet, I think I am still sort of figuring out how to make it work with a real life.
Who do you see as your main competitors? Uhm…just you know other news organisations. When I think about the work that I do and when I put it out there and especially when it goes out on Facebook, I am thinking about the whole Internet. All of the other things that possibly can consume someone’s attention, instead of watching my thing. So lots of things like Candy Crush or the Kardashians. There are a million things that we are competing with and it is not necessarily the Guardian or the NYT or something. A lot of the times it is just pictures or memes. I think we are in competition with million random things for people’s attention span.
Has this changed over time? Do you have any new competitors? Yes. I mean, yeah absolutely. Not so much in my very short three years, but in the last 20 years radically. 20 years ago people weren’t worried about these mobile apps, they wouldn’t even know what that was. Or huge websites. It has changed a lot and it continues to change constantly. 5 years ago we wouldn’t be competing with Netflix for instance, but now we are.
Who are your audiences? So ABC’s audience, and Michael can answer this a lot better than I can, but it’s older, whiter Australians by demographic. I think our challenge is to change this and we have done this. I think we have looked at, Michael does this for us, but he looks at some of the things we have made and who it performs best with online, who is most interested. We have just made something on Monday that was most popular with women age 20-25. So that is success for us. I think that is who we want as our audience. But the ABC, ultimately is for every Australian. That is who it is meant to serve.
Are you satisfied with these audiences or are there people you would like to reach that you are not reaching yet? I am not satisfied with the audience we have got at the moment, I want a different audience.
200 What different audience? Younger, less white, mainly younger. More representative, that sort of includes more Australians than the ones that it does now which is older whiter Australians.
How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? Uhm…look all the ways I’ve said before. By doing lots of experiments, collaborations and experiments, trying something new when we do that story and leaving everyone else with the impression of that story, the idea of that story, the templates, relationships, habits. All of those sorts of things.
Related to that, what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? I think digital storytelling is like any stories, it needs something new or something unexpected or interesting, some great characters. But it differs in some pretty particular ways. A lot of what we are doing with digital is to take the reporter out of the story, sometimes. So when we are making video for online we are not doing this thing where we are sort of, you know, ‘hi I am the reporter of…’. So I think what we are really prioritising with digital is really having a sort of equal relationship, a conversational rather than a bombastic tone of voice. Instead of talking down to people we are talking at, we are talking to them. I think it is very hard to do that in the best way you can do that which is to have a dialogue. It is quite difficult to execute. But I think in our tone of voice conversational is very important to digital.
In what ways are you trying to achieve that? So, that could be your literal tone of voice in the voiceover or the reporter video package. Or it could just be in the words and style of writing that you employ when you are writing something, or it can be in your graphics or whatever. So that we are making something that feels a bit less like an encyclopaedia or some official document but making something that perhaps is more organic. One of the big successes the ABC has had in the last couple of years had been a messenger app, the ABC messenger bot, that you can become friends with on Facebook and it just sends you in message the story of the day and if you want to read it you hit ‘read this story’ or if you want to read the news on any given day just hit one of these things and it sends you photos and little bits of text. Not too much, but if you want to find out more, just say ‘I want to find out more’ and it sends you more. So that sort of thing is a little bit representative of the kind of…
Is it just an article that rolls out in messages? Partly, it is actually crafted especially for the app. So it is not just copy paste the article. It has been designed particularly and I think that is important. I think news doesn’t need to feel cut and paste, but I think we want to make things which feel very special.
Was this made in Brisbane? Yes.
201 Nice. Also, do you interact in any way with your audiences other than by this bot? Not in the ways that has been tested by other people out there. Not in a big way. We pay a lot of attention to what people say in the comments and that sort of thing, that’s why we have Michael. But there is perhaps more we can do to encourage participation. We create things, which are quite interactive. Pages where you can put in your age or your postcode or whatever and the story will become a little more suited for you, but in terms of dialogue not necessarily.
Has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other teams Absolutely. We learn from mistakes we have made ourselves. We have already had collaborations where sort of, the story that was offered by another team wasn’t as strong or as interesting, or fresh or new as it could have been. And yeah, things where, like mistakes that are made even like down to publishing errors that were made. Recently we had a glitch in the CMS that meant that a story that was going to be out at 5 AM was out at 7 in the morning and there are consequences to that because it doesn’t get as much traffic and doesn’t get picked up by the search engines or the people who decide the news that day, as if it was up at 5. So little mistakes here and there that we learn from. Sometimes we prioritize, mainly we see other teams prioritize the wrong angle and then you wonder why they emphasized that angle and why they didn’t have pictures or whatever.
Last question, what do you see the most fundamental challenge for your field of work? Oh just to keep people’s attention, to stay relevant and justify, you know, the hours that we put into our work and to keep funding for it. It is a lot easier here than it is for commercial networks, which need to find a model where they can have money coming in so they can pay for all the hours that journalists want to spend on things. There is no perfect solution to this. People have so much choice now that it is harder than ever for us to stand out. And if we are to stand out that requires a very serious investment that doesn’t always justify itself in the way that other industries investments justify themselves. Unfortunately we find ourselves in the position where we need to do this not just in the case of making people entertained or happy but to keep everyone informed so that it can have some greater impact. So yeah, that is the big challenge that everyone in this industry has to figure out. There are some interesting things going on, as there have been over the past 10 years, but there is no perfect solution.
Okay, thank you!
202 Interview Alex Palmer
Let’s start with your job title, what is your job title? I am a digital designer.
And how long have you been doing that for a living? Oh for a living hmmm….I did a master’s in digital design in 2013, so and then I got a job in magazines in digital in 2014. So I have been purely a digital designer for about four years. Before that I was in motion graphics and video editing and that sort of stuff.
Before your master’s? Before my master’s yes.
So you worked between your bachelor’s and master’s? Uhm…a little bit, yes. I was mainly freelancing. I was doing video-work, shooting video and editing and doing motion graphics for various companies for about two, three years while I was at uni and then when I finished as well.
So you have already told me a little bit about this, but how did you get into this field? Uhm…well it kind of began, I suppose, it felt a little out of necessity. When I left uni with my bachelor’s…
What was your bachelor’s? A bachelor’s of arts with a bit of film studies and English literature. And a bachelor of arts is not exactly the best degree to leave and to try to start right into the industry. So I, sort of, I found almost immediately that I couldn’t find any full- time jobs doing editing in say the film industry, so I was just finding it very difficult. I was doing bits of freelance work here and there and sort of got into motion graphics and that is when I started doing my master’s because I was like, there were elements of design obviously in motion graphics and if I study digital design it is kind of like a bit of a bridge into, a bit of a starting point I guess…going form motion graphics design into digital design made sense to me. So that was kind of a pragmatic decision. It was pretty natural, I moved from motion graphic into digital design because I thought there would be more work and there was, because as soon as I finished my master’s I got a job straight out. And yeah…it worked out really well for me.
So you must have had some technical skills? Yeah, well that is kind of like what I guess people have found useful, or at least, have found me useful for, is that I have an odd skillset, it is quite broad. I am kind of a bit of a…I am not a full specialist in really anything, but I kind of have a good overview of things because I came from a weird background.
And how old are you now? I am 26.
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So young! How would you say the DSI team fits into the ABC’s history of innovation? Uhm…well I think the ABC, even though it’s one of the, obviously it is one of Australia’s most well-known and greatest institution. It has always been a bit of a beacon for innovation, particularly digital innovation. I know they started streaming, had streaming services before anyone else in this country. So I always, I mean that was one of the reasons why I was attracted to the role in the first place is that I knew ABC was kind of well-known for that and I felt quite safe going into the ABC, knowing that history, because it was just…it felt and I knew that the ABC really know what they are doing. I knew they had really good taste and I met with Kim and she seemed really knowledgeable about it. And I had seen a lot of the stuff that the Brisbane team…their stuff was so good, so I knew I was in pretty good hands. So I think uhm…to answer your question it is really just a continuation of the move to cross-platform, that the ABC has done for so long.
Could you, just for my information, name some examples or just one example of innovative initiatives within the ABC? Yeah, so there is I-view. It came out ages ago and all content that is played on ABC gets…it is just an online viewing platform. And that has been around for so long now. At least in Australia it predated Netflix and all that, and obviously all the other major channels like Channel 7 or Channel 9 all followed suit, pretty soon or actually quite a while after. They just had good foresight.
And what would you say is your team’s mission? Well I could be quite broad or quite specific. Broadly, I think we are really just trying to create content that is innovative, I know that is really vague. Specifically our goals are to reach certain benchmarks. So we want to keep people on the page for longer and things like that. And that is really the reason why we exist, is to get people on a page and stay there, get a good experience and then come back later for other experiences that are similar. So, yeah, that is essentially our mission. Creating data-driven investigation and I guess my role is to kind of make them look pretty and all that.
And when will this mission be successful? Well I think it’s kind of, in some way successful already. We have kind of met our benchmarks for every project we have done apart from yesterday, we didn’t reach our third-party roles. We didn’t get the numbers we wanted on Apple-news but apart from that we have always smashed the numbers and time spent and all of that. So in those respects we are successful. I know that we are funded until mid next year, so you know, that would probably be a good indication of wether we are successful is when we see if we get funded again or not.
But that is according to the benchmarks, but what do you think personally? Like when is it a success to you? Hmmm…to me, I am quite a…I am not a sentimental person, so to me it is just about numbers. You know, of course I want things to be very genuine and
204 authentic and all of that, but at the end of the day, if a story we really care about tanks, it is not like I would be like ‘well, at least it looks nice.’ I am never like that. It is all about meeting those benchmarks to me.
Do you have a daily routine? Not exactly. Not so far as…no, not really, no. I don’t get up and say ‘from 9 to 11 I am doing this.’ It is really, because we have projects that go on for a long time it changes so much. I do a bit of a range of things as well, you know…one day I will be doing motion graphics or video editing and then the next day I might be designing interactives for the guys up in Melbourne, or whatever, or doing pre- production, pre-planning stuff with Mark and Inga. There is no real timetable for me.
And what kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your role? Uhm…probably, I mean, well the reason why I was brought on board was really to be the overseer of design for the DSI team. And that is really what I am doing, but day-to-day it is kind of, I do a lot of small tasks.
That was my next question. How many different tasks do you do on an average day? Well, yeah, it depends a lot but I am usually not juggling more than one task at once. So, you know, we’d probably spend a good…we usually do it in chunks. Because we are quite a small team we are at least able to say ‘let’s not release one story on the same day.’ so usually it is like, say, the past two weeks for example has been some of our busiest time. I think we have released about three stories in the past two weeks. and I have been on all three of them and it has been, you know, four days on one, four days on the next and four days on the other.
Is that because you prefer to do it that way, or did it just happen that way? it is out of necessity, and it is also out of what we feel needs to be, I guess, what we feel is required by the story. So for example this Facebook reactions one that we did was probably a bit longer than four days for me because I was sort of aiding in the design of the interactives and I was also doing the video and various other little things on it, so that was kind of a little bit larger of a project. Maybe like five days. Whereas Inga and I did a video on the birth-data stuff and I was probably only on that for two days or something. To answer your question, it is pretty, apart from doing little things like meetings and whatever else, I would be doing various little things. And it also depends on the cycle of a project as well, so say in the lead-up I would be doing long hours on one piece of the project, but say yesterday when the thing was actually released, I might be spitting out four GIF’s for social media because Michael is like ‘can I just have a few options for GIF’s on Twitter?’, or ‘Can I have the video again, but can we do it in square?’ and I would have to rework that into a square format. Things like that. So there are always little things and it really depends on where I am in the cycle of a project.
205 So you work very closely with Michael? Yeah.
Is that the one you have most contact with? No, I think…I usually…not exactly. Michael tends to come in at the end. I mean he is always there, he is always around and he is instrumental to getting the benchmarks, but he, like, at the end on the day that it is released it is mainly Michael. The lead-up to the story is mainly whoever the journalist is, so Mark or Inga and you know, obviously not as much because they are not in Sydney but also Ri and Nathanael or Jack if he is involved in some respect as well. But my main contacts are Inga, Mark and Michael I think. If you were to divide my time up between who I was kind of working with, that would be it. I would say I work with Mark and Inga the most.
And are you allowed to pitch stories as well if you think of one? Yeah.
Do you ever do that? Uhm…not as much as the other guys. I am a bit of a work horse. I do, I certainly feel like I help shape the story. I just, it is not, I know Mark and Inga just get the concept and they can really get the kind of, the seed of the story and then they can kind of flash it out. I mean, a lot of things don’t start the way they end up either. So, it does start of with Inga or Mark usually, or Hutch, Stephen Hutcheon. I call him Hutch.
Does he know you guys call him that? Yes, I mean he kind of told us to. Well not really…he said…well anyway it is just nicer and that is his name in the Slack channel anyway, so it is not our fault if he doesn’t like it. Yeah, so one of those three guys will usually pitch a story, but even Michael. He has got a real kind of mind for numbers, so he would be like, he would even suggest design ideas to me. Not specific like ‘why don’t you make that green and round these corners’, but it is more like, you know, because he has got his eyes over social media all the time he would suggest things. So it always is a group effort.
And how do you experience having these different tasks? What do you mean?
How do you feel about it? Do you like having these different tasks or would you rather have it differently? Oh, hmmm…not really. I do like what I do. I am kind of eager to get more involved with the, I know and I am sure you will probably have this discussion with Ri and Nathaneal when you are down there, but you know it would be awesome if I could kind of…I went down to Melbourne a few months ago to see them and they are kind of quite isolated. And whenever…I mean, Ri is a designer as well and Nathanael certainly has that mind as well but usually I would come after the functionalities into the interactive and I would kind of suggest ideas or
206 design it up or say ‘can we try this?’ or ‘can we make it look like this?’ It would be awesome if I could kind of get involved in an earlier stage or whatever. It is just hard with the distance. But other than that, it’s pretty good.
What have you learned since starting this job? Well I am not really from news or from a newsroom background. So this is all different to me, so I guess I have learned a lot I suppose. Nothing concrete…how specific do you want me to answer this?
It can be anything from conceptual to specific skills… Uhm…let me think about it. I have kind of learned that, at least in newsrooms, that it is not just, well actually one big thing is the legal process which before this I hadn’t dealt with too much. Especially working with a program like Four Corners, the investigative beacon of Australian journalism, the legal jumps, the stuff they have to do to make sure that everything is correct and all that is pretty intense. I have had times when we did a story earlier in the year, mid this year, where it was on Adani. I made the video for that. And that was crazy because I think the article was released at 10 pm after the Four Corners special and my video was all done, all checked off and done by legal at 9:30. So we released it at 10 and it was just crazy. All day it was back and forth with the legal team. So that is kind of something new to me.
So you were talking to legal all the time? Well kind of, I was the middleman. I was talking to someone who was talking to the legal team and it was just like, the detail of…everything was suddenly…you know, instead of ‘Adani has tax havens all around the British virgin islands’ or whatever, it was ‘Adani allegedly…’ followed by ‘the Adani group denies these claims.’
Yeah, those are all the journalism rules… Yes, and if you rewatch that video and just listen, you can tell when the legal team stepped in. Even just tiny things like, I had a spinning globe in it, which I was really proud of because it was a big 3D globe and we had…and it had all of the environmental disasters that the Adani group was involved with, I think there were two in India and one in Australia, and I had to cut out the entire Australian bit, because there was no… I don’t know what the deal was, but it just got messy.
They couldn’t verify…? Yeah. So I put this globe in slow-motion and showed just India. So it was a bit silly. It is annoying but it is kind of really cool to deal with this weird stuff, it is really quite funny…because it is one of those things as well, you know, the moment some…it kind of actually adds to the narrative when someone denies something. It is just like so guilty! I should probably not say this…it is off-the- record hahaha
I know. As a journalist you usually know but can’t actually write it. Yeah, totally.
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And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you are doing? Ahhh so many, hahahaha! Do you have a few hours? I don’t know…I think with design you can’t, God I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a wanker. Yeah, as a designer, same thing with journalists or any profession, I think you just have…, I mean I grew up painting and drawing and things like that so it is just something I was always a part of.
Very visually minded… Yeah. You have to really be able to spot when something is just not right. Uhm..and you should, I think as a designer, you should be able to spot thing immediately, you should be able to say ‘that is eligible, that is wrong’. And everyone in the team luckily has somewhat a mind like that, to be able to say ‘that is not right’, especially Inga. But I mean, in terms of specifics, some level of HTML knowledge is pretty necessary because you are always kind of chatting with Ri and Nathanael and if your job is purely a designer from say a print background, or an artist or whatever, that is not enough. You can’t just be like…I don’t know, you have to be able to…
Speak the same language…? Yeah, so that is helpful. Uhm…I think you have to have some level of knowledge about animation as well: what looks right and what doesn’t look right with animation as well with motion graphics and things like that. There are so many details that go into something like a motion graphics video. You know, the amount of movement you have to have so it doesn’t feel boring. How the movement stops and starts and all that. I know Jack an I will be talking, he will ask me ‘does this look right?’ and I mean, he is pretty good at it. But you know, just little things like ‘oh, it needs to ease better into this spot’, or ‘you should add emotion-blow to this so it looks more natural’. So it is that kind of thing, it is all about some sort of level of unconscious…
Feel for it? Yeah, you just need to be able to spot it. And it takes some experience, I suppose, to be able to say ‘that font looks stupid’, or ‘that colour is weird’. It is little things like that. It sounds really basic, but sometimes things just don’t work.
And do you work together with other teams within the ABC? Yes. So obviously we have done a few co-productions with Four Corners. That was Paradise Papers, Adani, mortgage stress and we’ve probably done a few more. As well as, I didn’t work on this, but Jack did something with Australian Story. We also worked with, I have worked with the National Reporting team, on the interrail that has been under construction since the 1930’s, from Queensland to Melbourne. So I was doing little design bits for that. I also work a little bit with the Brisbane team. Not in a sense of, you know, doing actual work for them or vice versa, but just making sure that we are not covering the same stuff and adding to their kind of…so say, we are just making sure that we are not working on the same functionality or whatever. So I am going to start working on having
208 more stuff on the site that has better images with text over the top, so it was kind of like Ben, the designer from the Brisbane team or I could do that, and it is just like ‘who does that?’. It is really useful talking to another designer as well. And I do talk a bit with, I have fortnightly meetings with other designers across ABC as well. Again it is not concrete work, it is not like we are doing these co-pro’s or things like that. We just make sure that there is some level of design consistency across the ABC. So I would say apart from if it is just an Inga or a Mark-only story, it is usually with other teams as well.
And do you generally work with colleagues or alone? I know you have kind of answered this, but if you have anything to add feel free… Uhm…well it kind of depends on what you mean by alone I suppose. Yeah, I work mostly alone but it is usually a back and forth with whoever I am working with. I haven’t really had much of an issue with people saying, Inga or Mark saying ‘I don’t like what you did, can we change this or do that?’. I think they trust me in some respect to create the stuff that they had in mind. Inga, in particular, obviously she is a specialist in data and I am not, so it kind of requires me going over to Inga and being like ‘what does this mean?’. Especially if it is something like a quick turnaround, like the birth-story. I am getting better at is, and that is one of the things I have learned actually is to absorb information way quicker, because you have to just get it.
To be able to visualise it you need to understand it… Exactly. One of the first stories we have worked on was mortgage stress and as someone who has rented for my whole life, it is not something that I van really relate to. Even on a technical level, you know, interest rates and stuff like that is just not something I deal with personally. So I had to really absorb that so fast, because you can tell when a designer doesn’t know what they are talking about. You have to get it and particularly when it is data-driven, you have to know how to present that data so that it makes sense and that requires talking to Inga. It is like ‘does this display the information we need it to display?’ and Inga is a bit of a purist when it comes to data. So I remember this kind of it wasn’t an argument but it was a discussion, a heated discussion about the mortgage stress story. I was trying to present how many houses would be under mortgage stress if the interest rates kept on rising and I was using just a really simple, not even a metaphor, it was really literal, just houses, like 100 houses in a grid and they were kind going under a red line. So they were kind of sinking. And Inga was like, because it is not a perfect square it is not exactly correct…and I was going to do this video of a house that was filling up with water and that was going to be the stress levels rising, but Inga was like ‘well the roof is a triangle and the house is a square. So what: is the house a 100% from top to bottom or is it, you know, by surface area?’. So I am like, yeah…well anyway…we usually find a pretty decent middle ground.
How do you interact with your peers and colleagues? Obviously we went to Jack’s birthday party on the weekend.
209 Was that a first? Kind of yeah. It was the first time I have seen them in a different social setting like that. Obviously we had a Christmas party, but that’s it. I mean, we all get along really well. But how do we interact daily? Usually just face-to-face but it really depends on who it is. I am quite isolated as well, but I usually kind of go back and forth a couple of times a day…
Physically? Yes, I would just walk over. Oftentimes I would Slack, just because… and a lot of that is for the benefit of the guys in Melbourne because you really don’t want to end up in this bubble of sharing information verbally and then leaving very crucial members out. I mean, we are probably moving upstairs today and that is just something we really have to consider because we will all be sitting together. At the moment it is kind of like, sometimes it will be easier for me to be like ‘Mark, can you send me this.’, on Slack, or ‘What do you think about this?’. So that is a bit of a concern going upstairs, is that we will all just become chatty and we will just be in a bubble chatting about ‘wouldn’t it be great if we did this or this?’, or ‘I don’t like what this person has done here’, or ‘maybe we should change the interactive’, and it doesn’t get back in time to Ri and Nath. I really hope we can kind of continue that. It really helps being, talking, verbally or over Skype, but we have really got to keep them in the loop.
And are you missing anyone in the team? Would the team need more people or any other skills? Let me think…not exactly. We can kind of handle…we are never at a point where we are like exploding or going like ‘oh God, I wish we had another designer, or I wish we had another video-journalist.’ The only thing I would say is I think it would be pretty…and when I went down to Melbourne…it would be pretty awesome if there would be another producer in Melbourne. Say another Mark in Melbourne, or even just another producer here. Just so we always have like a few things going at once. I know at the moment it is kind of at a bit of a slow point, because all of the current affairs teams are off until February and it is a bit of a waiting game for me now to wait for Mark or Inga to come up with a story. I mean, there are other things I can work on in the meantime, but if there was another producer it would be kind of like, three weeks lead-up to…you could do like Inga’s story one week, Mark’s the next and another person’s the next and it keeps on going through a cycle like that.
So you are saying you would prefer to work on more projects? Yes, more projects. Uhm…yeah we worked a bit with a producer upstairs when Mark went away for about four weeks. We had a digital producer from upstairs come down and she was awesome. It was just like, it would make a massive difference to our workload and it may be another question like maybe there aren’t enough designers now. But it would be cool to have someone else to kind of…just a constant stream of stuff would be pretty cool, but again that would obviously take away from doing…I don’t know, that might change the DSI team a bit, if we are pumping out too much or whatever.
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How many hours would you say you work in a week? I think I work more than I should, but I don’t know if that is just a work-culture thing. I would probably work…I think we are meant to do 38 hours a week, but I would usually probably do an extra half an hour a day or whatever. So, I might be doing say 42 or 43. It depends. Last week was so busy that I was probably starting…sometimes I would start at 7 and finish at 7.
Really? Would you start here at the office at 7 or from home? No I’d start from home, but that is really rare. I have probably done that like three times, where it has been a huge day. And that is really out of necessity. But it is always like, I mean, with the Facebook reactions story there was a bit of work to do on Friday, so I was like ‘I don’t want to be super stressed out today, and finish, you know and then on Monday also be super stressed. So I will just do a little bit of work on Saturday from home.’ It is not a big problem for me to be like, this week like: ‘Can I come in for two hours today or not come in at all, or work from home or something?’ So, yeah it is okay.
And I presume you don’t have any other jobs? No.
And what do you consider free time? I try not to answer emails from home. We have the option in the ABC to set up your phone so that it is connected to your email. And I am just kind of like ‘nah, I don’t want to be working when I am home’. If it is really urgent people can call me. My number is in the system and things like that. To me, when I am at home I am at home. You have to have that separation.
And how many hours of free time would you say you have a week? Well I probably get home at, say, 6:30. I am a really early person, so I will be awake for like 3 hours and go to sleep at 9:30 and wake up at 5:30 and then I am around, doing different things. I am up and around for about 3 hours and I get to work at around 8:30 to 9. So, yeah, 6 hours times 5? 30 hours a week and the weekend.
Do you manage to earn a living from this? Yep.
Comfortably? Yeah…yeah, it is pretty decent.
What do you find the most difficult in your current work situation? Hmmm… I think sometimes, I guess as a content creator, I am usually the last one, I mean obviously Michael is working on the stuff behind the scenes. But I am always the one who’s up until the last minute I am doing stuff, you know, creating videos and stuff. I find, sometimes it is just like right on the edge and I am pushing out videos within, you know, like that Facebook reactions one I did
211 yesterday, I finished that at 12 and then it was out at 12:10. You know what I mean? It is that kind of stuff. I find that quite difficult. It is not unbearable but it can be very stressful.
How come that is always the case? Is it because you don’t get involved early enough in the process, or…? Yeah well I don’t want to be…I am not going to, I mean, I can’t blame it on anyone. It depends on who it is, but I know personally I am quite a…I can never be done with something until it is half an hour before it is ready, because there is always something to add. So I have never been like ‘Oh, guess what guys! I have finished this video a day early.’ That has never happened, and so it is really…most of the time it is kind of my own doing. And actually one thing I find quite difficult, and this is just a personal thing that I have always had issues with, is just, I guess as any creative person, or anyone with a sort of creative career, it is hard to show people things. To say ‘is this okay?’ and get feedback is quite full on. It is still full on even though I have been doing it for quite some time, it is still difficult.
If people don’t like it, you mean? It is not that. It is hard to explain.
It just feels very vulnerable I imagine, people judging your work. Yeah, it is quite personal, because it is like essentially we are a massive media company but everything you produce is very personal. And it is the same thing with journalists, they would probably all say the same thing. It is just, the moment you hand something over there is some level of personal style that is in there, and it is hard when people are like ‘well…I am not really a big fan of that’. It is actually not…when someone gives me feedback I am fine with it, it is just the first step of just being like ‘here’s it’, and watching people watch it is horrific. I hate that. People reading over your shoulder. I have always been like that.
And where do you work most? Is it from the ABC office or do you sometimes work from home? I really don’t often work from home. Always at the ABC. Apart from the Saturday that I worked from home a bit because I didn’t bother coming in. so yeah, mainly here.
And how would you describe your main workspace? Well I quite like it. I actually like where I am sitting at the moment, although I probably would prefer where I am moving to. I do, I mean it is a great, it really is a cool place to work. There is always a lot happening and I really love, I have always loved the ABC. So it is really cool to be around all this stuff. I do like the building a lot. I think it is really weird, like this part is the newest part, but you really just should take some time to venture up upstairs and see the weird labyrinths and rabbit-holes, there are these crazy…I don’t know how old this building is, but it really has a history about it. It is probably not that exciting…I remember I walked into a room once and it was completely empty apart from like
212 a stack of VCR’s, and I was like ‘what is wrong with this place?’. Sometimes you just go into this massive time-warp where you go into the 1970’s and 80’s Australia. I like it on that level, because there is an element of nostalgia there and especially growing up here as well, you know, seeing all the puppets from children’s TV and things like that around, is pretty awesome.
And what facilities do you have in your workspace? Uhm…well I have got a Macbook.
Is that a work one? Yes. When I signed up here I asked for a Macbook. We got two screens and a keyboard and a mouse and that’s about it. I wish I had a standing desk, but I don’t.
Yeah I have seen them, they are in high demand Yes, haha, it is quite a hot topic at the moment. Mine is like a car from the 90’s and you have to wind it up like a window and it only gets up to like here…so it is more like a kneeling desk or like a crouching desk.
So there are three levels of desks at the ABC… Yes, and this one just doesn’t do anything. And then there is one that has a windy thingy that reaches a certain level, and then there is the coveted electronic beautiful desk, that rises to beautiful levels. The freedom.
And what kind of facilities to you find absolutely essential? Uhm…a good internet connection, I guess. I mean, obviously, and this isn’t…I don’t know if you would consider this a facility, but obviously all the stuff that I use is the most essential thing. Having a good computer is good, but making sure I have all the software I need to work is easily the most essential.
What kind of hard- and software do you use? Well hardware a Macbook pro and software I use the entire Adobe Creative Suite. So Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, Premier, sometimes Flash. That is pretty much it. Oh and Photoshop, that is the main one. Photoshop and I would use Sketch, which I am not that familiar with, but Ri uses it in Melbourne so I am trying to learn that as well. It is pretty much a design tool for user interfaces, so she uses that a lot to migrate to from InDesign. Uhm…yeah, obviously Core Media which is our CMS.
What do you wear in you main workspace? Uhm…probably the same stuff every day actually. I wear these jeans every day and these shoes. I don’t know, it is pretty casual. At the start I was a bit more, like, I wore a collared shirt and all that, but who cares. Sitting with the graphic guys, who wear really sort of loud things, I don’t care. This is pretty much it. T-shirt, jeans and shoes.
213 And do you feel comfortable in this environment? Yes, I feel very comfortable hahaha.
Great. Not as comfortable as Mark, but you know…
Yeah you wouldn’t wear shorts? Bottom line? No shorts or showing of the feet? Uhm…yeah…it is not that…I wouldn’t care if anybody else did, it is really a personal thing. I never wear shorts, even on the hottest summer days.
Do you share your workspace with others? I know the answer to that…so what kind of support is available at the ABC? There seems to be a bit…and Jack is more involved in this than most people. There is the union, which helps people to talk to senior management making sure that it is fair and transparent and all that. So that is there…I know during the whole marriage debate, recently there was a lot of, kind of people on hand to be able to help LGBT people if they needed support, which is good.
Here in the workspace? Yeah, I think you had like access to say one call to a hotline to a psychologist or something like that, because it was quite a difficult time for a lot of LGBT people. So that was good that was there. What else is there? Uhm…obviously we have Marianne, who deals with all of our admin stuff, like getting travel expenses and whatever else. That is probably it, I’m sure there is much more than that but I just don’t use it. I haven’t used any of those.
And what would you like to change, if anything, about your workspace? Uhm…a standing desk? I’m not joking, that really…that is probably the only thing. And probably in hindsight I should have gotten a PC. I really like Mac’s but it’s not powerful enough for me, even this is like the best Macbook as well. But I should have gotten a graphics computer, because like sometimes I will be producing work, like some sort of heavy-duty motion graphics video or whatever and my machine would take like an hour and a half to render it and the person next to me…sometimes I would just take her computer or PC to render it out and it takes like 20 minutes. I don’t know why that is, but it is just…if I could get a second computer…because I do love Mac’s, but I would honestly probably give it up for a PC because I would prefer the power of it, I guess.
Why did you start working here at the ABC? Uhm…well, I kind of covered this, but the ABC is kind of a constant presence in everybody’s lives, I suppose. And to me it has always been a positive thing as well. Also, it was just one of those places I have always wanted to work and you know, it’s pretty good as well. I knew they would hire good people, and they did. The team is just so excellent. So I just trusted them. And it is kind of a good place for a creative job because it also feels like it could be long-term. Uhm…I have been in a lot of places where I was like, ‘I am going to give this a year, or two years’. But
214 here I really hope they extend my contract, because you just want to stay. There have been a lot of people at the ABC who have been there for 30 or 40 years. It is just one of those places. And I have talked to people in graphics, you know, who have worked here for 10 or 15 years and they were like ‘you know, you say you are going to move on but you just don’t. You stay or you leave and then you come back.’ I mean Inga used to work for the ABC before she went to Fairfax and everyone just kept crawling back. It is kind of really pervasive in Australian culture really. You can’t avoid the ABC and to me it has always been a great force in Australian culture.
Did Kimberley find you or did you find the role yourself? I found it. So I have applied for it online.
Had you quit your job already? No. I quit my job and then started here. So like, four weeks notice, but I had quit my job and came here and didn’t give myself a break in between.
And has your motivation changed over time? Uhm…I guess I feel a bit more driven towards news than I had before. So obviously I am from a bit of a mix of an advertising background and magazines and everything like that, and just being in a news environment is kind of impactful, I guess dealing with, you know, real kind of great…being a part of some really great investigations. Say, for example, I was on the Paradise Papers and being part of that, this secret thing, is pretty awesome. So I guess…it is not that my motivation has really changed. It is just that it is now…I guess it has changed. My motivation was just to design, but now it is to design storytelling in a really pure kind of way. Maybe it is not that my motivation has changed but it is that my skill to be able to pick those things up has changed.
But you love it, so I guess it did change… Yes. I love it more now, so that has changed.
What are your professional goals? Where would you like to go next? Uhm…I probably would like, oh I don’t know I am pretty happy with where I am at… I know it is really bad. Uhm…I have made it, I have peaked haha. I don’t know, there is no…it is hard because I am the only designer in my team so it is not like I can move up within my team. I can’t be the creative director of the DSI, it would just be a bit silly if I was. I think what could happen is maybe if the DSI did really well, and we were funded again next year and we were funded for more money, maybe we would hire another designer and then I would be senior to them or whatever…but in terms of moving around in the ABC it is not like I would love to be a supervising producer in graphics or whatever, that is not a motivation for me. I don’t want to be in TV graphics or whatever, it is just I want to be where I am but just…if that’s, you know, the only thing I could see happening is either professionally someone asks me or via somewhere else that is, you know, more of a director, a creative director…I am quite…one thing that I was used to before this, here I am as I said a bit of a work horse, before that I was
215 an art director and I was a senior designer, so I was always overseeing the people, so I was kind of used to managing people. Obviously still creating things, but I was kind of able to tell people what to do and things like that. So yeah, I can kind of…if that came along…because I am quite good at telling people what to do hahaha, uhm…then…you know, so be it. But for the moment I am happy here.
And what are the most important values that inform you work? Uhm…functionality I suppose. I think, to me…this is just a kind of philosophy of mine, uhm…I think there are kind of like two schools of thought in digital design. There is like designers who design and then make it work, so they design for design and then they make if functional. Or there are people who design for function and then make it pretty. And I would be the second, I think. I would, to me if it is not functional, doesn’t matter how pretty it is, in fact it even more annoying if it was really beautiful and it just sucks. But yeah, so to me, it is function over style.
Does you work make you happy? Yeah.
And do you ever get angry? No, I don’t think so. I am pretty chilled out I think. I can get stressed, but I have never gotten angry at anybody. Maybe secretly, but not…Not here, I haven’t been angry here. I do like…one thing the ABC has which a lot of other places don’t, is that there is a real kind of sense of ethics here. I feel like there is an effort to make sure that people feel comfortable and that there is no…I don’t know, just in past workplaces I have felt like, the last place I worked at I felt like there was always this undercurrent of sexism. And I have always kind of felt that in other workplaces and I don’t really here. Which is really unusual. In terms of…I should say misogyny, not sexism. It is something that bothered me a lot in my last job and that is why I kind of wanted to get out. I was working with a lot of women and there was always an undercurrent of, you know, men’s clubs and stuff, which kind of grossed me out a bit. I get angry at people if they are unfairly treating other people and I haven’t really felt that here yet.
Good. And is there anything that scares you in your field of work? Uhm…I think there is always a reason to fear digital stuff, because there is always, well I mean one big fear that I think is common across all designers but particularly digital designers is that, I mean I am quite young at the moment but when I am in my 40’s or 50’s there is always that worry that you will kind of fall behind I guess. So, there are concerns that I am not in a job that will be safe for me in thirty years, you know what I mean? Because the industry changes so rapidly and you have to…it is okay for me at the moment, I feel like I can keep up with the trends and things like that, but you know, I have always worked with older designers and there is always that you can see that there is a struggle. And I don’t, I hope this doesn’t come across as ageist, but you know, there are obviously exceptions but in digital design, it is just…it moves all the time, you know, if they changed the ABC app or the app store with the net neutrality stuff, you
216 know…there are always these concerns around any digital workplace and in particular in digital design. Like, how much, say, the shape of a screen has changed has completely informed the way you design things. And it is, I think it is a real mix-up for a lot of designers, and particularly coming from backgrounds in, say, video. When you are coming from a wide TV, to this, it is just a completely different way of thinking, it throws out the rule of thirds, it is so different. So my main concern is really ageing. Hahaha. In a professional way.
And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing? Well it is really just making sure that what I am doing kind of presents the content of the story or really what the journalists had in mind. I, yeah, just making sure that anything I do aids the story and it doesn’t you know, overpower a story. I don’t mean that in a wanky way…I am not saying ‘I hope my design isn’t toooo good!’. Haha. It is just that it is not distracting. There are so many designers that would just design for design’s sake. Making things beautiful, but it has no relevance. It is like that. You can always overdesign something, so making sure that the design fits the stories.
Which communities would you say you belong to? Communities? White people…hahaha, I don’t know. Do you mean work-related?
Yes, could be work or could be outside of work, anything that comes to mind… Hmmm…I feel an identity with Western Sydney. North-West Sydney, where I grew up. That could be a good or bad thing, but for me it is certainly something I identify with. The gay community…uhm…white people? No, haha, I don’t identify with white people, I am just being stupid. Designers…there is a design community. Uhm…yeah I am a pretty isolated person. It’s a hard one to answer. I am sorry I don’t mean to turn this around, but how would you answer that?
Uhm…it is funny because you are the second person to ask me that. I don’t know, I would say probably, a community of journalists, though not really yet because I have worked as a journalist but haven’t made money as one yet. So I feel like I will be part of that in the future. And then…women, I guess and maybe surfing and a yoga community. Oh yeah, in that sense mine would be musicians. I am not a musician myself, but I collect a lot of records. So I am a bit of a nerd with that. Artists, I do some paintings and all that, but I don’t know many artists, but I still feel…I guess it is the same way that you’d feel a sense of community of women, it is not like banding together all the time. It is the same thing with the gay community, I am just passively a part of that but not like going to gay meetings.
And do you have any memberships to trade unions or anything? No.
Would they in any way be useful to you? Not that I have found. Sorry that is really dismissive.
217
Is there a community that you would like to belong to but don’t yet? Uhm…I guess more, maybe journalists. I have always had a background in writing and things like that. I have never really used it, so…I have done little bits and pieces of journalism, but not like Inga and all of them. I think it would be pretty cool if I could expand into that in some way and somehow continue to be a designer. In some way I would like, for example to do projects that are design- focussed, that I could write. Not like huge essays, but you know, say a piece on, I don’t know, colour in aboriginal arts or something like that. Little things like that. So yeah, it would be cool if I could be a bit more involved in that community, uhm…I think that is kind of inevitable at the ABC anyway. Obviously, you know, Inga and Mark are kind of in that…there is so much access here to good journalists, so yeah…journalism really. That is probably it. I mean I don’t really feel part of a design community because I kind of came to it in a bit of a weird way, but my partner is a graphic designer. He had designed since he was 17 and now he is a designer, whereas if you asked me what a designer did when I was 17 I would be like ‘I don’t know, like, design a house or something?’. It is just not something that was on my radar at all, so I just came to it in a natural way, but I don’t have that same community of designers that I talk to, which would be really cool.
Are there any designer unions? Not really. There probably is…obviously there are a lot of resources for designers, I know, even within the ABC. There is a big designer community within the ABC which is really cool. Every two or three weeks we have an ABC meeting with most designers and graphics guys, anyone who is involved in digital design. And that is people from, say, the news app, the ABC I-view app, the ABC radio national and the designer in Brisbane and there is another digital designer. So that is really cool, because even though I do nothing with I-view or the ABC app, it is still cool to be able to sit in a room and be like people just saying what they did. And that is all we do, for 40 minutes, like ‘this is what we did for the past few weeks, this is what we are going to do for the next three weeks.’ so it is pretty…I find that really useful.
So you are part of the community here! Yes, to some extent, but not in an extent that I would be able to call them for help or whatever. It is just that…it is purely for inspiration or ideas. I feel like every time I leave, I am always like ‘yes!’, suddenly I have all these ideas and stuff, so it is really good to go to.
Awesome, so it is working. Okay, and who do you see as your main competitors? Ohhh, uhm…I feel a sense of competition internally with the Brisbane team because they are probably the closest…we are modelled after them actually. So they are the originals and they know everything about Core Media and stuff like that. So I do feel like, when they do a story insanely well I am like ‘damnit, they are so good!’, so I do feel a sense of competition, but it is healthy and it is not
218 like…yeah, I know this sounds braggy, but I don’t really think the ABC has competition, because at least in Australia nobody does what we do – at least in terms of these massive interactives and this kind of storytelling is really unique at least in Australia. I know the Guardian are a bit like that as well, so they are a bit of a competition, their interactives team.
What about newspapers? Do they have any online presence? The SMH do interactives and all that, but they just don’t…they do interactives and I know Nathanael from their team, he worked for ‘The Age’ which is the Melbourne version of the SMH essentially, and they…I don’t really consider them competition in the same way the Guardian or whatever is…because we are the national broadcaster, we don’t have adds, there is no real…I don’t feel, this is probably not the greatest way to think, but you know, there is no ulterior motive for the ABC. When we find a story interesting or important we release it.
There is no economic incentive… Yeah, and I have always worked in journalism to some extent and there has always been ‘this story is sponsored by this’ or ‘this story is a co-production with a Whisky company’, you know. I feel a sense of purity about the ABC that is really like. But yeah, in terms of competition it is probably the Guardian, because I really love the Guardian.
And has this changed in any way? Do you have new competitors now that weren’t there before? There is certainly…depends on what you mean by competitors, but in terms of…I would say most of our competitors are overseas. Even the Guardian, which is an international brand, they have a great interactive team in Australia, but there is a lot good stuff that they make overseas. The same goes for the NYT and the Washington Post. I consider them competitors in that they are not stealing our audience, but they are my competition in terms of design. I see their stuff and it is so good and I am really trying to get to their level, I suppose. I know that is maybe not competition in an audience sense, but you know…
Who are your audiences? I think the ABC has an interesting audience, because I don’t think you’d be able to find the same audience anywhere else, in that we don’t really have a…because it has been part of Australian culture for over 80 years it is part of everyone’s life. So it doesn’t really have the same kind of like audience that, say the Guardian Australia would have a left-wing audience, and the Daily Telegraph a right-wing audience. We have a bit of a mixture. I know the DSI team audience…I know that we are kind of existing to attract I guess millennials I suppose. Newer audiences. Our audience is huge. It is hard to explain, it is everybody really. And our intention is to get millennials looking at the ABC content, because it is a brand that is sort of aging, obviously over 80 years. It is important that our national broadcaster continues to, you know, inspire younger people I suppose.
219 And are you satisfied with these audiences or are there any other people that you would like to reach but are not reaching yet? Yeah, I am pretty satisfied, but I’m not…I mean, I am sure, I bet you anything that Michael probably answered this question with a 20 minute monologue. I am not sure, not really. If people are looking, and people are liking it and staying on the page then that’s a good audience, I guess.
What do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? I’d be so interested to hear what other people said about this. It is a nicely put question. [sighs] I guess engaging design, but that is so vague. I guess, it is like any journalism that you really want to hook people on, it has to be engaging, it has to be good journalism. It doesn’t matter…it being digital is just a new way of storytelling. The fundamentals of journalism are the same, it is just new ways of telling it and I guess the key to digital storytelling is continuingly innovating. That goes across making sure that you are telling the story correctly for the execution, for the designer making sure that you’re really adding to the story instead of distracting the story and I guess as a developer you are kind of ensuring that people remain engaged in an interactive. So yeah, it is engagement I guess. I don’t know, sorry…
Has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other innovative teams within or outside of the ABC? Well sometimes we, I shouldn’t say this, but we share content that we hate. Hahaha. Ri sent a graph in the Slack channel the other day that had, I can’t remember what it was comparing, but let’s just say it was road deaths or birth rates or whatever. The graph had two axes and it had two lines on it, but it was just bad design. They were trying to show a pattern between these two datasets by pretty much just slapping two graphs onto each other, while they had totally different axis. And they just made it so that it…but they were completely different numbers and different scales. It didn’t make sense and they really tried to make an argument for it. Actually another one that Inga sent around is this other one by this other website, I think it was about diversity and they had gotten a graph and I am not sure what exactly it was doing, I can’t remember the specifics but basically we even suggested setting up a Slack channel. There is this thing called ‘The museum of bad art’ that shares terrible art that is in museums and the same goes for designers and journalists, because you can kind of look at things and be like ‘that really doesn’t work, let’s never do that, let’s make sure we don’t get confused’. And we actually learned from one mistake we did earlier in the year. It was a children’s happiness survey that Behind the News, which is a children’s news program in the ABC and we got all this data from them. We fixed the mistake, but I will explain what happened. There was like a slider tool, and you could guess what percentage of kids were happy or whatever in Australia. And we had done this thing…there were a few things like how many kids were bullied etc., and it was particularly that sliding tool where the issue was. We picked it up from Reddit users, which were like ‘this is a bit weird’. You know when you slide it now it says something like ‘yes, that is right’, but before we had it so it was like ‘you got it!’ with a big smiley face. But a big happy face because you guessed how many
220 kids were being bullied…there was some disconnect and that happens when you are in a bubble of creating a project for like three weeks. People just don’t pick up on it and it was obviously insensitive, but you are tone-deaf at some point you become tone-deaf. But thank God we are in an age where feedback exists, because we changed it immediately. We were like ‘oh my god, this is awful, we are terrible people!’ So we got rid of the smiley face and toned it down.
Interesting. And how would you go about attracting new audiences? Uhm…I don’t know. It should just be about quality of work. Obviously it comes down a lot to Michael. To me Michael get’s the audiences and we, I guess journalists, designers and developers, we have to make sure that they enjoy it when they are there so that they come back. So, yeah, we should never really underestimate how important Michael is to everything. He is someone I think a lot of people would consider a luxury, but he is so essential. A lot of people wouldn’t even consider having an audience developer on their team. But he knows so much about audiences and who to target and how to get discussions going in comment sections. He is just so essential.
Right. Do you react to comments as well or do you just let people chat to each other? No we don’t unless it is valid like the Reddit situation. They are a good audience, a good source to make sure we do all that stuff, they are very opinionated but also very knowledgeable and they give pretty decent and constructive feedback. Yeah, in Facebook it is so different because people are just angry. Michael would read every comment there and would bring it to the table, you know, in meetings. He will be like ‘a lot of people said it was shared too many times…’, like, if I make a video I should recut it so that it doesn’t look like I am sharing the same video twice on Facebook. Sometimes people get exhausted and they will say like ‘has the ABC really done this again?’. That kind of thing Michael picks up on, but I have never seen the ABC go on there an being like ‘well, you know, actually blablabla’.
Last question. What do you see the most fundamental challenge for the field you are working in? I mean, personally I guess it is change in the industry. That is kind of a personal thing.
What kind of change? Well as I said, the change in technology I suppose. Making sure that we are able to keep up with an evolving landscape I suppose. It is hard for designers to continually maintain their knowledge. I come from a background of designing apps and things like that, and just making sure that all the screen sizes are right and all that feels really natural, but all those things change constantly. And even just purely from a design perspective it is, you know, you could…at the moment we are in an age of flat design, you know, instead of the fake-depth that we used to have back in the mid to late 2000’s at the start of web-design. For me that is one of the big challenges, staying relevant I suppose. Making sure that my design stays relevant. And as a designer you really just have to keep on figuring out where
221 everything is going so you don’t look old on arrival. Because I see a lot of articles where you can tell the designer, and this sounds really harsh, but is kind of past it, or they haven’t really been doing their research on what looks modern. Because people will see it if it doesn’t feel contemporary. If you go somewhere and it feels like it comes from the 90’s, it is really uncomfortable. And people know it, they are really savvy and they will just piss off.
So you interpreted this from a designer perspective because you probably feel more like a designer than a journalist, I guess right? I think so yes. I am more a designer for journalism. I think I can’t exclude journalism from what I do really. But yeah, it is hard to…I don’t know, I couldn’t really separate it. Because you have to be a journalist to some extent to design for journalism. It is a bit funny to consider me a journalist, because I am not a pure journalist in the same way Mark and Inga are, but I would consider Michael a journalist as well because at the end of the day it is always about the story, I suppose. It’s never purely about design or audiences, it is always about responding to journalism.
Okay and are there any fundamental challenges you see for journalism? Ohhh….I guess it is probably the same answer. It is the change in writing for digital for people who are…I think a big challenge that Inga and Mark would probably have to deal with is making sure that people remain engaged when people just absorb the news like, you know, chips. How casual people read the news now. I think that is really one of our greatest challenges, to make sure that somehow…I mean I do it all the time, I will be on Facebook and just like reading everything, but you are skipping through it. And that is one of the reasons why we use the scrollyteller. You know the scrollyteller? You have probably heard this before but it is the function of storytelling where you have animations happening behind text and things like that. You are trying to replicate the natural movement that people use day to day. So scolling through a Facebook feed, people just do it forever, because that is how they consume media now. The moment when you have done bad work as a designer is when you do something that is completely unnatural for a user. It is all about user experience really. For example, if you are doing a story that requires, you know, if you have your phone out and have to tap through the right to read things, but that isn’t really how people consume stuff. I mean, people have done it pretty well before but it is mainly just you are used to scrolling and people will do that regardless. So if you have something that side- scrolls people will just get so confused. Because you are dealing with people who look at their phone for hours and hours a day, so they have a certain way of moving around things that you have to be aware of.
Thank you!
222 Interview Inga Ting
Let’s start with your job title. What’s your job title? Just straight up data journalist.
Perfect. And how long have you been doing that for? At the ABC only about six months and before that I was a data journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald for almost four years, just under.
How did you get into data journalism? Uhm…it was kind of random actually. The position at the Herald was new and I think, I mean I was actually in food and wine before I was in data. Which is really bizar…
You were in what sorry? In food and wine…
In food and wine! No way, haha. Yes! Haha. Everyone is always like: what is the connection between food and wine and data, which there isn’t one. But I think it mainly was because I have always been interested in data, I really like numbers. And before…so I was at the SMH for about 7 years and so the last four years was in data and a year before that was in food and wine and then a few years before that I was doing digital production. But in that time, because I was working casually when I was a digital producer at the Herald, I was also publishing my own masters’ honours project, from when I studied. And that was an in-depth look at indigenous deaths in custody. That was basically a data-project, it was empirical data. So I was going through all the coroners reports over the last 10 years into indigenous deaths in custody and then creating a dataset, collecting it in a spread sheet, basically information on the cases and what the coroner found in each of the cases. So I was comparing the coroner’s observations about the case, to recommendations from the Royal Commission into aboriginal deaths in custody 20 years ago. And basically logging how many times the events outlined in the coroner’s report breached the recommendations of the Royal Commission. So you could actually then quantify how often cases or recommendations were breached, how often they followed the same patterns of breach, if it was the same kinds of recommendations that were always being breached or if it was different ones each time, and then how often a coroner would make a recommendation to strengthen that kind of recommendation from 20 years ago or whatever that was, or how often it was ignored. So you could kind of draw this line, the dataset span was about 10 years, a bit more than 10 years, so the systemic patterns of breach that happened all the time were regularly commented on by the coroner, so all of that stuff. At the time that I did that project I didn’t even know what data journalism was. I hadn’t even heard of it, I didn’t know it existed in Australia. That was like around 2010 until 2012 that I was working on that and then it was only in 2013/14 that the job came up at the SMH, so I think it was that project that kind of was the connection for my editor. So my editor had looked within the newsroom for other journalists and
223 I know that he has considered and offered the job to other journalists in the newsroom who were either strong in economics or in business or other kind of heavy reporting, but they hadn’t been interested so they kind of had to open it up to general expressions of interest in the newsroom and that’s when I applied. So I think it was that kind of connection, plus I had done previous work before I had even worked in news media I worked for a science magazine in mapping and geo- spacial sciences. And it was the mapping that he was interested in. It is kind of not what most journalists have a background in and the technical sides of that, like understanding how maps are created sort of thing I think he was interested in. And I had a bit of really basic development experience, so a bit of coding a bit of CSS, a bit of HTML, I was quite strong digitally. But yeah, and I had some reporting experience but not you know extensive reporting. So I think he was looking for someone that mainly would learn quickly, I think that’s what he looked for more than anything else. Because I think he knew he wasn’t going to find anyone with experience or any experience in data journalism because it didn’t really exist. And they had no position at all at the SMH before my position was created. So he was really looking for someone who could kind of learn quickly, grasp concepts quickly, who was digitally literate, numerate and interested in lots of different things. I would be working closely with other journalists across many different grounds, so you would have to be able to move quickly in sport or entertainment or business or economics or health or education and kind of be able to seamlessly grasp what the story was about, even though you weren’t in a specific ground. So I think that is always the tension with data and working within other grounds, they will be like ‘well it is not your ground, so you don’t have the same expertise that the ground reporter does’, you had to come in and work on quite detailed projects. So you had to be able to grasp it straight away.
And how old are you? 34
Just out of curiosity, was that first project that you did published? Uhm, it was in the end. It was a little while afterwards, but in the end Kranky, do you know Kranky? They are an independent media company. They are based in Melbourne and are really strong, particularly in politics. And there was a time, and I don’t know if it’s still seen that way, there is still definitely a time where they were breaking a lot of stories and they really focussed on the political and social reports. So they published it as an 11-part series that ran from the 20th anniversary of the Royal Commission and reported on indigenous deaths in custody over the following weeks.
Very interesting. Alright how would you say the DSI fits into ABC’s innovation history? Uhm…I am not that familiar with the ABC’s innovation history. I am new here but I knew the team in Brisbane the Interactive Storytelling Team, I have known them through my work at the Herald and because I would compete against them in the hackatons and things like that. Some of their work was similar to some of my work, so I knew them on Twitter and they do great stuff. So I feel like they
224 were probably, they have probably really paved the way for a lot of what our team has done. We use all of their templates and even in terms of how our team works. I think they have done a lot of the hard work in trying to get people to understand what’s involved in these kinds of stories, which I think is one of the hardest things because it’s basically a cultural shift that needs to happen in the newsroom for your team to work effectively. And I think having that team exist before our team did has made life a lot easier for our team. Our team is really an expansion of that kind of idea and it’s a geographical thing. Them being based in Brisbane which is where all the digital stuff happens at the ABC, I think is quite difficult because it means that the Sydney newsroom, which is one of the biggest newsrooms, if not the biggest newsroom, is geographically separated from where all that innovation is happening – not even innovation, just digital work. Because the ABC has been so TV and radio focussed in the past, they need to shift to a digital outlook and I think it is really difficult to get that if you don’t see it in action. It just becomes something that is talked about and it means that people feel resentful because they feel like the area is being neglected. If you are in TV or radio and you work really hard and then all of a sudden everyone is talking about digital, I think that can be really discouraging. So, yeah I think I mean the ABC is now hiring everybody out of the SMH digital, so I think the ABC is really pushing to get their digital credentials up, but these things are slow and speaking from my experience at the SMH it takes years to get the newsroom to shift the way it thinks. And I think the Herald did it really well. We did it maybe three years ago with a project, called project Sunrise which was really about shifting the way that people worked and thought about stories to a digital focussed and led kind of mode of operating I guess. And they did that through heaps of seminars and lots of consultation and then worked really closely with various leaders in the newsroom, they rolled out training for everybody. Everybody got really extensive training, everybody got the same training, and then people who wanted advanced training got advanced training, so I mean there was a lot of resistance to that I think kind of emotionally, not intellectually. I think intellectually people agreed that yes digital is important, but it is always about striking that balance about how to roll it out. And people were saying that they were too busy, because I mean journalists are really busy. But you know, you just have to change the way you do it, you just become busy doing something else instead of the things you used to be doing, so you just try to find a more efficient ways of working. So I think the Herald did that really well and I think the ABC needs to do that.
So there is not type of training here at the ABC? Not that I have seen, and I have only been here for 6 months but I haven’t seen anything about that. I think there was some talk about it in the last restructure that there would be training, but there was no detail. I haven’t heard any detail about how that would work and they do run digital literacy sessions here. And I have, and I know Michael has as well, run a session. But it’s voluntary and the people who need it probably don’t have the time to do it, because it takes an hour out of your day. and because journo’s have such randomly scheduled days all the time they are just not going to a training session unless it’s compulsory. So at the SMH
225 it was compulsory, you had to attend and if you didn’t attend it they told you you had to leave your job. They were really strict about it.
So you need really strict policies to make the digital turn… Yes and you need management to make room and to say okay you do not need to file any stories today, you are off work until you do this training. You are off work until you do this training and that’s how it was rolled out at the Herald. Even if you didn’t want to do the training they couldn’t say they didn’t have time to do it because people said ‘no, I’ve taken your work away now, you are doing the training’.
Okay interesting. And what would you say is the DSI’s core mission? We did have a mission statement when we first came on board.
Well what is the mission statement to you? If you tell it to your friends what do you say? To take the…well…I think to take the best news stories of the day and to present them in a way that is made for digital, so it works to the advantages of digital online and we tell that story in a way that it might be interactive, or might me more visual, or it might be a completely different form of storytelling to what we have previously done, it is not as formulaic. So we can, I guess, speak to the way that people consume news on their devices or online, rather than just trying to convert TV or print or radio into text on a screen.
And when will this mission be successful? Uhm…I think it is just an evolving thing. I don’t think, I can’t imagine a time where you would sit down and think it’s done, because people are always changing the way they consume media, new technologies are always coming out. And I think people, I mean, people just get sick of watching the news so you want to find a way of telling stories that is incredibly successful the first few times that you do it, but then people become accustomed to it and it doesn’t have that same engagement or that same magnetism as when you first did it. So I think that part of the problem with digital is that everything evolves so quickly, so I think it will never be done really…
Do you have a daily work routine? Not really. I guess in a really broad sense yes, like coming into work, reading emails, answering emails, going to meetings, that sort of thing. But not in the way that a traditional reporter would, where you know if you were a courts reporter or something like that you would come in or go to court, check the schedule and attend however many days and then you would be back in the office and filing the story. It is definitely nothing like that, it is pretty autonomous I guess.
Right, and is every day different? Or are there some fixed points in your day? I guess, there are fixed…I mean, it is a desk job more than other reporting jobs would be, so I don’t leave the office as much as I used to, or as some other
226 reporters might. So in that sense, it does become more fixed because it is not difficult to work out where I am for instance. And in a broad sense it is the same in that I will come in and check my emails, and talk to people about projects and uhm…but, yeah, I guess it is hard to answer in that way because it’s just, in a broad way yes…most days are the same but in a specific sense no, because, yeah, you are working on different projects I guess.
And what kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your role? I think there are a few aspects to it. One is definitely to raise the data-literacy in the newsroom. And that’s going to be through doing formal training sessions, like the digital literacy sessions that I mentioned earlier, but I think most of it or the most effective way of doing it is just by working with other people. And that’s what I did at the Herald as well. A lot of it is working directly with journalists who have data stories or who have data, to hopefully just teach them how to look at it in a particular way, or how to present it in a particular way, or at least how to assess what is effective and what is not effective. And a lot of that, I think, comes with time. Like, I think they have to know that I am around and that that is something I can do with them, and that is not necessarily working on stories together, it might just be that they say ‘I have a dataset what do you think about this?’ And I might say ‘oh, you could do it like this, or you can present it like this, or that could be effective’, and then they just go away and do it by themselves.
Did you get any training in data yourself when you started as a data journalist? Yeah, some. So I had additional training in Excel. Like, advanced Excel and I did three different courses in data journalism. So, that was distance courses, those mass online… how are they called MOOC’s? So I did three MOOC’s through the Night Centre of Journalism in Texas and they were really good. I did those a few years apart, so I did the first one…I probably did them all a year apart and they had slightly different focuses. I enjoy doing those, they are good. Because I think as well with data journalism it is something that changes all the time, so if you don’t keep up with it…I mean working with it means you have to keep up with it to some extent. So also did a couple of just digital training courses to brush up on Javascript and CSS and HTML, but a lot of it has been self-taught. Oh and I know, I use…
So self-taught at home or at university? Self-taught at work, so a lot of it…because I am not a developer, uhm, I look for out-of-the-box projects that I like the look of and basically just have a play with them and see if it works for the kind of stories we do. A lot of their out-of-the- box programs are made for internal marketing or business analysts, so they might look nice and work fairly well but you can’t publish them because they are not served to publish for mass views. You need something that can handle 300.000 views and most things will just fuck up under like 10.000 views. So like they are not made for that, you’ve got to find something that has a lot of power behind it. So anyway, I use Tableau a lot, which is, I use the free version, and they give me a
227 lot of support. So I have done a lot of training with Tableau specifically because it is not very user-friendly. But it is actually quite good. It’s ugly, so you need to design it up and you need to think really hard about how you are going to use it, but I think once you do that I think it can be pretty flexible. The only problem is that it looks crap and most people just publish it looking terrible.
Okay so you need to customise it… Yes, I think you need to think about design a lot, and that is something…like I think data journalists are all really varied in their skill sets, so some will be really…you know, they have a statistics background, and others will have a development background and others might have a reporting or design background. But I think you need bits of all of those things depending on what you do, like if you don’t have a team to back you to do all those parts of the job that you don’t have, which I didn’t at the SMH and which is nice about the ABC I do have a team now. But at the Herald I did everything myself, which meant that I had to be across some parts of coding, some parts of design, some parts of reporting.
So you had to really reinvent yourself and reskill… Yeah exactly, and to kind of have a blanket of skills that crosses all of those different areas.
Wow, that must have been pretty intense. Yes, but it was good though. My first degree was in arts, in film studies, so I really like visual communication, so that comes really easily to me and I like design. I used to do design and desktop publishing before I was a journalist, so you kind of…yeah it is interesting because data journalism has kind of brought other things that I like to do that aren’t journalism…so yeah, it is a fun role to have, I think, if you are a bit of a jack-of-all-traits.
And how many different tasks do you have on an average day? I know this is a hard one, it has proven to be a hard one to answer to the other ones. Uhm…like, what’s a task? How would you classify a task?
Uhm…that depends on what you find a task really... you can… Uhm…I don’t know, it will change. I can come in and be like ‘I have one task, which is to analyse a dataset’, but obviously within that there could be a lot of different things that involves, and sometimes I don’t know I am going to end up having to do all these other things until I get into the analysis. So it could be one or it could be like 15, I guess it depends on what part of the project we are in.
Okay, and how many projects do you work on a week? Do you work on several at the same time or do you do one after the other? Uhm…there is definitely overlap, but it’s…I am on a big project, like in the heat of it, like in the middle of it, it will just be the one. But at either end of the project there will be overlap with a couple. And I would always in the background be looking for other projects. So like, at the moment, like yesterday we just published
228 the birthday one, so that probably was like a week of being devoted to it, but at the same time I was hunting for this other dataset on sexual assaults and this other dataset on HSC stuff and working with Mark on his story, so…yeah it can be three or four things at once but only one would be the major and the rest would kind of ebb and flow around its schedule.
And how do you experience having these different tasks? Uhm…in what way?
Do you like it, do you find it difficult to juggle? Uh..no I think it’s good, I mean I find the pace at the ABC slower than at the SMH. And I think partly that is because our team is a more project-based rather than a news-cycle team, whereas at the SMH I was a bit of both. And certainly I was very conscious, and I am still conscious here although I try to train myself out of it, really conscious of the number of stories we are producing. Like, I know that you are supposed to be measuring impact, and quality of the publication and not just the number of things you churn out, but I still think people count the number of thing you churn out. I think that that’s just the way that the news media has worked in the past and it is really hard for managers right at the top, even if your direct manager is not counting it or your managers manager is not counting it, I still think someone is counting it somewhere.
Is that stressful for you? A little bit yes…it can be. I am never sure if I am producing enough stuff and, you know, I get great guidance from my manager that things are fine and I can relax about how quickly we are doing things but at the Herald for instance, and this is probably why I am like this, at the Herald we had the data team which was my editor and I for like two years, and a lot of that time we were spending time training, like doing training ourselves, like learning new tools, teaching other journalists how to use tools, teaching other journalists how to work with data and working a lot on changing the way journalists thought and the culture of the newsroom and how it dealt with data. And none of that stuff is measurable. You cannot measure how comfortable a newsroom is with data versus how comfortable they were a year ago. And so if you counted the amount of stories we did it was really low. Also because we didn’t bother putting our names to all of the stories. When we first worked with other journalists we just did it because we enjoyed it, and not because we put our names on it so we didn’t ask for credits or bylines. Also because that is the personality of my editor and I. We were a bit like well I could happily go through life anonymously as long as you’re doing something you enjoy. But it was seen that we weren’t doing anything, and we couldn’t point to a story…well obviously we could say we helped that journalist do something…but we never got credit for it, so it was not able to be quantified and then that team was disbanded like part-way through, so my editor took a redundancy and I was moved to breaking news and the editor-in-chief said ‘well we are not going to have a data team anymore, we are just going to have data as something that everyone does in the newsroom as part of the job’. So she said ‘it is not a specialist area, we don’t want it to be a specialist area.’
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So then your educational task must have worked well…or do you think this was just a theory? I think this was just a theory. I think that that particular newsroom leadership team didn’t understand data at all and they didn’t understand what it took and what it entailed. And they certainly read, I think, the climate of news indirectly in thinking that data was not a specialist area, because at the time that they’ve gotten rid of the data team at the Herald every other newsroom was hiring data journalists, so it was crazy. I think that person that made that decision was pretty out of touch. That person had a really strong print background, didn’t know anything about digital. But that is what I am really conscious of, because after that I ended up back into data but basically outing out a lot more stuff but that was also because I was trained better, I was two years into it so I was much more efficient and was able to put stories together much more quickly. And then I was really careful about making sure that I had bylines and I had credits and all of that stuff, so now I am also really much more careful of how things are credited in the newsroom. Whereas previously it was thought like if you did data, graphics or development or video you didn’t get credit and it was just the reporter that got the credit. Even though like now, we would say that the people who should get the credit is anyone who contributes to the experience of the story. So in our stories we credit anyone who takes part in it even though you are not the lead reporter or kind of drive the project.
Is there any particular order of credit, do you put the person that put most effort in first? Yes. I try to. I have notices, I don’t know if it is always the same way, but I noticed that it is still the tradition to put the reporter first. But I think, yeah, I think part of that is changing with our team. Because I know that we get stories where a reporter from another team brings us the data and they might have done a different story. With that mortgage stress story for instance that you saw, that was the case. They did their own TV program, they found the data, they used parts of it in their program, but they didn’t really look at it and then they gave us the dataset and then I became the lead reporter on that story because I did a completely different story on it. So in a way, because we presented the story completely differently they didn’t get any credit, I mean, they got credit as our collaborators right down the bottom but they didn’t get any particular credits on the story. And that was kind of an interesting reversal of what is normally the case.
Were they upset about it? There was certainly a bit of discussion about it, yeah. I think there was a, they were a bit taken aback at first because I think as well maybe they felt, you know normally and that is the weird thing as well, normally the person that finds the data they consider it their story or their data.
Yes they consider it their own idea. Yes, their idea, their contact or source. But they don’t know what to do with it,
230 they have no idea what to do with it and they can’t do anything with it so they have to hand it on. So then it becomes like…well what do you then? Either they want to learn how to do data journalism, or they want to hand it over. You need to collaborate, so I think that’s part of why my position was created at the ABC, because they have not really had any data journalists before, at least not titled data journalists. And so datasets just got dumped, they didn’t know what to do with it so they just ignored it, wasted it.
I just have a million questions that are unrelated, but I’ll just ask you them another time. Okay so what are the skills that someone needs to do what you do? Uhm..that’s a hard question in a way, because like I said there are so many different types of data journalists, particularly I think I am a bit different because I don’t have a particular specialist skillset. Like I said I am not a developer, I didn’t do statistics as my degree or anything, I am not a designer by trade or anything like that either, mine is more of a grab bag of stuff and I was a reporter first. So like, that is a bit different because I think a lot of data journalists get into it because either they were developers or designers, or now there is probably a whole new generation of data journalists who would have data science degrees and have an interest in journalism. Uhm..but it’s interesting because I do meet a lot of people asking me, ‘where do I find a data journalist I want to hire a data journalist.’ And I am like ‘uhm…I don’t know there are maybe like five or six in the whole of Australia that I can think of. There are probably a lot of people who are interested in it and if you are willing to train one then you can get yourself one, but you’ve got to be willing to train them for a couple of years and give them time and space to not produce a lot while they are learning, and all that kind of stuff. But that’s a big investment. But I have said to a lot of people ‘have you tried getting data science graduates?’ and they are like: ‘yes I have, and they are terrible because they can handle the data and can look at it, but they can’t find the story and that is a completely different thing.’ So I think it is hard, I think journalism is still about finding a story and that is still a journalistic skill and that is about news judgement and that is totally different skillset to analysing data.
So would you say it would be better to go at it from a journalism or a data background? Uhm…I think you can do either, but you definitely have to have a very keen interest into the other thing. And now actually, I think that data journalism is a core subject in some journalism courses. The way of working is completely different, it is way more collaborative and I think traditionally reporters are quite territorial and competitive and data and the kind of project work that my team does is really collaborative. There is no point being competitive and territorial about it, it would be ridiculous, so it is something you have to unlearn. You have to learn how to share and work with other people much more than you would have previously. But I think it is different for the developers than for the designers because they are always working with journalists, but as a journalist because you know you are going to be measured in bylines and you have been taught that you are measured in bylines, it is really hard to let go of that. I mean it
231 was less hard for me because my first editor didn’t care at all about bylines, it was kind of the opposite training that I got, but I mean I guess for people that ask you should be numerate as a journalist if you want to move into data journalism. So yes, definitely familiarise yourself with statistics. You don’t have to be a statistician, but you have to have a solid grounding in at least telling the difference between a rigorous statistical approach and one that is questionable. Uhm… I think you should definitely be good at Excel, but even though I have advanced Excel I am not amazing at Excel I definitely would need help from an accountant to do certain things I don’t know SQL or Microse or anything like that. I have no idea what any of those are about. So…
Do you feel like you are missing those skills in your work? Not necessarily. I think that I would be interested in, there is a program called R that people use for statistical analysis a lot. And I have seen, there is another journalist in here who used to be a scientist and she uses R and she gave me a bit of a demo. She is interested in using Tableau so I help her with Tableau and she said ‘I can show you R’. I think R is good for working with straight up data that you want to manipulate and analyse and shape, but there is no visualisation, you have to plug in a visualisation part. But to me looking at the spreadsheets and at the charts and graphs and pictures of it, they are completely inseparable, you would not be able to have one without the other and I would never work on a story or publish a story or any kind of visualisation that I had not worked…like developed while I was finding the story. So I don’t know how people get a story without doing that process. Like, I don’t know, maybe I just think differently like, for me, I am quite visual and it is visual storytelling essentially. But yeah I think people should be good at Excel, I think or they should have some kind of tool that would help them to analyse numbers, uhm…and I think it would be helpful to be grounded in best practices of visual communication, like visual language. Thinks like how to choose the correct chart types, what are the traditions for presenting time on an axis, or you know wether you use of colours, or even some sense of fonts and spacing would be good. But I don’t think a lot of journalists or data people have that, I think they must go to designers that have that or they you do it all, but I just think it looks terrible. Like if you had an amazing analysis, an amazing story, but if the thing is ugly I just think it is unbearable. You turn people off straight away. Especially because you are talking about new media where stuff can look beautiful. You have such beautiful visualisations and sharp images and you are competing with so much noise online. If your thing doesn’t look visually appealing I think you have just lost it.
Alright and what have you learned since starting this job? Uhm… in a general sense I think I have learned more about working on video, and this is a practical thing I guess, because we did do video at the Herald, but not well because it was not something that was given enough time. It was just something they churned out. The videos that we do here we try much more to make them really engaging and to try to present a clear and engaging story to the audience. So I have a better understanding of, in a way, how to write a video, how to write a script that works for that and how to work with visual elements and
232 how to work with Alex, the designer, and how much time he needs to do things. That kind of thing. I mean I am still learning that, but that is definitely a newer kind of experience, which is good because I really wanted to do lots of data videos and explainers at the Herald but we never had the time, so it was just impossible and you can’t do a crap data explainer, there is just no point.
Yeah, it is very special that you guys get the time…I think it is needed and more people should get the chance to do that, but it is great that you do. And I would say another thing I am learning more about is the hierarchy of the ABC. Like really, because if you compare this institution with the Herald I think there is a lot of tradition or like power struggles on the background that are going on that I am not really aware of. I am not really sure what is going on, but I know that there is stuff going on so you kind of have to think diplomatically.
And do you work together with any other ABC teams? Yes, so we have done stuff with Four Corners, I have spoken to…I just had meetings with other journalists around the newsroom more on a one on one basis on stories they are working on, which was good. So that is not really team stuff, but they are interested in data so I think that is a really good place to try to plant a seed. And usually if you can get a few people to do it in the newsroom and other journalists see the kind of work that they are producing and kind of become interested, I think that that is the best kind of way to spread the love. Most of it has been that sort of stuff but I think more so than any of the other team I would work on my own stories, or I would come up with the stories that then the whole team would work on.
Yeah okay so you have already answered my second question about if you usually work with other colleagues, but your most recent story was a bit of a solo effort right? Yes, this is the first one probably that I have done solo. Uhm…and then the other stories, like actually most of the big stories that we’ve done as a team have been my stories. It would have been a story that I would have done completely on my own at the SMH, but now the whole team works on it.
So you have the ideas? You are the idea machine… A little bit. There are only two journo’s on the team, so it is Mark and I who come up with ideas more and the others are more about implementing the ideas and really making the best of them. But in terms of finding stories, I think the journalists of the team are more used to that part of it. So, yeah, it is interesting…for Ri an Nath, the developers in Melbourne, if a story that they are working on gets published they will just sit and wait for us to come up with the next story or for another pitch to come through. Whereas Mark and I are always finding stories, pitching, thinking of stuff. So in a team like this, how do you balance the people making the stories, the journalist side of it with the development or the design side of it.
How do you interact with your colleagues?
233 Uhm…a lot of it is on Slack. I mean, I sit with Mark and Michael, so Mark and I will talk all the time and we probably work most closely on stories.
Would that be because you are sitting together or because you guys are the two journo’s and just generally work on the same stories? It is probably both. Recently I have been working with Alex a lot too, because in all of my stories we have had video and we had quite tight deadlines on the last two that went out, so it has been a bit of a scramble. I think it would definitely be Alex and Mark that I would talk to most and then Michael, his work is a bit separated because he usually comes in at the end of the story to talk about sells and stuff like that.
What do you mean exactly by sells? It came from the Herald, from Hutch and I. It is literally a marketplace where you sell something. So we talk about the homepage on the website almost like a marketplace where you are selling the story.
Oh! I thought cells with a –c I know a lot of people think that. It is language that Hutch and I have brought over from the SMH. In that training that I talked about they talked about, because then you had to write your own headlines with search engine optimisation in it, and they were teaching you to differentiate between the SEO headline which you load with keywords at the front, so that people can find it for all of history. But you sell would be how you are going to get people to read the story when they were only going to see the headline on the homepage.
So just the intro? No the intro is different, they are the small words that go next to it. If you have the headline, I’ll show you. The sell, so for instance…uhm….the let me think about it. So a story I had at the Herald for instance where the headline was ‘Australian’s median age is revealed as 37’, and so it’s a really straight headline, it’s very boring. But it has got good SEO because if someone wanted to look up Australian’s median age they would look that up in Google. But the sell of the story is the way we would get people to click on it on the homepage, was ‘when will all my friends be married and divorced’. So it is a totally different angle that we think will draw in readers, but is not loaded with SEO keywords.
So it would be like the subtitle under the title? No, the headline would not appear at all on the homepage. It appears as if it’s the headline but it’s not the headline. So I think at the ABC they call it the teaser, or the teaser title or something like that. So for the birthday story for instance, the title was ‘Australia’s most popular and least popular birthdates revealed’, that was the same as the teaser in this case. But and we will probably change it over later in the week, another teaser we had thought of was ‘Australia enters babymaking season’, so it is like an alternative headline in a way, but it’s what we would call the sell: the way we would get people to click on the story, even if it’s not the headline.
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So I heard that you don’t do A/B-testing here? Apparently not here.
So it is mostly through Slack. Do you see your colleagues outside of work? Do you go for drinks, do you go for lunch together? Yeah, sometimes. I definitely hang out with Mark and Alex the most. With Mark I usually try to get coffee everyday or a coffee every second day. I try not to drink too much coffee…he drinks a lot of coffee so sometimes I am like, ‘no I am not coming for coffee’. But if I go for coffee it is always going to be with either Mark or Alex or both of them, and sometimes Michael because he is there as well. And Jack I know from the Herald, and we were friends there, so I see him…although, of everyone in the team who is in Sydney, I would have the least to do with Jack, which is odd.
Is that just because he is sitting the furthest away? I don’t know. It is also because he just hasn’t worked on any of my stories, which is really weird because everyone else has worked on all of my stories. So when I say all of the team works on my stories it is actually everyone but Jack, which is weird. And I think in a way it is because his skills and Alex’s skills overlap a little bit, so when we do video my stuff are hardly ever interviews, which I think is more what Jack does. Whereas my stuff needs motion graphics and animation and illustration and so Alex has been doing that. But yeah, in terms of socially…yeah our team will go on team lunches usually every time we finish a big project there is a team lunch. And sometimes we are going for drinks. Jack has his birthday party his weekend and he has invited everybody, I don’t know if they are going…I am going! But I think everyone gets on really well, which is nice.
Did you guys have a Christmas party? We did, we had one last week. We had two on the same day and then another one the next day. I was really hungover…but it was really fun. So Mark didn’t want to come to the big Christmas party, but Alex and Jack and I went and stayed out super late, so it was fun.
And who are you missing in the team? Are you missing any skills do you think some people carry a heavier workload than others? Uhm…I think I reckon we could do with more developers. Mark and I are always fighting over developers, and we are always teasing each other because we are like…like….I did the birthday story on my own because there were no developers, because he took both developers for his Facebook story. So I was trying to poach them off his story, so I was like ‘hey guys…what are you working on?’ and they’d be like ‘oh, on Mark’s Facebook story’, and I’d be like…’Do you want to work on a different story?’. Hahaha. And Mark was like ‘Stop stealing my developers!’. And I was like ‘Well…if they want to come over…it’s their choice.’ But before that I had both developers working on my story, so I feel like we could do with more developers. Who else? I think we’ve got good design, video, I mean in a way if we had more journo’s we would do more of our own stories. Because
235 like I said, the project ideas come from the journo’s, but then we don’t have the developers to pull them off…so.
So one more journo and one more developer? I think two more developers. I think it would be nice to have like 1,5 developer for each journo or even two.
How many hours would you say you work a week? I think it varies. I mean I think, I try not to be here all the time. So I would say about 40 to…yeah probably an average of 40 to 42. Uhm…but it can be shorter on longer. On the mortgage stress story, I was here all the time, I was here like 15 hours a day everyday, and then I was working on the weekend as well. How long did you do that for? About two or three weeks. No three weeks. But that was an exception, it was partly because that was the first really big project we did. I was writing that project, and when we do my projects I usually do a lot of it. I lead the project and direct everybody else’s work. Whereas I think some of the other projects that we have been working on with other teams there is no one person that runs the project. People kind of do their own part of it and then the other team will kind of pull it together. Or Mark’s job has been to pull it together. But if it is my project I run it, write it, pull it together, do the video, I work on the concepts with the developers and stuff, like I will…so with that one I was leading the project and then I was working on another one with Four Corners that they were running really behind with, so it came to me very late, so we were kind of scrambling to get things done and I was going away overseas, so it was a hard deadline. So I think that was an exception that I was working that much. That was crazy.
Hasn’t happened since? No, hasn’t happened since.
I am presuming you don’t have any other jobs aside from this one? No.
What do you consider free time? Uhm…what do you mean? In my life?
Yes. Would you consider watching the news on your day off free time? Would you consider talking to your workmates on Slack out of working hours free time? Yes, I guess I would consider it free time. I mean technically it is not…like if the union was to do a survey on what we were doing, like work outside of working hours than I would put being in Slack in, unless I was just messing around on it instead of talking about a project. Watching the news and that kind of thing I don’t really consider work unless it’s really focussed stuff that I am actually researching. So if I am just at home, watching the news casually while making dinner or if I am on public transport reading the news, if I am just reading anything I wouldn’t consider it work. But if I am at home in the evening,
236 specifically looking at stories on mortgage stress because I want to see what’s been done than I would consider that work, because I wouldn’t do that normally. But I guess, especially with Slack and stuff, you can get that stuff anywhere, but our team is pretty good at clocking off. I think the ABC is definitely you know, much better than the SMH at clocking off. It makes it easier.
And how many hours of free time would you consider you have a week then? Uhm…well I guess like most evenings and the weekend. I wouldn’t normally work on the weekend at all.
And do you manage to earn a living from doing this? Yes, luckily. Yes.
Comfortably? Yes. I mean I think…I was a casual employee at the SMH for a really long time, working permanent hours, five days a week, Monday to Friday, on a casual contract.
It is like that at newspapers in Holland…it is terrible. Yes, it is crazy. I mean they have to pay you overtime and things like that. At the end of the day you are paying me more than you would if you would just give me a salary. But it is because of job security and things…eventually I finally did get a permanent contract at the Herald in the last two years, and then came here and now we are all on contracts. So when I got interviewed for the position…so the union agreement covers all media, regardless of where you work, and in that bargain agreement they say: if you work the same hours, regular hours at least three days a week over six months you have the right to be asked to be made permanent, because you are basically working a permanent job. But very few people do that, because they are worried they will get fired, but you do have the right to do that. And the media union is very strong. It has more than 80 percent maybe even 90 percent membership. So at Fairfax they had lots of restructures, they made lots of people redundant so they were very aware of what their union rights were. The union is very powerful, in a good way, not super powerful in a way that the miners were in the 1960’s in England, but people are certainly part of the union and know that they can go to the union for help. So when I came here…so the union helped me fight for a permanent contract when I was at the Herald, I finally got the permanent contract. And then came here for the interview and then they were like, it is a one year contract…so I was like…’ah, I literally spent 9 months trying to get a permanent contract at the SMH, and I was like…I do not want to leave a permanent job in this industry and go back on a contract.’ And Kim, who recruited the team said, you know, I am really quite confident that it will be renewed. Because I was like, also, data journalism is really trendy, people go through a phase where everybody wants a data journalist and then, like it happened at the Herald, someone comes in who doesn’t understand it and says ‘we are not doing it anymore’ and then you are out of a job. I was like…’it takes a long time to change a newsroom’, and part of the job advertisement for my job
237 was that you should help to change the culture of the newsroom. And I was like ‘I am totally happy to do that, I have done it before, but it takes years…, you cannot say: you have six months to do this.’ I was like ‘you have to at least give it two years, and then it will pick up pace. The change is slow at first but then it picks up exponential and the kind of work that you can do after, say two or three years, is amazing!’. And Kim is aware of that, but I don’t know about the other people in the newsroom and I am not gonna get this done in a year. So…
But you said yes to it anyway. I did, I was getting insurances that they were very confident that it would be renewed. But, you know, it is the media and I know that things change.
How are you feeling about this restructure that is going on now? Do you still feel confident that this team will still exist in 6 months or that you guys will be moved to other positions within the ABC? Yes, I am not sure actually. I think, if working in media has taught me anything, it is that you never know what is going on. Uhm…and things can change like that. It can be someone that moves from one position into a more powerful position and then everything changes. And I have never been interested in those sorts of politics, so these things always take me by surprise. But, I feel like our team is doing pretty well and I also feel like we are picking up the pace. And I am quite conscious of that. I still think that we need to do some things more quickly and some things slower. And I have worked out on a more personal level I was always fighting to get more time to do project work at the Herald, but actually now that I am only on project work I am like ‘oh I would like to do some faster stuff’, so I think it is actually a change of pace. You need a couple of slow project and then a few fast ones. Otherwise you just get bored or lazy, or you work much less efficiently than you would otherwise.
Yes, so you need that bit of a push… Yes exactly. So, I hope that the team will continue on. And I think that the fact that we have moved as a team under the restructure is a good sign, so…
And what do you find the most difficult in your current situation? Uhm…I mean I don’t find anything particularly difficult…but it is difficult to, I mean in a way I feel our team is not at all integrated into the newsroom and I don’t know if that’s because no team at the ABC is. The ABC is a much less integrated newsroom than the Herald ones, because it is bigger and it’s got all these different parts and it’s got more employees, so I don’t know if that’s the way I would feel in any team I moved to or if it is something specific to our team because we are considered this sort of, new crack digital team and I don’t know if there is stand-off-ishness around that or if the structure means we haven’t been integrated. Sometimes I feel like it’s hard to work out how we are supposed to fit our stories into what else is going on in the newsroom. So like at the Herald, if I had a story, I know my editor would be doing her best to sell it on the homepage, and she would talk to me about the exact time when she was going to make it live, when it would be on the homepage, how long she was trying to keep it on the
238 homepage for, how I should pitch it, wether I would need to get a photo for it, yeah…all these sorts of strategic things about how…you make the story, but then you’ve got to get people to read it and that’s a whole different art and I was very across how that was done at the Herald, whereas here the homepage guys are up in Brisbane, I don’t even know who half of them are, I don’t know if they are going to put the story up and where they are going to put it. Like, yesterday’s story came a bit below the story that you would first look at, for most of the day. So it is weird, at the Herald, a story like that would never be placed below the fold, it go into a main position because it is exactly the kind of story that gets…it’s a social story, people talk about it, it is a talking-point story, so that is definitely a story that would have, I think anyway, come on the main image spot on the homepage. But in the ABC it didn’t even appear in the top 4 stories. Uhm…and that’s strange. Like, at the Herald, the people that make those decisions sit like several meters away and we would just go over there and be like ‘hey, what’s going on, do you want me to change the sell on the story or do you not like the picture, or is there something I could do to get that story moved up? Because that is a good story.’ Yeah and you kind of say ‘It is a big story, or I worked on that for weeks, I don’t want it wasted. What can I do to move it up?’ And they will work on that with you, whereas here there is none of that. They just, they dump it if they don’t like it, they move it if they do and they don’t talk to you about it.
There is no communication about it? No, at least not with me. I don’t know if other people have communication about this or if this is because I am new and I don’t know these people or if this is just how the ABC works. You know, the digital desk being in Brisbane, gives a geographical distance to work as an autonomous thing. I find that strange, I find that difficult because ultimately you can work as hard on a story and make it as great as you want on the inside, but if it just doesn’t get the exposure it doesn’t matter how hard Michael pushes it on social media, or whatever, the homepage is where people find stuff still. So, yeah, it’s ultimately what decides the fate of the story. So I think it is really strange that we are not involved in those sorts of decisions.
Where do you work most? Is it here at the office or from home or somewhere else? Uhm…no, pretty much here at the office. I almost never work from home, I try not to anyway.
Do you ever go out for interviews? Uhm…yes sometimes. I would go out to meet people, contacts and things like that, but yeah…I wouldn’t really go far, I wouldn’t meet people here, the building is not very nice.
And how would you describe your workspace? I guess you just sort of did, you said it’s not very nice… Haha, the ABC building is not very nice, but I think it’s fine. It is, yeah, again kind of architecturally I find it segregated, like all the…I was really…I still don’t
239 understand what the TV and news people and the planning people do. I get, kind of, theoretically what they do but I don’t see it happening. So a lot of it is quite separate. It feels quite separate from the news-cycle still, and this long building structure means that people have to sit in these rows rather than in hubs. Like I know that at the Herald, the design of the newsroom is very important, and it they were very insistent on having a central news-wheel, and hubs that came off it. So no one was closer to the decision-making pod than anyone else. It was about being egalitarian, that all the different sections had equal geographical access to where decisions were made in the centre of the newsroom. And you could see when they were meeting, because they were meeting in the centre of the newsroom. So in a way it was about being very integrated, and having this kind of structure…but you can’t really have that here because it is one big, long building. Plus there are like a million people, so I guess it is quite hard. But I do feel that in the workspace, the way that it’s laid out. But I like my desk, I like being near Mark and Michael and I like also that, we are sitting with other people that are not in our teams, because I think it would be quite bad if it was just our team and we would just talk to each other. Particularly me, I need to help other journo’s with their data-stories. You kind of need to be visible and accessible.
Uhuh…how do you feel about moving upstairs next week and sitting all together? Uhm…I think it is good, I definitely think sitting all together is good, but I hope that we won’t kind of just be off, sitting in a little pod. You need to be together but also have an open door kind of policy and be accessible.
And what facilities do you have in your workspace? Well there is Wi-Fi, there is a kitchen. The kitchen doesn’t have a toaster though, you are not allowed to make toast in the kitchen, which I find really weird.
But I saw a toaster the other day? There is a sandwich press, but not a toaster. It is really weird, because apparently someone set off a fire alarm and it cost 3000 dollars for the firemen to come, it is so weird. It feels like you are a child, even children are allowed to make toast. So I find that weird, there is some strange bureaucratic stuff like that at the ABC. But yes, there are microwaves, fridges, we all got new laptops and monitors and stuff, that was cool. It hasn’t been hard to get like a headset or a phone, uhm…like a hands-free set. I kind of expected it to be really hard to get that at the ABC. Yeah…
And what kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential to your work? Definitely internet. I mean, the Internet connection is a bit shit. Like, as you saw with our meetings there is a lot of that ‘I can’t hear that’. So, they definitely need more meeting rooms that have video conferencing and things like that. Like it is hard having two people in Melbourne, especially the developers. I think in a way if it was just journalists who were there it would be easier, because I think people have a better sense of what journalists are doing, but developing is news for journalism and new for newsrooms generally. Lots of newsrooms don’t
240 understand what developers are doing, so if they are actually physically separated from you as well, then people kind of like never…and the same goes for the digital desk in Brisbane, people don’t visualise actual time that you were interacting with them and you don’t have as good as a grasp on what their work entails. So yeah, better meeting rooms with video conferencing and stuff could help maybe. That is probably it, I think the ABC is very good at programs for instance like Excel or I have self-admin rights so I can get my own software, yeah…that kind of stuff.
Okay good. And what kind of hard- and software do you use? Software Tableau, DataRaptor, Highcharts I am starting to bring back in, it is a Javascript-based mapping template kind of thing. Template-series, that we used to use…I used when I used at the SMH but we dropped for various reasons. But I want to bring it back because it has really nice animations, but it’s a bit difficult to use, you need a bit of Javascript to use it. So it is kind of between D3, which you need like full out programming skills and like DataRaptor for which you need no programming skills. Uhm…then Excel and stuff like Photoshop or GIFcam, to make GIF’s.
Do you know how to do all of those things? Yes. I am not very good at Photoshop anymore though. I used to be good at Photoshop when I worked in digital production and desktop publishing and Illustrater and InDesign and all those sorts of programs that Alex uses, but I haven’t used them for like five or more years, so I have to get Alex to reteach me things sometimes. And hardware, really just laptop, headphones, speakers, monitors.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Uhm, yeah essential. You couldn’t do it without them.
Cool. Uhm…and what do people wear in your main workspace? That is a weird question, why do you ask questions about what people wear?
Uhm…I guess it is all about the atmosphere and the culture as well and how that affects how you work and how comfortable you feel. Ah okay…uhm…people wear all kinds of things. I think it is pretty casual, I guess. I think yeah it ranges from suits to shorts and a T-shirt really, and I think it is pretty non-directive…I don’t think the ABC has any dress codes. But certainly I feel like, at the Herald for instance, if people told you what to wear…unless you were wearing something really inappropriate, I think people should be able to wear what they want to wear, especially journalists going in and out of the office and work really independently, I think most journalists would argue that they should be able to wear what they want to wear. So, like, which is something I totally respect.
241 And do you feel comfortable in this environment with people wearing what they want to wear? Yeah, yes.
What kind of support is available in your workspace? Uhm… I am not even really sure. I assume, I mean there would definitely be legal support, I have never had to use it yet. I am sure there is counselling support, but I don’t know about it. There is IT support. There is the production admin managers, so the people who do stuff for all the teams. They are amazing. I sit next to one of them who doesn’t do my team, but it is really useful to have access to her because she knows everything that goes on and does everything.
In the CMS? No just in the office. Like where to get a stapler. Things like that. Or ‘how do I claim an expense?’ or ‘where do I put my bike?’ Just anything about how the ABC works you want to ask a production manager. And I have been lucky enough to sit next to one, and our team has a production manager as well.
And what would you like to change, if anything, about the workspace? Sitting together would be good. Ri and Nath moving to Sydney would be good, or maybe all of us moving to Melbourne. Like I think, if I could change where they were geographically I would definitely have the whole team in one place. Uhm…and I don’t know, it is always useful to sit near the people you would work with most, so I guess in a way us moving up and sitting next to the investigations team where we are embedded is a good thing. But, you know, maybe it would have been good if we sat next to the National Reporting Team when they still existed, because you know, they were like the national team, they had a huge reporting team with more than 20 reporters who were all specialist reporters, so exactly the type of people that I would usually work with. I have seen them do stories with data in them, and I was like, you really needed help on that. But those kind of opportunities you just don’t see because you don’t know who any of those people are. So I would change that definitely, to have the team more physically integrated with that stuff. Uhm…and I would have the Brisbane team not be in Brisbane and the digital team not run out of Brisbane.
Do you think they should all be in Sydney? Kind of, or at least have hubs in every capitol city, so that at least you can have sort of a more direct understanding of why certain decisions about the homepage are made. Those sorts of things because to me doing a story, the start of the story is having an idea…but the end of it is where it gets placed on the homepage and all the post-publication stuff of how it did. It should be something that you do in your planning as well, and not something you should hand off to other people.
Do you know if Stephen has any say in that? I think he has some influence, like, he can say ‘this is a story that we have been working on for a long time and we would like to see it get some homepage love’,
242 but he certainly can’t ring up and be like ‘this should be number one or two, why is this on number three or four?’
Right okay. Why did you start working as a data journalist here? Why…uhm…it sounded like a really good opportunity to work with a team. So I had been working at the SMH as the only data-person for two years after my editor left and it is hard to work on your own, particularly in data journalism. And I didn’t feel like I was learning as much as I could have, because I didn’t have anyone who had more skills than I did or who even understood what I did. And sometimes it was weird because I was like, hmmm…’did I do this correctly or did I make a terrible mistake?’ and there is no one who would even understand what the hell I had done anyway.
That is a lot of responsibility… Yeah, so that can be…I mean it was great because I had a lot of autonomy, a lot of independence and my editors really trusted me, I had a lot of trust from the newsroom. But I was like, this is silly, there should be a much more rigorous sense of checks and balance, but I don’t know if that has even increased here. It is still the case that my work doesn’t get checked in terms of the numbers, because I am still the only one who is doing them…but it is still nice to have a team. There was definitely a sense at my old job where I felt like I was climbing up against a wall because I needed development skills and I had to figure out wether I was going to work on those skills myself or if I was going to do something else with my time. So I did, like I did a course in 3D, and then I was like ‘I actually need to be a developer’, you can’t kind of casually be a developer. It doesn’t make any sense. So I thought having developers in my team would be a really good opportunity here at the ABC. So yeah, at the Herald I was sort of feeling like I was coming up against a block of my own skills development and one of the things I said to them when I was leaving was: ‘I am never going to win any awards here.’ Which was silly, because then I did get nominated for an award. But I think uhm…
Is that important to you, winning awards? Uhm…yeah…or at least having some kind of recognition of what you do. Being different. That you get some kind of sense that if you are working on big projects and you are being given the time and space to do it, which is what most of the journalists want, that you are doing something worthwhile with it. Because it’s a real luxury, you are blessed if you are given that kind of trust and space and you want to feel like you are making the best of it, and you are kind of producing something better than what people are just doing from day to day and it was hard to gage any of that because I didn’t have any kind of guidance.
So you saw this opportunity…were you still working at the Herald at the time? Yes I was. I came from the interview here, but I wasn’t really intending to…I wasn’t even really that interested in the job, because I really liked the Herald and I was really happy there, because I had all of this autonomy and a great editor and the newsroom was quite data-literate, at the time we were getting great leaks from
243 data sources and the stuff that we were doing was way more advanced, because everyone else could handle the easy data stuff so then we started doing harder stories. And that is one of the things that I miss at the ABC, like the data-literacy is still really low, so you just can’t get the same kind of advanced data-stories out there, because you are held down by all this easy stuff, not easy, but basic data stuff. Yeah, so I came for the interview here…
So did Kimberley see your work and approach you or did you apply? No, so Kimberley used to work at the Herald and she knew my old editor who took a redundancy and they ran into each other at the theatre and Kim said ‘I am looking for a data journalist, I am recruiting a new team at the ABC’. And he was like ‘ah, you should get Inga Ting.’ And she was like ‘we could never afford her.’ And he was like ‘you would be surprised who you can afford at the Herald. Never assume that people at Fairfax are paid very much.’ And he knew that I was a casual and had been a casual worker for a long time and he had been fighting for me to get a permanent job as well. And so he was like ‘if they are not going to give you a job, and someone else gives you a better job, that’s their problem.’ So she asked him to ask me to apply for the job. So he sent me a message on Facebook and was like: ‘hey, you should apply. Kimberley is a really great manager, you should at least check it out.’ And I went mainly because I knew the team created here would compete with me at the Herald, so I just wanted to see what they were doing and how much money they had, and who was running it and all of that. But then when I was at the interview, I was really impressed with the interview questions and you know, the vision for the team and the fact that there were so many in the team. You know, she was like ‘it is a small team it will only have 9 people.’ And I was like: ‘wow, that is huge that is like 9 times the size of my team!’. Hahaha.
Yeah haha she is such a visionary. And has your motivation changed over time? Uhm…no not really. It is kind of the same. I think, as I was saying before, like I kind of realised that I don’t want to do just project work and just the big kind of pieces. I think you need to do smaller and faster things in between, just to keep your own motivation up. But I definitely still think it is an amazing opportunity to have a team, like, I don’t know many other newsrooms that have a team as big as this that is allowed to do project work like this. So even if, you know, and I am quite conscious of the contract thing as well…I think like you know, this year is really the time to do those big projects, but it is hard to change gears. Like sometimes, some of the things that does stress me out here, or not stress me out but worry, is sometimes when I am doing stories and I’ve got 8 people working on a story I am like: ‘is this story even worth 8 people?’ At the Herald I would have done this story on my own and now I am taking up all the resources of 8 people over, you know, I might have done the story in a month on my own but I know if I involve all of the others it becomes a two month story, or a two week story becomes a 6 week story.
244 Is that all up to you or do you decide it all together? Uhm…it is kind of decided with Hutch, but mainly it is me, because he will kind of say ‘do you think the story should be done like this?’ Or ‘how do you think the story should be done?’ And my instincts have kind of always been to raid it in, because I was used to doing it on my own at the Herald and not taking up so much time and not taking up so many resources. And then I would be like to Hutch ‘I don’t know, but then it will take six weeks instead of two.’ And he will be like ‘But we don’t have the same kind of time pressures’, and I would be like ‘Yeah, I know, but I still feel bad about it.’ I still feel guilty about taking up so much time. Because if you multiply it, six weeks by 8 people, that’s huge. Previously I would be like…
And what do you think about the end-product? Do you think you could have done that in a shorter amount of time with less people? No. It definitely becomes better, it is definitely a different sort of project. I couldn’t take something that our team has worked on and be like ‘oh, I could have done that.’ I never could have done that. But the question is more like, did that story deserve that. Is it a good enough story? From a journalistic point of view. If you take away the bells and whistles, is this from a news point of view, big enough to do it with 8 people over 6 weeks time. That is what concerns me. And sometimes I am like ‘ah, I should think of bigger stories, I need to find a story that is so big that it could totally justify 8 people working on it for months at a time.’ So that is a bit of a strange pressure that I feel, like for myself it doesn’t come from anybody else in the team or from Hutch or…Hutch is like to opposite, he is always like ‘relax!’.
Alright and what are your professional goals? Where do you want to go next? I am not sure, I am not a person that thinks really far ahead, or ahead much at all. Like, I am usually surprised by what I am doing six months on from where I am, or like on the weekends. Haha. Mainly I want to still be interested in the work, and still I guess I want to avoid just being someone who just handles numbers. Ultimately I sited as a reporter and I like being one because I like meeting people and I think data ultimately is about people. Data is just one way of looking at the world and society and the lives and experiences of people in it. So I don’t want data to become something that is separated from lived experience, and so in a way I feel like I’m out of the office less. I do less interviews, I do less you know actually on the ground reporting, so I guess I would like to do more of that, or at least make sure I am not prowled away from that. Because a lot of it is just because if you are collaborating with a reporter on a story and a reporter has no data skills then obviously the way the work gets divided up is that they do the interviews and I will do the data. And that’s what I like about doing my own stories, is that I get to do my own interviews as well. But then it obviously means the story takes longer and it is not as collaborating. So I don’t know, I have to kind of find a way to balance that stuff.
245 What are the most important values that inform you work? I want every story to educate people in something that is true. I think integrity, the integrity of the way that you report or tell the story, because I know that we are being innovative and experimenting with new ways of engaging people, but still it is really important to me that the rigour of the actual story itself and the way that you’ve told it and the data that you’ve used for instance or anything that you’ve put forward is still rock solid and incredibly air tight. I don’t want it to become…you know, you put bells and whistles on something, you dress it up and it looks amazing, but the story itself doesn’t hold up if you kind of look closer. So definitely truth, accuracy, uhm…rigour, that sort of thing. I think it is good to do fun stories, the ones that don’t bring down the government but are still interesting, like I think social science type things, but yeah, I think, my siding point is that everything in the world reflects something about it. So even a light story says something meaningful about the way that people live in this world, and you should highlight that in your stories even if they are just fun. There is still always something deeper to it and I think you know, you want people to…you are after click bait or I guess you try to grab people’s attention in any way that you can, but I still want our stories ultimately to be teaching people about the world that they live in.
And do you feel like your work lives up to these values? Uhm…yeah, I think mostly yes. Uhm…I still, I mean I try to anyway, I don’t know if they get that far down the story but yeah hopefully.
And does your work make you happy? Yeah, yes. I like my job. I like being a journalist. I do miss being more integrated into the news flow, like the news cycle. Even if you are working on a project basis, there is still value in seeing other journalists who work faster and I think it kind of keeps you grounded and it helps to show you, it just helps to remind you how lucky you are to have that space, but it also means…you need to be plugged into the news and into the world and news cycle I think to even shape longer term projects in a way that is still relevant to people, in a way that connects with them. So I miss being more embedded in the news cycle.
And do you ever get angry in your work? Uhm…rarely. I am not an angry kind of person. Sometimes I get annoyed about the homepage. There was a series, there were two stories that we did, where the second one got like almost no support from the homepage. And that I was annoyed about because I was like we worked on the two stories for like maybe a month or six weeks, all together, which is really long compared to other stories in the newsroom. And because it was the second part to a two part series that went over two days, they pretty much didn’t give it any placement on the homepage. So I was like ‘that’s a total waste, what is the point of that?’ So I was annoyed about that, that was the most recent thing, the only thing that actually kind of bothered me out of working hours.
246 Is there anything that scared you about what is happening in your field of work? Uhm…I think definitely the redundancies are scary for the future of the industry…that you lose heaps of experience and talent and all that stuff. I mean I think in a way that a lot of really seasoned journo’s feel like digital is kind of like the enemy and they feel threatened by it, but I feel like with better management there wouldn’t be that kind of fear. So…yeah, I do worry about that sort of thing and the general future of the media and losing audience and that sort of stuff.
So what is your motivation to keep doing what you are doing, despite all of those things? I think it does have an impact, I do, even in talking to people when you go out or on the streets or something or whatever who talk about news. It is still a huge part of people’s understandings of the world and of themselves and you know, there is so much trashy reporting as well so you can add value.
Which communities would you say you belong to? Well I guess obviously a journalistic kind of community, a community of communicators. Socially, outside of work, I don’t know…I guess sometimes in a way I feel like I am young for my age, like I still live in a share house which I really enjoy, I live with my partner in a share house, so I am still really social I guess. Like I [inaudible…don’t?] like being around people that I wouldn’t normally choose to associate with, or maybe that I would not run into in my normal course of life. So I am still friends with lots of people from school, but yeah I guess I feel like that part of my circle I have moved away from socially and then maybe in the way that I think as well, and present, so I guess it is quite a kind of educated, middle class kind of community. And then obviously an ethnic community as well, like my parents were migrants, I wasn’t born here, I was born in Malaysia. Uhm…so I am conscious of that, I think in Australia it is hard not to be in the kind of country that Australia is…
Do you find Australians racist? Definitely yeah…I think it is hard to say its racist because it is a country of 22 million people but there is definitely, it definitely has racial issues that it doesn’t acknowledge. Like the treatment of indigenous people is atrocious and has been for ages. But even the attitudes towards Muslims and migrants is still…it comes in waves and I think that Australians gloss over it, some do… and some don’t. And I think it is something that is a continuing issue and I think that if people…I think people should try to understand it more like this kind of feeling that I think Australia is really lucky because it is way more integrated, socially integrated and wealthy compared to a lot of countries. Like countries in Europe that have had problems with immigrants and immigrants feeling really alienated and then this sort of home-grown terrorism for example…these things are linked. Or at least the perception that the immigrants have something to do with home-grown terrorism, that’s got to do with it. And I think Australia has escaped a lot of that, but it could quite easily head in that direction if it continues to I guess to separate people either racially or ethnically and not to acknowledge that inequality exists.
247
Do you feel like there is enough diversity on the work floor here at the ABC? I think there could always be more, like in every newsroom. I think there is a real lack of…it certainly doesn’t reflect the demographics of the society we live in and certainly not in the city. We live in the most multicultural city in Australia and you know, it is still very white, still very male it is still very middle class. I mean, I am middle class so I know how it becomes competitive for jobs and people have degrees so it is like that, but I think particularly for journalists it is important that we try to be as representative of society as possible, because you are supposed to be reporting about society to the world and so much is based on your context and your own lived experience that if you don’t try really hard to move beyond your own circles you will always be reporting on yourself and the people around you and reflecting that world as if it is the entire world, which it is not. And that is something that is really hard to change day-to-day, you have got to be really conscious of it all the time and then it becomes a sort of bigger question as well.
Well you just said you had a membership to the journalism union? Yeah.
How useful are those professional communities to you? I think they are invaluable, I mean I have lent on the union support throughout my career even when I was like really young and just started working in communications. When I was like 21, the union came in to vow for me over a contract that I had…
Do they physically come in for the negotiations? They can if you want them to, and they sit with you through meetings and stuff like that. It is amazing. But they also wouldn’t if you don’t want them to. If you were like ‘uhh…I don’t want to be seen as really confrontational’, because it can be seen as confrontational if you bring someone from the union in. In that case they will just advise you over the phone, or over email and kind of say ‘well this is what we think, but obviously it is up to you, and there are the risks that you take when you go down this path.’ They are really good.
And then you just refer to them in your conversation with your employer? Exactly. And they will also say even things like ‘we have negotiated things like this before at your workplace. They won’t tell you who, but they’ll tell you they have negotiated this deal for someone else.’
So that you know it is possible and you are more empowered… Yes, or you know, they will say ‘we have had 6 people or 10 people or 100 people coming to us with the same problem and we couldn’t solve it, so your chances aren’t good, but we will fight for you.’ That sort of thing.
Great. And is there a community that you would like to belong to that you don’t belong to yet?
248 Uhm…in a way I wonder if there is a tighter journalistic community, so maybe like in the past when there were less journalists or journalism wasn’t as like, I guess when journalists were just reporters. I think they had really tight networks and hung out together a lot in and out of work and there was more of a sense of that kind of community. I wonder if that exists, but maybe it doesn’t. If it did that would be good and I would like to be part of it, but sometimes I feel like now because journalism is so wide with digital we have developers and designers who are not journalists except they work in a newsroom, yeah…so it is just a bit more…everything is kind of displaced.
Who do you see as your main competitors? Uhm…I guess it would be, I mean other news channels on TV, and other major media organisations. Probably, I mean I guess it’s everybody. I guess the SMH, the Guardian, the Australian, the Daily Telegraph, news.com, but even uhm…smaller websites or even some of the international ones. I guess now the whole world is your competitor now in this digital age.
Well you have answered my second question there about if this has changed and if you have any new competitors… Yeah, I guess if you are realistic about it, it would be the entire world. But then it’s silly, because there are so many organisations you cannot worry about every single one. So I don’t know, in a way I feel like people choose the source that they trust and the ABC has really good trust credentials for years, people trust the ABC even though it gets criticised a lot.
If you are big you will always be criticised. Yeah exactly.
Who are your audiences? Uhm… well we know from the marketing demographics that they are mainly old people. It is heavily skewed old, heavily skewed male, it is probably also skewed to professionals and wealthier people, although I think the ABC must also have a much stronger audience in regional Australia then does the SMH or the Guardian or news.com, because the ABC’s agreement is to serve Australia and therefore we have funding specifically to go to regional Australia. So I would hope that the pick up there was quite big, uhm…I mean that is definitely what our current audience is like, but for our team I know that our agreement is to get new audiences in. We are specifically aiming to get new and younger people in, more women and to engage with hopefully any kind of new audience. Although I think class-wise, and people don’t like to think in terms of class in Australia but it is a reality, I would say that our team is probably not the best. We haven’t specifically been given an agreement to look at people outside the kind of middle-class demographic or wealthy demographic, but there probably should be.
And are you satisfied with these audiences or are there people you would like to reach but are not reaching yet? Uhm…I definitely would like to reach more working-class, poorer communities,
249 definitely more ethnic and migrant communities. Just people who I think feel shut out of the media a lot. I mean I think they are shut out of all of the media, it is not particularly an ABC problem and the ABC has better reach because it is a national broadcaster than do the other ones, but I always feel like the media can do better to reach those kinds of audiences.
Do you have a specific strategy in mind or are you working specifically towards this in your personal work? Uhm…I guess it is more of a personal thing to try to find stories that would appeal or would kind of specifically be about those kinds of people. But also on a personal level like when I am looking for case studies for a story, and often with case studies the story is not about the person, the person just illustrates the story and you take a nice photo to put on the website. For that, like the last one we did about jobs I did a story about the jobs that had the widest gender-age gaps, and part of that was that really poorly paid jobs had lots of young people and baby boomer women in them. And I couldn’t find a woman who was working in one of these really poorly paid jobs. And I tried so hard, and I was really, I was like…we were doing sort of mirror-opposite jobs, so I was trying to look for kitchenhands or housekeepers or shelf fillers and on the other hand barrister, or doctors or veterinarians or dentists and within hours I had a bunch of barristers and a bunch of lawyers and a vet and it was really easy for me to find those people even though statistically there are like 10 times more of these other low paid workers in Australia. It took me like four days to find one kitchen hand and then I found another kitchen hand who was an older woman and I kept calling her and she wouldn’t speak to me in the end. And it makes me really sad, because part of it, you know…for a journalist socially you are much closer to a barrister or a vet and a doctor or lawyer than a kitchenhand, so obviously these people are in the news all the time, they say lots of stuff, they have easy access and I want other people to have access. You know, and even though you try really hard, they don’t want to talk to you.
I had a very similar experience when I was writing a story for a newspaper on hard jobs and I really wanted to balance hard mental with hard physical jobs and so I spoke to a fisherman and a teacher because they are super overworked, and a roofer. And I got so much shit about that, the roofers didn’t agree on me classifying teaching as a hard job etc. Really they didn’t think they classified as hard work?
They did themselves, but afterwards like the fisherman, the unskilled more physical workers were upset about it. Also I always try to balance women and men, but it is pretty hard in some fields. Yeah it is crazy, and you just think ‘there are so many of these people, why can’t I find one?’, it is ridiculous! And it just shows how out of touch you are with the reality.
So true. I try to use Twitter a lot to find people. Does that work?
250
It did work in a lot of cases but it went terribly wrong in one case. Really why?
I was writing this piece on work e-mail etiquette and behaviour and how people hate being CC’d and how they deal with basically work messaging. Some people tried to get a 0 e-mail policy in and just go on Slack. So I was looking for people that had radically erased email or rarely use it. So I tweeted ‘hey, for this and this newspaper I am looking for people who have erased their email address or rarely use email. E-mail me on: [email protected]’ Hahaha.
You know, they could have had cousins or brothers who had erased their e- mail or something. Anyway I had just left the office and I immediately got three replies within seconds so I ran back to my editor who then told me it was fine and if taken literally the message was correct. And then it just went viral, it even came on television. It was ridiculous. That is crazy, that’s ridiculous.
So be careful of what you post if you get retweeted by the ABC. Good lesson.
Anyway, I have got four more questions. How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? Uhm…I guess part of it is just going to be in the way of just thinking about stories. Uhm…and thinking about new ways to tell a story or what is the best way to tell the story, part of it is just that, it is conceptual. Other parts are skills, the technical skills of motion graphics, coding, data and those sorts of thing.
Training…the training you would give to the others? Yeah. Uhm…or at least to educate them on what is involved in these sorts of projects. Like my training is, ‘here are some tools that you can use in your work immediately’ and then the second part is ‘here is what I do, so you can work with me and know what I am doing.’ And when people understand what other people are doing they are much more likely to be able to work with you more effectively. Uhm…yeah.
And what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? I think one of them is to bring the story to where people are reading it. So that is going to be about platform, time of day, day of week, uhm…understanding what they are doing. Like are people snacking? Walking and reading? Or listening or talking? Are they sitting at their desks using a desktop computer? Are they at home? Is it a stay-at-home-mom with a baby in one arm and the phone in another? I think it is about understanding where people are consuming news, tailoring it to that rather than news being on at 7 pm and you will come and sit in
251 front of the TV and watch us when we say we are on. Digital is very different like that.
And has the DSI learned from possible mistakes made by other teams in or outside of the ABC? Yeah, I mean definitely I think we have managed to skip all of the hard parts by having the other team that I mentioned in Brisbane, the Interactive Storytelling Team pave the way. So and that’s in terms of technology, you know, they set up templates and things in the CMS that we use and they know how to hook up a Mac to the CMS when previously it hasn’t been done before. All those practical sort of things but also I think in terms of the culture, about education other members of the newsroom about what is a good digital story and what isn’t and how you know, and really, I know it is still an ongoing battle but really saying you can’t just transport something from the TV and plug it into the website and it will be good. So we have definitely learned from that. And I think other teams…I think because journalism work is so public you can definitely look at stuff and say, ‘well this was a bit crap’ or ‘they did this really well’. We have a Slack channel, which is called Work We Like and we post things that we want to recreate. And then today there was a story that someone posted, an old colleague of mine at the Herald did the same story of mine with the same data on birthdays but took a completely different angle on the story and had a chart in it that was just terrible. So we were kind of like…’ohhh why did he do that? He is normally so good at data! I taught him. Come on, I taught you better than that!’. But, yeah, we definitely look all over the world for other examples of things we would like to recreate or follow or take tips from.
Alright okay, that was it! Thank you.
252 Interview Michael Workman
Let’s start with your job title. What is your job title? I am an audience development producer.
And how long have you been doing this for? Uhm…six months. Since the inception of the team.
Where were you before, how did you get to this role? Previously, I think for about a year and a half, close to two years uhm…, I was helping run the digital marketing campaigns for ABC news, so it was fairly similar to what I do now. And that was a paid activity to get our content in front of new audiences so that they would come back to the site, basically to grow our audiences. Prior to that I worked for several years in media agencies as a media buyer for different brands, so from creditcard and banking brands to you know different brands, so I was a marketer.
Okay, is that what you studied in uni? I studied communications at UTS and because I graduated just as the GFC happened in 2008, I made a decision to go into the workforce rather than pursuing academia, which is what I intended to do. I had gotten into honours and decided not to do it, because I preferred to work because I didn’t trust that I would have a job potentially in the future. No offense to what you are doing, it was just a decision I made at the time.
None taken. I am not planning on doing a PhD after this or anything. No, no, no, I am not belittling academia.
How does the DSI fit into ABC’s innovation history? I would say we would be a leading team in improving and bringing innovation to ABC news, in terms of its digital offering. One of the things that was listed in terms of my role were very clear definitions of success and very clear definitions for measurement of things that matter, rather than what would happen in the past where people would look at certain results in isolation and not understand the bigger picture. So, obviously we have a range of very skilled digital people here and that’s flowing through into better digital stories, in terms of digital storytelling and the interactive stories that we produce. So my role in that is really to provide a bit more of a framework and a clear strategy in terms of how we bring those to new audiences, improving the measurements we do, and I’d say having defined and proper distribution strategies or uhm…which…we previously didn’t really have a framework. As you understand we are quite an old legacy broadcaster, like the BBC, so I think people had kind of gotten into habits of doing the same thing and not really understanding why we weren’t growing our audiences. So that was sort of what I came in to help do.
253 And I guess you partly answered this but if you have anything to add feel free to do so. I am just curious what the DSI’s mission is. What is its mission for you? Well the mission to me is, there are a few there. Obviously we want to engrain new audiences, because the ABC currently has a target of 30% reach based on Neilson, which we need to achieve and we are not achieving that currently. So in order to make what we do align with that business goal the measurement that I put in place for our reporting, which is what our team has to achieve are very, very ambitious benchmarks. So they are things like page views that are well in access of what’s average, the third-party reach through social media that is well in access to what is average. Very long time spent on the site, again above average and a new audience reach, people who have actually come to our site. So that is how I see our mission, uhm…so part of that, having very clear benchmarks that we achieve, so we can demonstrate that there is a different way of working. Another side to it is also bringing…filling in gaps for a lot of teams, or demonstrating with best practice what other teams could do if they perhaps reprioritise some of their work, so perhaps less focus on TV packages being produced, and an understanding of what you can do with social media for instance, how you can drive people to your articles. So I think we are kind of a pioneering team and kind of a test, in terms of these new ways of working for news production. So I think that is why we are a pioneering team, because people are kind of looking to us to test out new ways of reaching new audiences, which at first people wouldn’t necessarily understand like how we would fit in. But I think now that we’ve had probably about a dozen stories come out this year people kind of see that we are actually able to compete with other major news stories, even though we are only a smaller team.
And when will this mission be successful? Look, I would argue it has already been a success. If you were to judge out success based on how well we are contributing to, say, that reach-goal, the 30% reach- goal, it is pretty clear that we are punching above our weight in terms of how small the team is. But I think what the eventual kind of deciding factor is in close to six months time, when the funding of this team starts to run out because there is a hard kind of end date for the experiment, people will kind of evaluate what the impact of the team was both in terms of the articles we worked on and how they compare to the average kind of article or average news story. And also I think they will evaluate our impact in terms of assisting other teams, which perhaps is a bit less tangible, uhm…So that decision would kind of need to be based on what we have done in the last six to twelve months and if it was helpful to people and if there are things where we can help upskill teams. That would be one way of measuring it, but if they want a very concrete measure, they can say, you know, ‘the articles that the team worked on have a four-fold increase in terms of page views against the average article, which kind of shows that the stuff they release is of a higher quality or is being engaged in by audiences.’ It is a little bit hard to say because I don’t know what the exact kind of criteria will be, but I imagine because even if, say, they are very ambitious goals, which maybe haven’t been explained to me that if we don’t hit they will find roles for all of us. What seems to have been happening is that the team has kind of been used a lot more to kind of help out
254 other teams a lot more. So I think we seem to be filling in a gap that has always been there, but because everyone is kind of very specialised there hasn’t been an opportunity for someone to go and approach someone for let’s say, a video for social media or a distributions strategy plan because those roles just didn’t exist, you just didn’t have those types of expertise before.
Right okay. Do you have a daily work routine? Probably not, because it changes every day. There are certain things I do in terms of routine, when it comes to our stories I will obviously very closely monitor how they perform and if the distribution plans that I have put in place to assist those stories are actually working or not. Uhm…outside of that though, my day really varies. I will have many people around the organisation asking me about benchmarking and measurement or even things like ‘should we keep this particular social media account open, what do you think?’ Sometimes it is me advising on creative for a video, to even doing like research on what is new and coming up with new strategies and looking at new platforms we should be distributing on. So it ranges a lot, it changes a lot.
And what kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your role here? What I am supposed to be doing? Hopefully everything that I am doing. Because essentially it is just to provide, I guess, as the audience development producers, a clear framework for how our stories are getting out there in terms of distribution, a clear framework and very robust reporting where those approaches work. And then a third kind of aspect would be to share my knowledge and share the success we had and explain why things work or don’t work and so I do chat to a lot of people around the ABC about that or about questions they have. And sometimes I will just share things that I have found that might be interested or that I find of value.
And do you have a set schedule of doing that or do you do it out of your own motivation? Uhm…I don’t, not necessarily. People just tend to contact me, most of the time. Otherwise, if it is something that I think needs to be addressed I will flag it. So for instance there will be sometimes where I will see an internal document, which might be on measuring the referral rates, and if I know that that’s incorrect, I will flag that that is incorrect and then I will go upstairs and chat to people and explain how you actually do it. So they are leaning on my expertise from when I was a media buyer, uhm…but more often it will be people coming to me saying ‘can I chat to you about this? I have got some questions.’ So for instance we had elections the other month in Queensland and the elections team wanted me to find out what they could do to enhance their coverage with social media monitoring which we built a dashboard for. So it is just me being roped in to be kind of someone with another perspective on what they can do to enhance coverage or for instance if it is a story roll-out, they will ask me ‘What would be the best way to distribute this on social? Or what kind of content do we need that is going to work better? Would a video work better than a series of images?’ So it
255 is things like that, people kind of thinking about similar things that we do but asking for my expertise because I have the experience and some of the background.
This one seems to be a hard one to answer but I will ask you anyway. How many different tasks would you say you have on an average day? I guess it might be between 6 to 12, it really depends. Some of them are really just grunt work, very hands on things, like scheduling posts and writing post copy, to actually thinking on a much higher level about our relation with Facebook and the problem that we have for instance, issues not being addressed, why is our partnership not working? And looking over the strategy that has been presented by people upstairs and trying to weigh in if this is a good strategy and if it is a workable strategy. So I am kind of across the entire chain of stuff, which is good for me because I feel like whatever I suggest has to be practical and it has to work. One of the things I didn’t like, but I have seen happen in some organisations, is that there is a disconnect between the desires of people in higher lever strategic roles and because they are not on the ground and seeing how things work they don’t know the problems, they miss the details, so it is just me trying to sort of be a bridge between the two.
Yeah, okay interesting. By the way, before I forget. How old are you? 30
And how do you experience having these different tasks? Yeah it is fine, it is a lot of fun. I really genuinely love what I do. I find that it keeps me stimulated mentally. There is never anything that is really boring. It is just the daily challenge that is interesting.
What are the skills that someone needs to do what you are doing? It is a good question because they are trying to hire more people like me at the moment and it’s a bit tough. Look, I would argue that there are other people that could do my job, perhaps without say the expertise I have in digital marketing. But I think the benefit of the skills that I have with this job means that I am kind of in an ideal position, I think, to do a lot of the stuff because the skills that you need are things like a good understanding for instance of how digital media measurement works, especially with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms merging on such as Snapchat. So you have to understand what can you measure and what measures matter. Because one of the things that I’ve seen and I’ll take an example of views on social media, for a while there was a lot of excitement about the fact that we were getting hundreds of thousands of millions of views on Facebook. But if you don’t understand what those mean or how those are defined it is a problem, because uhm…if you dig into it they are actually not very meaningful if the viewers get say a three second impression. So I try to bring a bit of sense to some of these and evaluate which things we should be measuring and what ones we shouldn’t. Part of that planning background as well and media buying process means I have, what I think are okay Excel skills and organisational skills in terms of planning for things and also being able to
256 change plans midway through if things change. Because that in my experience as a media buyer, would always be the case because it is a chaotic environment and things would always be very pressured and you would have to have very good attention to detail because otherwise you wouldn’t survive. Uhm…the other side to it though is a completely different set of skills, which is journalistic skills. Being able to understand not just what goes into a news story and how to package it, but being able to understand how audiences will receive that in very different ways. So it is kind of like a combination of more kind of technical and numbers driven and data analysis kind of stuff with a bit of organisational stuff behind it and then also having a really really good understanding of the pressures for instance with journalists or producers or creatives and what they have to do and deliver, and their process, so that you are able to speak the same language to everyone. Because otherwise there is miscommunication or misunderstandings of what’s possible. And also I think we have demonstrated with the stories of this week, you kind of need a creative bind as well, for instance yesterday we had a data-driven story and we didn’t have a good homepage image, which is no fault of anyone’s it is just something that we didn’t necessarily had thought about into the last minute and we all agreed that we needed a photo of babies because the story was about babies. So we managed to get those and you know, it is that kind of stuff…having a bit of an idea of the kind of imagery that people respond to. Another way to view it is to understand that there are different emotional reactions that people have to different types of content. So if you want to do a story and tell that story on social media you need to understand what are the kind of emotional reactions that people might have to different pieces of content, so that you can kind of get and maintain their interest. So it is a range of skills which I think it is why it is not necessarily clear that you can get it from university. I think a bit of it is just job experience elsewhere.
Okay and what have you learned since starting this job? Uhm…a lot. I mean I suppose I have learned a lot about the process, how to put it together from scratch, you know, from an idea or a hint of a story to actually how that evolves over time and the challenges in that. Uhm…I think that is probably the main thing that I haven’t been exposed to previously. I think the other thing I have learned as well is that you can definitely overcome barriers that might seem impossible because of the way an organisation is set up. If your team is small enough and has a good boss who can kind of give you a bit of autonomy. So it helps for instance for me to know quite a lot of the people around the organisation, because I am able to kind of ask for favours when I need favours, which if I potentially relied on the kind of normal approach which would be to send an email and ask for a favour I don’t think I would have as much success, just because of things like if someone doesn’t check their email on time the opportunity is lost. So that is probably another thing I have learned is that it is really good to have good relations with other teams, especially in a national news organisation like ours because you can’t have all the answers yourself and sometimes you need other people to help out. Favours are really beneficial because obviously if we would help them out they would help us out.
257 And do you generally work with other teams? Yes, definitely. Yeah…uhm…I do in different capacities. It depends on what they need me for. So for instance with the paradise papers, Four Corners has got me involved pretty early on and the idea was for me to just provide another perspective on what the concept would mean to the audiences, what were the big narratives that were really behind some of the stories that would really be the key points that people would be interested in. So for instance with Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson the main thing that people would be interested in in that would be the Russia connection, which is a fairly obvious thing but it is good to have that very clearly placed. We had another issue about tax avoidance the main narrative there for me is that this is not fair. It is not fair to the taxpayers and that translates into the copy you use and the elements of the story you might highlight when you distribute it. Because of instance on social media the copy you use would be different to what you might use on the homepage. So Four Corners got me involved pretty heavily there, but it kind of changes throughout the year. Sometimes I will be working just, you know, I will have one meeting with them and that’s it we’re done and other times it will be working with them again and again and again like with Four Corners, they will kind of ask me whenever they need help with stuff. So it can vary a lot and it really just depends on my capacity and how badly they need me. Sometimes I will say no because I am not the best person to help them with that or because I just don’t have time, but I am pretty honest about that.
And do you generally work alone from day to day or with colleagues? Uhm…look it’s an annoying answer but it’s both. There will be sometimes where I can work just wholly independently, so putting a whole lot of data for benchmarking something, I will just work independently and do that because it is just spread sheet work. Other times, if we have been told of a story as it has been made, we want to understand and might be coming up with ideas for headlines or something. On these things we obviously work together. Or they kind of want me to go to me for another opinion of the article as it has been built. So it has been a mixture of both. Compared to the other guys in the team I probably work a bit more on my own. At least that may be the impression, but that’s only because it is stuff that I can only kind of do on my own like the spread sheet kind of stuff.
Do you usually make these spread sheets after publication or…? No I have a few that I do. I create distribution plans, which includes things like timing, copy and the channels, the role of the different activity that we are distributing. And that is kind of what I use as my guide when I go do stuff or when I ask them for materials, for instance when I go to Alex and I ask ‘Alex, I need a square video for Facebook, because…’. Or he might be working on a video and I work out where this fits into the plan and what that video needs to look like on YouTube. So it is for me to kind of guide it when it goes live, that we are maximising every opportunity that we have and we are getting all the stuff out that we need to get out. Kind of like a marketing campaign would run. That document then gets used and completely transformed into a report, which is very detailed. And what that report will show is the results for everything we did on
258 social media as distribution channels as well as our articles found on let’s say Reddit. If someone has found it on Reddit, how that went. And also a breakdown of the performance results based off the site results. So I try to unify all of that to tell a cohesive story which is, here is how we went on the very hard-core goals that we have to achieve, those are the ones that everyone agrees to measuring, those are the same for everyone because it is page views and time spent and what not…and I explain why the results are as they are and then I will go through the social media activity. Whatever we do on there can have a very big impact on how an article performs and that is kind of where my expertise lies. And it is also because it is such an untapped platform. At the moment there are more Australians on Facebook for instance, that we don’t reach than we do reach, so that’s why we are so currently focussed on social media because early on when I came to the interview I said there are several platforms here which are opportunities for us to grow, we are limited with what we can do for instance with search, which is the number one referrer, but for instance Facebook is our number two referrer it is the highest reaching social media platform so there is a lot of potential there. So I set kind of pretty early on the sort of groundwork for what I would be focussing on. And that has just kind of been ongoing. That is not to say I don’t value other stuff, like YouTube, but it is just something that perhaps is on a lower priority because other stuff is more important.
So the priorities are Facebook and the website? Facebook and website and Twitter. And the other reason for that is referrals, because for us if I think about it to the Neilson measurement goal that we have which is a 30% reach goal, the only way we are going to achieve that is if we get more people to the website. So, and that to me makes sense that that would be what we should value and so that translates into ‘what platforms have the most potential for that?’ Or ‘where can we grow the most?’ Uhm…so everything I do I try to tie back into some kind of business goal, because otherwise what is the point of our team. Because ultimately, to be frank, the success of our team wether we continue or not we have to be made a higher level and whatever we report back would have to be in the same language that they have, which is KPI’s and percentage increase on things and that sort of thing. And I guess another thing with bringing me into the team, which makes us different to other teams, is that a lot of that distribution and measurement was put onto reporters previously, or executive producers. And that really is not fair because they already have a lot of work to do and it is not something that they would have the right expertise for.
It is funny because in traditional media there is usually a huge divide between marketing and journalism, and in this team that has been broken down and you are all working together. Yeah, and I think it’s…look, it is a personal thing too. I genuinely really like the hard hitting stories that we do, and I don’t know if every marketing person would feel that. So I guess, there is a perception that marketers kind of don’t care about substance and I try to change that.
259 That’s good. It’s an interesting team. How do you interact with your team members? Well obviously face-to-face communication is good, which we do do. A lot of our discussions happen through a chat platform called Slack, which I am sure you are familiar with. It is just for ease because anyone can access it wether at home or at work, it is good for sharing documents or updates on the site, progression on pages, I can show reports there too. Email is another way, that is more of a formal way of communicating. So for instance when I send a report and it goes to everyone in my team or perhaps a wider audience beyond the team, I would use email communication there. Uhm..so I think we have got quite a good rapport, we are really comfortable with each other, so really whatever is convenient to communicate. In some cases we will have to…we will be using Whisper, if we are working on something confidential. Or we will be texting each other very early in the morning when the article goes live to check how everything is going. So whatever we need, we are all kind of yeah…pretty fine with that.
And are you missing any skills in the team? Are you missing another person or another set of skills? Uhm…it is hard to say. I think honestly we are fine. But what I hear is that other teams are not fine and that they are having problems because obviously they are leaning on us for help. So, I think as the team is set up right now I actually think it is quite a good one. Like, from what I have seen from the reports is that we are achieving all the goals that we need to very easily. So I don’t see any immediate problems with the way that the team has been set up. I think there may be more stuff we could do if we had another version of me or another reporter or designer, of course we could increase the output and make it easier for everyone. But I think if the team had to stay as it is, I think it would be totally fine and I also think it is a good justification for keeping it as it is, because it is probably not that expensive to have us as we are – to kind of almost have individual specialists. So I think it works, but in five years time we might need other people. We might need coders for instance in the future, which would be a growing skillset that we could need. I just don’t think that we need it immediately, but that could change.
How many hours would you say you work a week? Uhm…I don’t know…the standard sort of 40 hours a week. I probably have the easier roster out of everyone because I can kind of do the 9 to 5 stuff because I am not working on building the articles. But there will be some days where I might work 10 hours in the day because I have to because an article might go live early in the morning and I need to be here to help distribute stuff, which I can’t do from home because the Australian internet really sucks as you have probably heard, so I literally can’t do stuff like upload videos and stuff, so it is a barrier for me doing my job from home, or remotely. Uhm…
Really? Do you live in an area with especially bad coverage or something? No. Australia just has issues with its internet services. So there will be, and it is only very occasionally and I am fine with it, where I might work let’s say a lot longer…I do quite a few hours overtime, but that’s fine. But to be completely
260 honest with you, prior to working at the ABC I was doing 10-hour days almost as a normal thing, because that is just what media agencies are like, you are just expected to work overtime unpaid. So to me this is really a lot better, a lot more balanced. And I can live with the occasional day where I have to work a little bit on the weekend or I have to work a little bit in the morning, it is all flexible and it is fine with me.
And I presume you don’t have any other jobs? No.
What do you consider free time? Free time…well, hours outside of work would be free time I suppose. So…yeah.
And if you spend time watching the news or talking to colleagues on Slack outside of working hours…? Ahhh…you mean work-creep? Yeah, I probably like most other people don’t love that, and I think as someone who I guess is always thinking about the impact of technology on audiences lives… because like, because that is what got me into studying communications at university, because I was really really interested in how it was changing people’s behaviour and how social media was doing things like the Scientology protest which lead into the Arab Spring protest. I could see that technology was changing people’s behaviour. And there is a debate always about wether that is technological determinism or audience behaviour, but irrespectively work has creeped to the home. I just take that as the way things are, I have always had extra work outside of work hours ever since I started working, so it is very normal for me. But it is not a problem here. I don’t think it is too much. I have had it much worse.
So you would just consider your day to be finished at 5 or 6? Yeah. I will occasionally check things like email and stuff, just for checking things that are absolutely urgent, but people…if there is an emergency, people will contact me anyway. Thankfully because I am not like a developer or anything, emergencies for me aren’t as serious and are usually things that would be spotted during the working day. I haven’t had any yet. I think the worst thing was somebody complaining about someone who was leaving nasty comments on Facebook and Twitter and they called someone at the ABC Brisbane and they had to moderate it. And the only reason I couldn’t do it was because I was at home because I had started the day early. That is as bad as it gets, it is actually really fine.
Do you manage to earn a living from doing this? Yeah, I do okay.
Comfortably? I do, although as most people probably tell you young people in Australia are in a really bad position in terms of getting into the property market. Which is a problem I am sure lots of other countries have. Probably because I think too deeply about stuff I think about the implications, you know, how that is going to
261 impact the demographics of the population and it creates clusters of you know ghetto’s basically…that is not the right word to use, but people will be trapped into very poor lives further out in terms of outskirts of cities, and into the urban sprawl and poor living standards and at the same time we had very poor wage growth in Australia, so that clusterfuck if I can use that word, is a problem. So whilst I, objectively speaking, I make okay money, I am pretty happy with my salary, it is not enough I feel still do to a lot of stuff I would take for granted when I was younger, like being able to get a house and stuff. But everyone in Australia, at least everyone in Sydney who is our age is in the exact same position. And in Amsterdam and in Vancouver and in London, so it’s a problem that goes to much wider forces. We do have other factors in Australia that make us a bit unique, so we have a scheme where if you are a property investor you can actually get a tax deduction on any investment that lose money, which is not fair because old people do that. So people who had been able to ride the wave of ridiculous property price rises have just been overall averaging, uhm…but yeah this is all unrelated stuff, but just for your insight. So you will find probably a lot of people here who are on good salaries who don’t necessarily have the lifestyles that might reflect that, because most of the money goes into living.
All still in share houses… Yeah exactly.
Are you in a shared house? No, I live with my partner and I actually have a mortgage. I am one of the rare ones that do, but it still sucks because it is a very small apartment and it is not ideal. It is quite difficult to think of things like starting a family. So that’s why I see that for young people it should be the number one issue in Australia, but it is not because I think there is a lot of political apathy or perhaps not an understanding of what can be done. Uhm…but that’s just our local flavour, every country has got their own issues.
Sure, okay and what do you find the most difficult in your current situation? Uhm…I think for me, and it’s a personal thing too, is I guess maintaining motivation because sometimes you are obviously not as motivated as you would be otherwise. This time of the year is really hard for us because it is beautiful outside and it’s sunny and we are working indoors while a lot of the other people are on holidays. But, you know, this is what we have signed up for.
Are you working through the holiday? Yes, I am. But that’s okay. The real thing for me is that there are a lot of stories that, because I am a producer and I am not necessarily filing stuff, but there are still stories that I would work on a little bit, like one of my things that I am really interested in is fake-news and filter bubble stuff. And I have kind of done the start of the story or email stuff around to see if people like it, but I don’t have time to pursue it because I have got other stuff to do. So that is the only thing I would change. I wish I had more hours in the day or maybe, you know, had time to work
262 on that, but that’s okay. Honestly, like, if I was more motivated I would probably just get it done, but that’s all…
Where do you work most? Is it from the office here? Yeah I do.
Do you work in any other spaces, like from home or in a café? No for me 99 percent of the time is here. Sometimes I will work from home, you know, if it is something where I don’t need the internet too much. Uhm…occasionally I would go to different offices around Australia.
ABC offices? Yes. To usually give training to other people, or to be involved in meetings that might happen once a quarter or twice a year. Yeah, so most of the time I spend here, which is good because that is all I really need to do.
How do you get to your workspace? I take a train.
And how would you describe the office here? Oh it is great! I like it here.
What facilities do you have in your workspace? Everything…all of the essential stuff and more. I think we are looked after really well here…I know some workplaces will have other incentives like a gym or whatever. I don’t see those as being great incentives though, I see them as being aimed at…it’s an HR strategy aimed at making people stay longer…So I like the ABC just being very clear about being a workplace. It is well-stocked, there is everything we need here. I know people complain about the technology sometimes, because we don’t necessarily have the best stuff, but at the same time we are a taxpayer-funded institution so I don’t think we can expect to have the best of the best. So I think we have reasonably more than enough to do our jobs well.
Good. And what facilities are absolutely essential to you? Well the internet, I suppose…having a good internet connection. A computer. It doesn’t need to be a laptop or a desktop, I just need a computer and the internet to be able to do 99 percent of the stuff that I do. Honestly, that would be enough.
And what kind of hard- and software do you use? Look, it is basic stuff…it is just Microsoft Office Suite, so Excel is probably the thing I use most of the time. I probably have the least amount of software needs than anyone else. I literally just use that and email and in terms of distribution for social I try to use everything that is free or within the platform itself. My reasoning for that is, after years as a media buyer and stuff, I have seen platforms like Facebook and Twitter even, have fixed all of the problems they have had in terms of gaps they have in their data, or gaps in tools. There are other things like
263 CrowdTangle, which is a really really good tool for journalists. It is a social media listing tool, but it can do a lot more. It is another free one because Facebook had purchased it, and so for now it is free. Anything that is free are the ones that I try to stick to. And it is not necessarily because they are free, but because they are honestly better. We’ve had instances where we’ve had to bring in paid software solutions for instance for distribution that haven’t really worked, because they become out-dated very quickly. So for me it is really low-cost stuff that I use. It is all usually web-based or computer, nothing really high-tech.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Uhm…they are kind of essential. I think the stuff that is really essential would be internet access and also, I mean I could get by using just that. I mean…the other stuff is good to have, to speed up processes, but I could probably live without it.
What do people wear in your main workspace? Uhhh…well…we are all pretty casual. Because we are not TV presenters, we are not really facing the public. I think we are okay to dress for the weather. So it is kind of smart-casual.
And do you feel comfortable in this environment? I do. I do.
Perfect. Right, what kind of support is available at your workspace? Uhm…it is all there. At the ABC there is always someone providing a service depending on what you need, wether it is IT stuff, or even you know HR or if you need to talk to a union representative, or if you are having a workplace issue, I think they are all there. I personally don’t really need them too much, I kind of just able to work…but when I needed IT stuff they have always been fine to me…So I feel like, just based off my own experience, I think there is a lot of services here if you do need it, I think it is quite an understanding place too in terms of accepting that you might need a piece of software installed or yeah, like whatever you need you can get it, most of the time. I think sometimes where we have limitation is just where we don’t have money. So we work around that.
And is there anything you would change about your workspace? Uhm…no, look. Because the thing is, if I need to change my workspace I think I have the flexibility to do that. Like, it would be nice sometimes I feel like it would be nice to have a quiet office like this one where I can kind of like make my own space and you know, put down some physical stuff that I want to look at or a piece of research that I want to look into. That is the only thing that I would like, but I know that if I really really needed that I would probably be able to get it, if there was a good enough reason for it.
Could you sit out here? Yeah. If I really needed to I could probably do it. Or, as is the case a lot of the time at the ABC, you might not get the one thing you really want but you might compromise. So they might find you a very small room on a level where no one
264 wants to work anyway because it is crap. But if you need that quiet space, if I needed that to really concentrate, I could probably get it. It is just a conversation with my superiors and explaining why I need it, and they will hopefully help me to have it.
Why did you start working here? Uhm...well I guess at the time before I came to the ABC I really wanted a change. I had worked for about five years in marketing as a media buyer and I really didn't like it anymore, because I didn't feel like I was getting paid enough and I felt it really wasn't a nice place to work. And that is just because of personal beliefs. I wasn't comfortable to do things like selling Credit Cards to people. the ABC is an institution I have always had a lot of respect for. I have always been very passionate about news and passionate about I guess, media-literacy and how that is changing. So, when I found out about a marketing role here originally, I went for it straight away because I could do all the stuff that they were asking for and I had the passion that I think they were looking for. Someone who really likes news and understands news. And then when I came into this role it was all of the back- stuff that I was already doing outside of the marketing role, so I was doing reports kind of similar to what I do now on how stories travel across social media, how consistent are stories, how they get syndicated by third parties who just want to steal a lot of content and I track it to their sites. So I was doing reports on that kind of stuff because I was curious about it and I could see that ABC news would probably be curious about it, because they didn't fully understand how that was happening. And I was using marketing tools to work that stuff out. So it has been a really nice fit because I think the ABC kind of needed someone like me to come in and help or at least be part of the team. And firstly it is very satisfying because I feel like I am able to use my brain every day, it is very interesting work and it has a very good public effect as well...so it is a win-win.
And has your motivation changed over time? Uhm...no, like I am still very excited about being here. Everyone obviously has a few days that are not like this, but there has never been a moment where I haven't wanted to be here. Yeah, I have been really happy the whole time.
Okay...what are your professional goals? Where would you like to go next? I definitely aim to stay at the ABC, because this is only the start of what would be an ongoing thing where we're trying to make sure that as a very old broadcaster we are still relevant and we still matter. And even if I wasn't at the ABC I know that the ABC is really important for democracy. To put it bluntly, if we don't have a strong ABC, a strong national broadcaster in Australia the news that people would get would be really bad. Like, every country has their kind of tabloid newspapers and the less reputable news outlets, and I think the fact that we are a public service is reflected in the fact that we have a very high trust-scores with our audiences because they see that we do a lot more good than others. So career-wise I would like to kind of expand whatever this role turns into down the line. I don’t have any kind of clear goals in mind other than to continue working in news and
265 making news really good and improving news in terms of what it does with measurement and distribution. So I will just do whatever they’ll need me to do.
Alright, and what are the most important values that inform your work? Uhm…that’s a good question. I think having a really good understanding of what the audience expects us to deliver, is probably the most important thing. Uhm…because it is different for everyone and I think we need to keep that in mind that we should have empathy, I suppose, for everyone on everyone’s perspective even if you don’t agree with their political views for instance we are still representing those people. So I guess it is that humility and empathy are probably two big things to have, which is probably why I left marketing because I was too empathetic with people. And I think it is just being able to not fall into a trap, which I think a lot of news organisations do, where they are kind of pontificating or being moralising or providing or dispersing their opinion in what they do or the news that they cover. I think, it is a simple example, but because I live in the city Sydney, you might assume that I don’t care about what happens in country Australia, and I don’t care what happens outside of Sydney. And for me it is always important to understand those mindsets of where those extremisms’ are and you know, like for me, it is just that. To maintain, to try and understand that we are kind of everyone, we need to be able to speak for and to everyone and to remain, even if there are politicians saying stuff that we really really don’t like, to remain objective and not to let that cloud your judgement. That is just it.
And do you feel your work lives up to these values? Yeah, I think so. Uhm…I wouldn’t say…there is always a shadow of doubt and I think that is healthy to always be questioning ‘is this really relevant?’ or ‘is this really important?’, but I certainly don’t see anything that we’ve done to be partisan or problematic. I think that kind of stuff is less of a danger to us and more of a danger down the line if people become complacent or start to misunderstand what our job is here to do. That’s all.
You have already partially answered this, but does your work make you happy? Yeah, it does! It makes me frustrated sometimes, but it is a good frustration because I care.
What makes you frustrated? The things that get me frustrated is…let’s say, and this is just an example, but that a member of the public says this is a stupid story, a dumb story, it is fake, don’t believe it. That can be frustrating, that can upset me because we put a lot of effort into it and, again, it comes back to understanding where they are coming from. And for instance that is one of the reasons why I am very interested in things like filter-bubbles and fake news and all of that, because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding around that whole issue. So I guess the frustration to me is where I feel like the audience didn’t get it. Uhm…but, you know that is probably more of a reflection of us not having done the best job at communicating rather than any problem with the audience. Because I think that is the worse thing you
266 can do, if you start blaming the audience and saying they are dumb, you are out of touch. And I think when I think about what is happening in the world with media trust, that is something that you need to have as paramount is respect and again humility, because otherwise that is the fastest way to alienate people. And you know, if you want to have a healthy democracy, you need to have a good public sphere where people can discuss, good news dissemination and exchange of ideas. You never want to be in a position where you are scared people away from expressing themselves, so that is a problem.
Is there anything that scares you in your field of work? Yes, tons of stuff scares me! Uhm…the thing for me that I see more and more, and it is not necessarily a new thing and I am obviously not the first person to say this, but more and more we are seeing much more partisan perspectives on the world playing a more influential, a bigger role. And I think social media is obviously one of the reasons for this, and smartphone usage come hand-in-hand. But it leads to a point where you have completely different interpretations of the same news event and uhm…I worry about that because we are kind of lucky in a way being a public broadcaster in that we kind of need to be for everyone. So we are very uniquely placed to capitalise on that fracture, but the problem is that people are really inhabiting their own particular flavour of reality, their own kind of perspective, which is completely different from someone from the other side of the political spectrum or his lived experience. So, it is the fact that people are able to live in these kind of artificial impressions of the world very comfortably because there are tons of news-outlets to cater to those. It is a real problem for democracy I think and obviously you see it reflected in what has happened in recent political events. So that for me is the biggest problem, so these days if someone doesn’t agree with what the ABC says, they can very easily switch us off and they can still get, from their perspective, as much news as they were getting from the ABC. And all that news is going to seem really, really great to them because it aligns with all their prejudices and world views but it’s actually games. And I think this feeds into the whole issue of fake news, because there is also like the sort of monetary benefit of pedalling fake news stories or very light-weight news stories that are emotionally driven that have no substance or maybe didn’t even happen. Uhm…and I really worry about the sort of dynamics that have come out and that are being established because you end up with completely tribalised people having communality, having a breakdown in the politics. So yeah, there are some interesting trends on the horizon and I think it is only going to accelerate and not solved by gatekeepers either, like Google or Facebook fixing this. I don’t think they will fix this, if anything they are making it worse. So I think there is no clear solution to this issue. Perhaps education, but then…fact-checking as well, but the thing is if people don’t believe the fact-checkers than what good are fact-checkers? And if those fact-checkers are actually compromised then what good are those? So again this comes to trying to understand other perspectives, because for me, if we are going to get more people we have to understand why they hate us and don’t agree with us. How do we convince them that we are okay and that they can believe us?
267 Do you have an idea of how to do that? Look, sometimes it is actually showing them something that is an area of interest for them, that doesn’t necessarily have to align to their perspectives, but it shows that we are reporting on the stuff that we are talking about. So for instance in Australia a big topic is foreign land-ownership. The impression is that too many foreigners are getting our land and that is not okay. I am talking about China buying farms to produce food for China, so that is the issue and that can be a non-partisan issue, but obviously if you approach that same issue from different perspectives you get the xenophobes on one side and you might have environmentalists in the other spectrum. So, for me to address those people who are not reading us because they think we are not on their side or whatever, I think we need to think about how we can kind of provide them with objective news that shows them ‘hey, we actually are reporting on this’, or ‘we have fact-checked this’, or ‘we have looked into this’, so that they are aware that they can trust us as an objective source for reporting on that issue that they care about. And then at the same time if they want to go out and follow all of these hateful groups and they want to chat with people who are xenophobic, that’s okay, they can do that, but at least they know that when they come to us they will get balanced reporting and they may not agree with it, but we actually are reporting on the issues they care about. So that is how I think you can slowly kind of wind back the tribalism that is happening.
So really choosing the topics that you report on very carefully… Yeah, and it is not necessarily picking the right topics to report about but it is actually that we do report on those things anyway, but their perception is that we don’t. So it is kind of making sure that they realise we are reporting on it or…because the worry that I would have is if we suddenly said we need to just report on this stuff from a bad perspective and reflect what they believe. That is not what we should do. But showing that we actually do report on that stuff even though they may not be aware of it. That might be a more extreme example, but the problem is that a lot of people are getting news from unverified news sources or like, just, people who are stating opinions and that against that whole kind of filter-bubble and tribal kind of nature, which is not good for anyone.
And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing? Uhm…look I find it really interesting. Like I said, I love news, I love reading the news and I think I also really like seeing how people interpret the news. So it is a bit of the psychological or sociological interest there that bleeds through for me, that keeps me motivated. And the other motivation is really, really valuing the importance and uniqueness of the ABC. I feel like what we do here is really important stuff, so for me it feels like it is more than just a salary job. There is a very clear good purpose to it that we do.
Which communities would you say you belong to? Uhm…Australian millenials? Look, I don’t know. There is no…I mean you can’t obviously see me on the recording but I am a white male Australian, so I guess for me I kind of would just more broadly identify with Australian inner-city millenials
268 in the city I suppose. Because that is kind of where I am from. I grew up in Sydney so I am a Sydney-sider. And there are some interstate rivalries that do go on, but nothing serious. Melbourne and Sydney like to pretend to hate each other to compete about which city is better. So yeah, I think for me there are different kinds of tribes, I guess around Sydney too. So if I had to pick one, I would probably be refered to as a ‘Westie’, so Western-Sydney people, who are a bit uncultured and under-educated and less refined, that is probably me more closely, rather than like Eastern suburbs or South-Sydney or Northern Sydney. So for background, that is more of a migrant kind of community, or more working-class backgrounds, which is more what my parents were. So that is kind of how I identify.
Right. Where are they from? Well my dad is Anglo-Saxon but my mother is a migrant to Australia. So she came from Russia. Oh sorry she came from China but it is a Russian extraction, so she is kind of…when she arrived in Australia she was like already a few years old, so she kind of grew up with like a separate identity. So I kind of, like with her, I kind of have that connection. And then my partner is from very West in Western Sydney and she has a Cypriote family who came here from that background. So again, I am more identified with that kind of newer Australian perspective, rather than other who might be more established and who lived in more affluent areas. So I kind of try to go between the inner-city more educated people and the more kind of like working-class roots that I have.
That is interesting. I don’t really know the stereotypes of the different areas yet here in Sydney. Just for my understanding, can you give me a little rundown of how the city is divided? This is my biased interpretation…so I can only talk to you from my perspective, which is the inner west, which is the best. Why is it the best? Because it is a melting pot of a whole lot of different cultures, which is a mixture of more grungy punk-kind of stuff and more migrant communities. So it is great! The further west you go it is a bit more wild. Wild is a perception, but wild in terms of crime, poverty, much more difficult to live. If you imagine geographically it is a lot further away from the beach. It get’s a lot hotter, less parks, it is less nice, it is a poorer area it is tougher to live out there. So that is why a lot of migrant communities set up there first.
Is that where you grew up? I am lucky because I grew up in the inner west, but still went to a public school and so can straddle both worlds. Whereas by contrast, the Eastern suburbs for instance are completely different in my experience. A lot wealthier, a lot of snobbish families, a lot bigger houses. They are much nicer areas, closer to the beach, people are generally better dressed, better educated and speak a bit differently. Uhm…whereas south Sydney is kind of the same as western Sydney, but a bit more I guess sort of white middle-class. And then northern Sydney is you know, a little bit wealthier, but not the extreme kind of wealth that you see in eastern Sydney where the real estate is really nice and obviously everyone wants to
269 live there. But I don’t feel like it is a serious divide like everyone…there are not much class-divisions really, at least in my experience. I still think class exists in Australia, but it is for me, like I have been really fortunate because I don’t have, like I didn’t grow up in the extreme west, so I feel like I was able to get into an okay uni, I was able to do the job I do today. Whereas I know that that’s not the experience for a lot of people, because of where they were born.
Yeah, there seems to be a big divide between public and private schools here. The other day I saw a flyer and I think they were doing a charity run for public school kids. And I was like…wow that sounds like they are actually poor. Basically there is a disparity between the quality of the education you receive. If you enter a private school, generally you are going to get a better level of education because there is more money per student. So that is the difference and I think that is just how it is. If people want to send their kids to private schools that is totally fine, but it does reflect a class division and obviously if you are able to get a much better education earlier on in life you will have a higher chance to going onto higher education and, you know, pursuing that kind of life. There is a reason why people talk about western Sydney as this kind of estranged thing. It is 10% of Australia, the population…which is quite significant.
Western Sydney? Western Sydney alone is 10% of Australia’s population.
That is crazy… Yeah, well Sydney is the largest city. So yeah, like I guess coming from the Netherlands it is obviously different. I have been to the Netherlands so I kind of get it a little bit.
Very densely populated. Yeah, so I think the differences are kind of dividing boundaries. There are tribes around Sydney, just because of where people are placed and live and work is very different, and the opportunities that you have. In western Sydney there are a lot less opportunities, which is why, you know, it is rarer to kind of see people from those areas succeed.
Makes sense, thanks for filling me in. And the same happens in Melbourne too and in other cities. There are always these kind of different distinctions.
And do you have memberships to trade unions? I do not, no.
Would they be in any way useful to you? Yes they would be. The only reason why I have not done that is because I am forever trying to save as much money as I can. That’s all…and I am hypocritical
270 in that. Like, I will buy myself luxuries like coffee, which I don’t…like I could be cheaper about, but that’s all it is…it is the only reason why.
And is there a community that you would like to belong to but don’t yet? Well, I would like to be part of the union, that’s about it. And a few other bodies like that. I guess for me, the reason why I haven’t yet, is because I haven’t really needed to for my career, so…yeah. There hasn’t really been a need yet, but…that’s why.
And who do you see as your competitors? Uhm…there are two sets. So, obviously within Australia all other media who are in the top five in terms of rankings would be our competitors. So anyone who is ahead of us, like news.com would be our number one competitor and that is only because of their position right now. Whoever is on the number one spot, we want to be there. And if we are in the number one spot we would be worried about number two and three and four. So, there is that immediate concern and most of those are either international groups like Newscorp, which have local presence with news.com.au and others. There are others, which are local publishing networks like Fairfax, which used to be a real worry for us as a competitor. Well we have some of their employees working for us now, but they have lost a lot of good personnel and have made some poor strategic decisions, which has meant that we have kind of jumped them. Which means that we are currently number two in terms of reach online. So we are actually doing quite well, we have grown a lot. But, even if we were number one I would be putting us up against…I would be thinking about the next thing, which is global reach. And there is…I have to explain this. We are chartered to service the Australian audience, which means the reach goals are aligned to the Australian audience and what we are meant to do is service the Australian audience. And we will continue to do that, irrespective of wether we are number one or number two, but I think longer term we need to or even now, be thinking about how can we compete against the BBC, CNN, and all those kind of international brands like the New York Times. The reason why that is important is because a lot of people are obviously getting news from global news sources these days. So there is less of a national kind of isolated market and I think long-term for the ABC to survive into the 21st century we need to be at that level, where we are competing or at least on the radar of those top ten publishers or networks around the world. Because we are kind or seeing that people will read us just because they are living in Australia and we are Australian. I think we need to be able to have as much authority and respect as those global competitors. So it means integrating in what they are doing and being able to compete on let’s say the Paradise Papers as much as the Guardian are doing or CNN. Because there are going to be some stories where there is going to be a global audience for it that we are able to report on really well. And there is also the other idea, which is the behavioural thing, where people are consuming news from all different kinds of global sources. So maybe that, like Reddit might be one and would be a way of people accessing news, because it is a content aggregator and it is looking at global content. We want to still have as much brand- recognition on Reddit than the BBC, and frankly I think we do. We are able to
271 compete there, because we do have very very high journalistic standards. So, I think we should be that ambitious.
Yeah. Are you tracking views from different countries as well? I will do it as sort of like an addition, but because it is not within the charter it is not necessary. The reason why I want to entertain those ideas is because I think one day we would need to be thinking about that and I think obviously the fact that you are here is probably because of your awareness of Four Corners as a competitor to Panorama or Frontline. So I think we do have, for instance, the opportunity to get that global audience. But the thing is, it is all outside of the charter, so it is not necessary. But I do it because I firmly believe we can do that. I think there are stories that we can probably report on more objectively than more partisan markets like the US. The US is a very partisan news market and I think we can be more of a objective viewer and that is something where we have demonstrated success with. There was a video that went viral of a reporter, one of our political reporters, assessing Trump’s appearance at the G20 summit, which went all around the globe. So stuff like that is really good just to kind of demonstrate that there actually are audiences beyond Australia who value our stuff. And if we think about globalised media-consumption it may be that we need those global audiences to propel ourselves to do that well, so that those Australians who aren’t coming to us from any kind of obvious channels, but they see it on a content aggregator or they are maybe following CNN-world and CNN- world is reporting on a story that we have done, they will come to us. So that is why I think we need to think about that.
Yes, you have an amazing advantage that it is in English so you have the possibility to do that. Yeah. And Ozzies seem to be doing kind of well, in the international media. Maybe it is a personality thing as well. Like I think Ozzies are kind of valued as no bullshit kind of like people, who will tell it as it is. And that is something we should just leverage. Why not? Uhm…but obviously that is all secondary to our main thing we are here to do which is for Australians.
Yes of course, okay cool. Has this changed? Do you have any new competitors? Yeah, of course. Look, all the time we have got global competitors coming up. Coming in here and setting up shop, like the New York Times even. So we also have to be aware of that. I think we have been really lucky so far…
Wait, has the NYT set up shop here? Yep. NYT got in Australia, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post had been but have recently kind of fallen apart. So global competitors are looking at Australia and they want to have a slice of the pie. Most of the time they are failing to get good impact into the market, so we are not as worried about them. But I do worry that…it wouldn’t take much to steal away key audiences we need to grow with, like millennials for instance. And that is happening with Vice News for instance, has their own channel in Australia. And even though it is not a huge audience share, it
272 overindulges with Australian millenials, which is who we are really need to be talking to. We do need to worry about the impact of those guys over time, because I don’t feel… irrespective of whatever they say they are good for in their mission statement, they are not bound to a charter like we are. And so whatever they produce is going to be a bit slanted and it’s probably more to the judgement of the audience. Uhm…so I can’t stop people from watching stuff like that, or if they are finding that stuff more interesting that is fine, but I worry about us losing relevancy to that kind of competition. And it won’t happen straight away but it can kind of slowly happen because of the changing behaviour.
How do you feel about their division between marketing and journalism? Vice? The wall is gone and I don’t necessarily think that is a good thing. I think like having people like myself within the organisation is a risk, because you can undermine the quality of the product, but I think because I worked in the news marketing division, I already had respect for the news product, but I understand a lot more the resources that go into stuff. And I really don’t want to stand up in a place where the internet is filled with the Kardashians because that is what people want. It is the cheapest stuff and the easiest shit to produce. And in fact, that ties back to the whole fake news thing. Uhm…so I worry about that because they are really slick operations. You feel informed watching it, you feel like it is cool as well. So their branding is super effective and it is a lot cooler and more compelling than us. But in contrast we are like the uncool, older, grandpa or uncle who is like trying to talk to you and you are not really listening because it is some dumb old story…So I think the critical challenge for us is not to dumb down what we are doing to chase that new audience, but to think about how we van still be valuable to them and still do what we do really well, whilst speaking their language or perhaps just being in the places where they are consuming media. Because I worry with something like Vice, which, on the surface is something edgy, cool, independent media, which is owned by Fox, the group of Merdock, that is really going to be a problem. Especially for things like reporting on politics, because it will end up being partisan or it will end up being, you know, subjective or sensationalist. I think what they do, like hats off to them, they are doing it really well obviously the formula is working for them, but we need to I think work out what we could do to not mimic them but to compete against them on stuff that they can’t do as well.
Okay. And who are your audiences right now? Depends on the channel. Over 50 on TV, a lot younger on other channels online, like on social. So it kind of changes like that, like an inversed pyramid. So the problem we have, the media landscape in 2017 is a lot of young people who don’t have terrestrial TV’s in their home and they are streaming everything if they do watch stuff. So, we have this kind of very old audience who are going to fade away eventually, and we aren’t going to have anyone really watching our television programs. So, the audience we have now is a lot older than we would like. It is still fairly representative of Australia in terms of demographic, but we need to grow it and grow it especially with young people.
273 What do you mean in terms of demographic. Is it fairly spread out? It is yes, geographically. So, the problem is working out what we can do to make sure that younger people don’t completely drop off from us.
And how do you do that? That’s what we are trying to do with our team.
Yes exactly, but do you have a specific idea or strategy? Is there something you could be pushing more? There are a few things that I would like us to do overall as an organisation that I think would fix stuff. Uhm…we need to have a better CMS. The CMS we have now looks too dated. We need to have a better video-player. We have Iview but it is not good enough to compete against Netflix. We need something that is good enough to compete against Netflix. Those are the two most pressing issues, because they are products that don’t work as well as they should and that don’t work as well as their competitors. And for a lot of people, you know, that is wanting to stop them from using us at all. If there are any barriers for people to get to the story, that is fucked. So we need to fix that. And I think if we were, that would be my main focus if I could make that decision. I think we have got the story, but the packaging or the vehicles to get people to that are out-dated, but yeah that is just how it is.
You sort of answered this one and we are getting to the last questions, so don’t worry. Are you satisfied with these audiences or are there other people you would like to reach? Yeah look, I am satisfied with time. I think down the line, it would be good to look at international audiences. Another side to that is monetisation, so with YouTube for instance, if we put all the content that we own on YouTube and we ran adds against the stuff that were facing global audiences and there are reports there, we know that on YouTube we are reaching a much more globalised audience…uhm…because our stories…we might do one on Venezuela, and another on Haiti, we might do one in South-Africa. So people from those countries often come and view those episodes if it is like a Foreign Correspondent or a Four Corners or what have you. So, yeah, in the short term there is the charter which says we need to reach Australians and there are goals behind that each year that we need to hit. So that is the number one audience, but down the line I think there are other audiences we could look at, wether it is for a commercial imperative to get more money for the ABC, or…
So you are saying to put all content on YouTube? That is an idea that we have explored, yes.
Okay interesting. Uhm… because obviously that is where a lot of our stuff can live on as a long- form content. We can monetise it, so commercial are happy ‘hey, there is an income stream’, we can set rules around that and say we are only running adds on foreign IP addresses, so that our audiences aren’t annoyed because we are putting
274 something between them and the content, which is an add, which is not okay. So it is just things like that, that I think we are thinking about…
Would the content have to change? Would people watch a whole show on YouTube? Ah look, yeah, you can definitely make that argument that a 45-minute program should be cut up into explainer-videos for YouTube. And that is something that we do with our team. The stuff that we do is generally a bit longer, it needs a bit more context. But outside of that, what I am thinking is that we have a huge archive of stuff that has been ABC produced, like shopper ABC, the rights are owned by ABC, the music is owned by ABC, the ultimate owner is the ABC. So that kind of stuff I think are, and I know that we are looking at it and maybe that’s the thing you might want to make anonymous, but there are definite discussions in higher levels about that. But if it was my call I would be getting as much of our stuff there, categorising it, making it all open to people to see and just running adds only on stuff that is facing foreign IP addresses, because if we want to grow our audiences, again even just in Australia all of the young people are using YouTube as one of their primary social media platforms. Good long-form media, which is what we have, to put it all on there. That is what we can do.
Is that really controversial this opinion? Is that why you wanted this to be anonymous? It is controversial because there are legal issues to it and there are practical issues to it. The ABC is a big organisation, it takes a lot of time to get stuff done, even for a single program to get stuff from the archives can take a long time, because they have to digitise stuff. So it all has to be rationalised on a much higher level and, you know, whilst I can see this is obviously how you do it, there are probably things that I am not aware of that would be barriers. Uhm…but, yeah, it is just again from my perspective as an audience development producer, it is a good opportunity to make money, which would hopefully be a good enough incentive for people to make them want to do it. Uhm…but, yeah, whatever shape or form it takes, it is not up to me.
Last couple of questions. What do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? It is online. Look, I don’t know. I think, it is difficult to answer that question if I am honest. I think the key elements of digital storytelling would be something that goes well beyond a written piece. Something that maintains interest, number one. So something that is interesting, wether it is the written piece that is very interesting because it is a fascinating story, or wether the treatment that we have given the story with the baby-making thing, which might be a data-driven story that might be a bit dry, that we take people through that in a way that is very engaging. Like, having interesting charts or interesting videos, uhm…and one that takes people through what it all means. But it is a hard one to answer because obviously there are some stories that don’t need all the kind of gimmicky kind of flashy stuff. The main thing, so for me, digital storytelling is stuff that is online and is accessible and the treatment makes sense for the story that it is. Uhm…and
275 why I say that is because the problem I think some people have with digital is that they think it has to be really flashy and make noise and has to have all of these amazing features that don’t really serve any purpose to the story. And I think you need to have a bit of that kind of common sense consideration, because if you think about it: the primary avenue that people that come to our stories come from is from mobile devices, from data-plans that are not very generous. So, I told you that coverage isn’t great in Australia, so I don’t like putting stuff that is going to slow the experience or does not provide any real value to the story. So that is why I don’t think that we necessarily for a digital or interactive story it has to be super interactive or flashy. It just has to…like, if there is stuff that would add value to the audience, like maybe a scrolling timeline, or maybe dropdown menus that are interactive that just change what’s the slate on the screen because it adds value or context to the story, then that is all called for. So yeah it’s…I probably didn’t answer your question, but…it depends on the story.
Yes you did. And has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by other innovation teams within or outside of the ABC? Yeah, I think so. Uhm…I suppose we have probably learned from our own mistakes when we are just reflecting on stuff from ourselves. Uhm…and talking about that other point about unnecessary flashy stuff, there was a story that we did for a current affairs program and they wanted it to be really interactive. And but that they meant, what that meant from their perspective was something that looked great on screen, that had a lot of moving images and background vignettes and what not. Now, the main view of the team at that time was that it is not adding anything further to the story, just having background images that move around and look really pretty, because there is no real need for it, it is uncalled for in the story, it is not necessary to have all this movement. And the ultimate result of that story was that it didn’t preform as well as we had hoped. A lot of time was spent making that work and look good, but the story ultimately didn’t preform because it wasn’t a story that… at the end of the day it was a very niche story in its appeal. I just don’t want to get into too many details, but you know, I don’t want to call out anyone. And this particular example is all I can think of, it was the only time I have seen this happen. But I think sometimes there is a temptation of looking at a team like ours and saying we can make our stories look really poppy and they will pop out at people, without thinking through what does the audience actually want or what does the story really need here. So that is something that is always going to be something that we have to learn from. I think in that case we could have probably made a stronger case to say no, it doesn’t need this kind of treatment. Because producing this doesn’t add anything to the story and what it ultimately means is that designers spend a lot of time producing something that doesn’t perform very well. Uhm…there are other things too, obviously the reports I do there are recommendations in there about what we could do differently for instance. And I think that even the greatest success should have some kind of recommendations for doing things differently, or trying things differently, to experiment, because otherwise it all just becomes formulaic and you don’t learn. I think what I have even notices though, looking at other teams who are similar to
276 us is that they really do need distributers to help them out because without a distribution strategy a story has a much poorer chance of doing well.
Okay. Last question. What do you see the most fundamental challenge for the field of journalism? Uhm…yeah I mean like I said it is the decline into light-weight news and news that only reflects a particular perspective. Uhm…because there is a good financial incentive to do that and it’s a lot easier to produce. So that is my concern, is that journalists are in temptation to kind of start to undermine what they actually do. The other thing that worries me a lot, and I don’t feel like this actually gets enough attention, is misunderstanding or misreading of metrics leading to a false impression of positive results. So for instance like, a Facebook page which is pushing out all the stories might have fantastic engagement rates of the way that they are doing their political stories uhm…but engagement rates doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a positive interaction and maybe that people are engaging with their post and the political coverage because they are so outraged at the way they are presenting it. But if you didn’t consider that you would be misreading the results. So, like, data coming into newsrooms dictating editorial flow and what happens on the homepage or what happens on social media and how that flows into content commissioning, uhm…if that data is misread, if those signals are misinterpreted it can fuck up the entire process in terms of news production. And I think one of the things I have seen happen is that a lot of, and this is like pre smartphone era, the rise of a lot more opinion pieces because nothing pisses off people more than an opinion piece that is just inflammatory or outrageous. And what I fear is that a lot of people who work in digital who maybe don’t understand all the nuances would look at a piece that has driven tons and tons of visits, because it is so inflammatory in nature, so outrageous, and think that is the way to go and just commission another 12 opinion pieces. Someone like Katie Hobkins is a good example of that, from the UK, who writes for the Daily Mail. There are other personalities here in Australia who do kind of very similar baiting of people based off just saying outrageous stuff. So I worry about that combined with the whole tribalised nature of media and its fracturing leading to a place where you just have a lot more opinion-led news dictating what people talk about. Because that is like the detriment of real news in my opinion.
Thank you! That was very extensive. No, thank you.
277 Interview Nathanael Scott
Let’s start with your job title. What is your job title? Frontend developer in the EDL team, Equal Digital Life, although now I think we are going by DSI.
Yeah, I am so confused. What is the difference? We were called EDL which stands for Equal Digital Life, but then we realised that EDL is also the UK nationalists group, so I think in all the paperwork we still are technically called the EDL, but internally and externally as well we call ourselves DSI, which is Digital Storytelling Innovations.
Okay, cool. And how old are you? 34.
Okay. And how long have you been doing this for a living? Uhm…I first started in 2005, so that is 13 years now, so I did an internship at Fairfax, which is the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald basically as part of my uni masters. We had a year that was industry experience. And kind of very very randomly wound up there, because I had no interest in them. I was looking at, sort of, animation and design studios and more advertising stuff, because that is what everyone aims for. But then after completing a year, I really enjoyed it and loved working there and was asked to stay on there. And that was a really interesting time because in 2006 there wasn’t really much, in the way that…you know, the internet was still very basic, and especially in the way that online journalism was handled. And I was doing probably for all intents and purposes the same thing as I am doing now, but in a very basic…and we were still trying to figure it out, we are still trying to figure it out now, but back then we had to figure out even what works, you know, we were using a lot of flash to do things…you know, big photo galleries. But also it was kind of…we were kind of taking newspaper graphics and making them a little bit interactive or a little bit more interesting, but it kind of was still approached with a newspaper sensibility to it.
Yeah so very much with a newspaper mentality and just translating that literally to the online world… Yes, and I was there on and off for about 10 years. I took some breaks and I quit twice maybe, and did some other things, but over that time there was a lot of trying to figure out what works. But then also there was a lot of discussions with people in charge, trying to convince them. As far as they were concerned it was maybe 4 or 5 years ago where they sat down with everyone and said ‘we are now a digital company, we still have the print component, but we are going to be digital- first and if you are not okay with that then you can take a redundancy and we will pay you out.’ Fairfax media used to have a lot of other parts to them, which is to say that the two newspapers and they also had some houses classifieds and job listings and those got smaller and smaller as time has gone on, but they are moving to digital-first.
278 Okay, so you started off there. How did you get to the job you do now? I used to work with Kim Porteous at Fairfax. I think she had a similar title, like she had some sort of technologies innovations type of title there as well. And she gave me a phone call to let me know they were hiring, and she has spoken about me with a couple of people that she had worked with at Fairfax and I think at that stage I had been back there for 3 or 4 years, so it felt like a good time to move on. And also I really like the ABC and I like the work that they have done, so I really wanted to work there and check it out. So far I have no regrets.
So you still had to apply? Yeah, she told me about it, so I had to apply and go through all the interviewing process, but I think I was certainly in a unique position in a way that there aren’t too many people who do what we do very specifically. That is to say, there are people who do web development, like there are thousands of them. But having worked in specifically editorial development, put me in a unique position over some of the other candidates, and wether or not that was an actual advantage I am not sure…
You had the experience. Are there any other innovations teams similar to yours? I know about the Brisbane team…but are there any other initiatives within the ABC that you know of? There is. There is a small team in Canberra that have only just started. The political team and there are only three people that have just started. As far as News goes, that is the only other innovations team that I know of.
And how would you say does the DSI fit into the ABC’s innovation history? Uhm…yeah well my understanding of it is, because uhm…it is sort of tricky because I started six months ago, so I have kind of gotten the gist of what has been happening over the last two years, which is to say it sounds like a lot has. But my understanding of how we fit into the innovations is that especially in News there was a real big push to get more digital content, because I don’t think I necessarily am saying something too revolutionary but especially a couple of years ago the ABC news website was kind of viewed as a lot of AP and Reuters feeds.
No original content? No, it wasn’t known for that. And definitely in the last couple of years the Brisbane team has started to do a lot of work and I would say probably with all of the work they have done they definitely impressed enough people to kind of convince them of the value of having original digital content, but then just also the need in 2018 to have a good website. I would say that that is where most people get their news from nowadays. The ABC also has network television as well. So as far as DSI goes, it was sort of mostly an experiment to…it is kind of weird because I do think we are kind of used as an experiment, but at the same time we are mostly doing something very similar to the Brisbane team. It is just that we have come to free them up a bit more and let them move away from working with the current affairs programs specifically. So, I think as far as what DSI’s role is, is to work with the existing current affairs and the existing stuff,
279 which is this amazing content and help modernise it, or even not just to modernise it but to…repurpose is the wrong word as well…but to build upon it and create other channels. I think probably one of the best things I can think of is the mortgage stress story that we worked on. In the sense that we were working from the same data that Four Corners and then they did their broadcast from the same data but we were able to come to it from a different angle, which was a lot more interactive mapping and kind of a bit more animated storytelling. But yeah, it wasn’t necessarily saying the exact same thing as what was said on television, we came at if from a different angle, extending the life of this piece of work.
So same data, different stories or angles, cool. And what would you say is DSI’s mission? I think we have a kind of clear direction, which is what I just said. To support their current affairs programs, but I think a bit more internally for us, like we all have our own mission of creating great content, but we certainly want to create new things and try and…I think we want to create new things because we all like what we do and we are in the position to do so. Yeah, because I think that we want to push digital journalism into new places and to experiment and try and…because I don’t think we have all the solutions yet, even though you know, you can look at the New York Times and they look like they have all the solutions haha. They are doing really well, but I don’t think and I think everyone I work with doesn’t think we have figured it out perfectly yet and I think one of the missions we have is to keep pushing that and try and figure out new and better ways to have online journalism.
Alright. And when will this mission be successful? Uhm…don’t know if it every will be successful.
Okay, it is an ongoing process? I think so. And it’s sort of the curse of working in a digital or tech field, is that it is always changing. There are new things all the time. Basically as long as I am going to be in this job or any sort of developmental job I have to just keep learning, because what I am doing now, the tools that I am using now didn’t exist three years ago. And if I stopped looking around and stopped learning I would just be completely left behind and because we are trying to push things in an interesting way I have to continue educating myself. And I think, as I said, that is the same with everyone because we can’t really coast or rest, because we are storytelling innovations.
Yes you are supposed to be at the front of the line… But I think, you know, we do have some goals that you probably know about, of how many views we need to have and how much reach. So that goal will be completed in June, but…
Do these goals affect you in any way? Not really. Like, it is sort of weird because, it is like…well in the interview Matt asked how do I cope when I think a story will be big and my answer is that I
280 always sort of assume a story is going to be big, especially on a site like the ABC where you have millions of people. And I think as well, like, one I am not so worried about it because it’s been going really well. But I also, I think it has been going really well and I think that is a testament to…it is because of the quality of the work and the type of work that we have been doing. And it is kind of not really up to me to figure out the type of work or the angles and the things that will be interesting or have a large reach.
Would that mostly be up to Mark and Inga? Yeah, Mark, Inga and Hutch. They tend to have a bit more of an idea of what we should be doing. But even like Michael Workman, he is very good at knowing the types of things that reach an audience and how to massage the angle.
Nice, okay. Do you have a daily work routine? Uhm…yep. Usually when I get in I read all the news sites to see what is going on in the NYT and Washington Post and the Age.
Are you specifically looking at the interactive stuff or…? It is funny that those are the first ones you mention. Yeah, well those are kind of the good ones to look at because they generally have some good interactive stuff. And even if it is not like something hugely interactive, but even the photo-journalism stories and things like that, that is still sort of in the same ball-park of what we need to figure out, and if it is a nice template…it is just me reading the news, again, just staying on top of it. And there are a couple of other sites like, the Pudding and a couple of tech sites like Medium and CSS tricks, that I read as well. That’s it, a little bit of research to make sure I am staying on top of things. And depending on where I am in a project and if I have got something to work on. Because most of my job is just sitting down and doing it, like, locking myself in this metaphorical room for a week or two and making something, and generally checking in with everyone I am working with. But sometimes that doesn’t happen on any given day, but then that usually happens in the afternoon when I am feeling a bit more confident.
And what kind of activities do you feel like you are supposed to be doing in your job? Uhm…I think apart from working on projects, that is obviously the most important thing, I think there is a responsibility to keep in touch with the Brisbane team and make sure that we are across each others doings, because even though we are not working together, we still kind of use a lot of each others’ stuff. There is also a responsibility to try to keep in touch with everyone in the newsroom and people in other areas because, even though we do make our own stuff, we are kind of here to make other people’s stuff. It is about letting everyone know that we are here.
Here in Melbourne, or…? Yeah here in Melbourne and also I have been chatting a lot with the people in Western Australia.
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Really? Okay, you are the first one to mention them. Tell me about them! Hahaha. Liam Philips is heading up that newsroom and he used to work at Fairfax as well with me, so I know him, but that’s only…the reason why I’ve been chatting with them is because they have got their hands on a whole bunch of crime data for Western Australia and we are trying to figure out what we are going to do with that. And it is tricky because it is just for Western Australia and the ABC is a national thing.
So you can’t make one cheeky little local story? Well that is what we are figuring out. It will probably just be snuck in between projects.
Okay nice. So that is the ABC in Perth? Yeah. I don’t know very many people over there.
Is it the local news team? Yeah I think it is just the local news team. They have to have broadcast news, but you know what, I don’t know.
How did you know they had this data? Uhm…oh Liam contacted me about it.
You know him personally so he know what you do, I guess. Yes, but also I had interest in the newsroom over there and let them know that we are here and met up with them in Sydney at some point.
So you are actively reaching out to other branches in the ABC to say ‘we are doing this stuff, use us!’? Yeah. Because we are all new.
Of course, people need to get to know you. Apart from Mark and Michael everyone in our team is new.
Alright. How many different tasks would you say you have on an average day. I know this is a bit of a hard one to answer. I think, you know what? This actual…I will take this to mean how many projects we are working on at any one time. And I would say that it actually hasn’t been that hectic, which is to say I work a lot, but I have only ever had two projects going on at the same time. So it is sort of less than what I am used to, but that is because we are focussing on bigger things. There aren’t necessarily smaller graphs here and there, that I am used to.
Do you like working that way? Do you like doing one thing after the other? Yeah, I do kind of like focussing on one thing. But I also like that for the most part they last two weeks, like, that is the most time I will spend on something. So even though I am focussing on one thing I am not focussing on it for very long.
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Okay. And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you are doing? So yeah, I would say that the first and foremost is frontend development. We work in, prominently in Javascript and yeah, all of our systems are based around Javascript, but uhm…but also I am kind of a bit more focussed on things like database development and a bit more of system development, whereas Ri is more of a almost like design-based.
So do you mean you make formats to reuse later? Yeah, yeah. So I am kind of for, I kind of go a bit deeper into the back-end of things. So if I need to set up a database or set up a polling thing…it is kind of a bit more computer techy slash engineering type stuff. But also, I kind of also need to know the fundamentals of web design and do a lot of design work myself, because it is such a small team and we don’t all necessarily have the resources. So it is some design, some animation, but mostly front-end web development work.
And what have you learned since starting doing this work at the ABC? Uhm…I have definitely learned a lot about tech stuff working with the Brisbane guys, because they are a pretty close team and are working pretty heavily on their own systems and they have got some more software programming types up there. So they kind of lean on the tech a bit heavier. So I have learned a lot of new and interesting ways to work, a lot deeper programming stuff than what I had previously done. I am trying to think if there is anything more philosophical that I have learned working at the ABC. I learned that there are a lot of people that are very angry out there at the ABC on Facebook. Haha. I learned to not read the comments, I suppose.
Never read the comments, they will tear you down. And do you specifically work with any colleagues here? No not in the newsroom here, this newsroom they are kind of more, because they are local news they are more breaking news and current affairs and so the stuff that they are doing is more sort of immediate. Immediate reporting. Whereas our team does more feature pieces. There hasn’t been an opportunity to work with anyone here, but that might change. Like, everyone in this newsroom is busy all the time. So, no one in Melbourne yet.
Do you think they know what you are doing here? Yes, I know everyone. I have met them all and will have a chat to them in the kitchen, but as far as working with them…but I think there are some other people starting on…so our team is under the investigations umbrella, and I think there were some other people starting in a different area of investigations somewhere else in this building. So we might be moving up to a different floor and work with some other people.
You are actually physically moving? Maybe. Yeah, there used to be a bunch of cabinets behind us that kept us kind of
283 tucked away. Now we are a lot more exposed. I am not sure I like it, haha. But it was also, we were kind of tucked away in the corner.
Do you think that was done for a reason? Uhm…yeah I think that was done because, there are a lot of hot-desks and stuff, but we needed to have our own desks and needn’t to move around like everyone else.
So these people all move around and have flexible desks? Yes. All of the ones you see at the moment are open desks, and sometimes there are people sitting there and sometimes not, depending on…because there are like three shifts of people: morning, day and night. So there is no point having one desk each, because they would just be empty most of the time.
So here you generally work by yourself mostly or do you work with Ri? Yeah I work with Ri quite closely on some things. We have worked on some projects together and we generally talk about the things that we are doing, because yeah, she is right there and she is very smart. But she is pretty much the only person I work with here in Melbourne. Everyone else is in Sydney.
Yeah…how do you interact with the people in Sydney? We have got the Slack channel, you know? And the two weekly meetings. And then just basically if there is something we need to talk about we just jump on video call on our laptop and have a chat that way. Do you ever see them in person? I haven’t for a bit. They sometimes come down here, but we went up when we first started and sat down with everyone but that was kind of the last time I saw a lot of them in person. And every now and again someone will come down to Melbourne, mostly for fun, and we will catch up. But for the most part no, I don’t really see them in person.
And is there anyone you are missing in the team? Or any skills? Uhm…no. I would say that we probably need another designer. Alex is stretched a bit thin, because I think he is also doing a lot of video work, which is really good and necessary but it means that we have only got half a designer at the moment. So I think that is probably where it has strained a little bit. But also we could take on another designer and be fine, we have enough work to take on another producer as well. With the amount of work that is thrown our way we could probably double the team and still be fine.
Okay, cool. How many hours would you say you work a week? Uhm…I would say that it is generally a 40-hour week. There have been a few weeks where I have maybe bumped that up to 50 hours when I am in the middle of a project, or generally when I am struggling with the project and can’t quite break it, or some tech thing is going wrong. So it kind of fluctuates, but I think for the most part it is a pretty regular 40-hour week.
284 Okay. And I presume you don’t have any other jobs on the side? No.
And what do you consider free time? I keep Slack going, I don’t really check it necessarily. I will check it in the morning when I am on the tram and stuff and if something pressing comes up on Slack, which is rare, I will interact with it. But no, for the most part, once I am gone here…I don’t have email on my phone, so if people want to get in contact with me, people need to call me and they only call me when it is absolutely necessary.
So you have no email at all on your phone or just no work mail? No work email.
Okay. And do you manage to earn a living from doing this? Yes.
Comfortably? Yes.
Okay. What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? I think, uhm…especially in these last few months there was a certain expectation to kind of prove ourselves a bit, which has meant that I think we took on a bit more work than we should have. So I think probably one of the most difficult things is trying to find that threshold of how many projects we can work on. But then also there is that desire to make everything absolutely amazing, but then trying to figure out ‘where do I stop?’ and ‘when am I working on this too much?’ and ‘where will I stop where it will still be amazing but won’t have this slider or this one little thing?’. And I think in this particular job, because we are kind of a bit more of a scrappy team and there is sort of a bit more expectation on us it took a bit of time to find out balance, but I think we are getting there.
So would you say there are too many or too little projects? Too many and I think we are also quite ambitious in what we decide to do with those projects.
So do you think that any of the projects that you have published so far could have been better, or did you feel like they weren’t really finished in the way that you would have liked to see them? No, I think like with the mortgage stress one, I think we probably did too much for that in the time that we had. It was great, but it was also…
Yeah, you guys were all working over-hours right? Yeah.
But that was one of the first stories… Yeah that was like the first or second.
285 Where do you work most? From the office? Yeah, here from the office.
Do you ever work from home? Yeah, sometimes. We are set up to work from home, I have got the VPN set up and I do it every now and again, but I am the type that needs to work from an office to get myself motivated.
And how do you get to your main workspace? I catch the tram. I would say I ride my bike, but I don’t do that as much nowadays.
And how would you describe it here? Uhm…everyone is very friendly. Everyone is very passionate about what they do. It is a very passionate workspace, everyone is very driven. It is also…especially when you are in the Sydney office, it is the biggest company I have worked for. So big, is how I would describe it as well.
Okay and what kind of facilities do you have in your workspace? Just my laptop.
Did you get your laptop from the ABC? Yes. My laptop, and we have got an Iphone that we test stuff on. That is kind of it, that is all we really need. We have got access to a lot of digital tools that is all paid for by the ABC. So pretty much all the software tools we have, we can generally get access to if it is not too expensive.
Okay. And what kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential? Obviously my laptop is the most essential. But no, I don’t really…yeah I use the kitchen a bit, but I think for the most part I don’t necessarily use too much here at the office. There is a bigger kitchen upstairs that I don’t really use, and I only use this one here to fill up my water bottle.
Alright and what kind of hard- and software do you use? Let me see…the software I use so with the development software basically my coding tool is Visual Studio Code, which is new and I like it and pretty much everything can be done from there. But then also we use all the Adobe…PhotoShop, Illustrator AfterEffects, Premiere to do design and video work. Those are the two main ones. Because there is a small balance between design and development.
And how important are these technologies in your work? Uhm…they are vital.
What do you wear in your main workspace? I am a bit more…it is a bit hot at the moment. I usually, you know, wear a jacket and come in with more business casual, but there is no dress code in this office.
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Would you say it is more formal or casual? Oh look, it is kind of both. Reporters who have to go out in the field, they wear more business attire, lots of suits, but then the reporters who just stay in the newsroom are more towards casual.
And do you feel comfortable here? Yeah, definitely.
What kind of support is available in your workspace? Does it count with like my access to the Brisbane team?
Yeah. But it could also be IT or legal support… Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There is counselling available, but I have yet to work on any stories where I have needed that. There is an IT department on level two and they have helped us a fair bit. They helped us setting up and help with any issues we have. Uhm…yeah, and generally a lot of the support we get comes from the Brisbane team. They help us with a lot of tech issues as well.
Alright. Also…I forgot to ask you before, but how much time do you spend doing journalistic work? Uhm…I would say none. Yeah, so the sort of work that I am doing isn’t necessarily journalism. It is generally figuring out the angle of a project that someone else has already done the journalist work for and figure out how to package things or spin them.
Yeah right, okay. And what would you like to change, if anything, about your workspace? Uhm…I would like to have more people in our team in Melbourne. That is what we have been pushing for.
You mean adding on team members, or half of the existing team or the whole team just moving to Melbourne? Uhm…yeah just sort of having more contact, just having some more people of our team in Melbourne. That will probably amount to adding people to the team and placing them in Melbourne. But I think that so far this has been the only thing that I would change at the moment. I haven’t been here that long, but it has been a lot of fun. The distance sometimes gets you…
What is challenging about the distance? Sometimes you just feel a bit left out of the conversations. Which is to say, we do a lot of meetings together and do have communication with each other, but there is also that other level which is just the conversation you have when you are sitting next to someone at a desk as opposed to getting on a video call. So people like, generally, by the time we find out about the projects everyone has already kind of had a chat about it and already kind of figured out what they want to do, and
287 when we come on we do have input in the process and do get to shape things, but it kind of feels like there has already been conversation before we are having ours.
And do you ever get to pitch stories? Yeah, yeah. So uhm…we do if we bring something. I don’t think…I did pitch something that we didn’t do, just because we didn’t have enough resources, but we will bring that around again with the Melbourne Cup in November. So yeah, if I find something like a dataset or that sort of angle, I can bring it to the team and find out if it is the sort of thing that we do.
Why did you start working in this job? You have already sort of answered this, but if you have something to add… Uhm…I can say yeah…I like the variety of work that you do when you work in editorial. There is a bit more space for innovation. I have done some work in advertising and other design and animation studios, and the thing I like most about this compared with advertising is…in both areas you are spending a lot of time and energy in making something, but I kind of like at the end of the day having this piece of, you know, “important” journalism out there instead of like a Volvo commercial. It feels more like a better use of energy to me.
And has your motivation changed over time? So this sort of stuff has become more important to you? Yeah. I would say, look, as far as working in editorial I don’t think it necessarily has changed. I think, maybe after the first year, when I didn’t really know what I was doing…but having worked in it for a little bit I quickly took to it and liked it, and I think for the last however many years I have felt pretty passionate, driven and enthused apart from, you know, regular day-to-day tiredness. I would say that I have the same passion for it now than I had 10 years ago.
Great. And what would you describe as your mission statement? Uhm…I think ultimately I have always wanted to make cool stuff.
And what does that mean for your daily work if anything? I think there is a lot of research that goes into that. It also means that I have to spend, I usually spend a lot of time working on things that don’t go anywhere. There is a lot of experimentation and research.
Which ultimately means time wasted…not necessarily wasted, but yeah…and what are your professional goals? Where do you want to go next? Uhm…it is kind of weird working in a tech job, because generally the only kind of place to go up is into management and things like that, and I don’t have much desire to…like it is, I think ultimately to just continue doing work that interests me is really what I want to do - wether that is here at the ABC or somewhere else.
And what are the most important values that inform your work? Uhm…I think there is a certain pressure working in the media and especially in
288 the media in Australia, to try and tell the truth the best you can and to not put your own biases and spin on things.
Why is that something that especially applies to Australia? I think just, it is everywhere really. I think just in some of the other publications that are interested in putting forward a narrative and putting forward you know…everyone has an agenda, some political view or maybe emphasise parts of society that aren’t necessarily the whole truth, or exactly was is happening.
So truth telling is one value… Yeah, I think it is. But also I think that and especially working for the ABC which is a public broadcast service is to try and be as representative as possible with the content we put forward and the views and voices we promote.
You mean diverse? Yeah. Not just focus on people on Melbourne, or people leaving in the cities and our experiences. It is a big country.
But it is funny because then before you said you wanted to speak to all people but at the same time you can’t really…or maybe you can…tell a story just about Western Australia. So you are trying to always target the Australian? Yeah, but you obviously can’t speak to all people all the time and I think that the WA story kind of ties into the truth-telling thing because it was specifically crime statistics and crime is kind of one of those subjects that is often politicised and is often used to push an agenda of some sort, and maybe to try and get to the raw statistics of what is actually happening and maybe try and see if that lines up with what has been put forward. Like, I think that is…
Put forward by politicians? Yes, by politicians and other media outlets. I think that is sort of a good way to get to the bottom of things.
And do you feel your work lives up to these values? Uhm…I think so, yeah. I do. And especially with the very first piece we did about ordinary Australians tied into that idea of trying to cover a range of…It does both. We are trying to paint a broad picture and not just this very specific idea of what an Australian is and then kind of representing other areas of Australia, but then also that was a good way to sort of get to the truth of things by taking the census and the raw statistics and seeing how that lines up with what they have been told and the perception of what an Australian is and what they actually are.
Okay. And does your work make you happy? Yes it does.
What makes you most happy? I really like having a completed thing at the end of the day but also, since is have
289 started working here, even though I said I don’t read the comments, here has actually been a really positive reception to what we have been doing and it has been getting a lot of positive feedback. And it is really good working on something really hard and seeing that people like what you have done and understand and see that you have done it in an understandable way. I like reaching people with my information.
And do you ever get angry in your work? Uhm…I don’t think I have here. Not yet. Yeah I am reasonably chilled.
Is there anything that frustrates you? Yeah, look, especially with development work there is that…sometimes something just doesn’t work and you don’t know why. You are doing something that is supposed to take an hour and then 8 hours later you are still doing it and looking at your error-logs and I think that is frustrating because generally that happens when you are pushing deadlines.
Has it every actually gone wrong? Yeah, look, there was a couple of times. Especially when we had to get used to our content management system. The Facebook story was the first story that we launched without anything going wrong. Hahaha. So with every other story, at 5 o’clock in the morning when it is launched we go on there and something is broken and we have to fix it.
Do you always wake up before it launches? We have been, just because things have been going wrong. We haven’t quite figured out all of the problems. But probably from here on in we won’t have to anymore. I think Mark does, and he kind of has to because he is the producer. But if something goes wrong he will give us a ring.
Alright. And is there anything that scares you in your field of work? I think I was saying this to you yesterday, last year I was previewed at one of the big redundancies over at Fairfax media and over there I have sat through about five different rounds of redundancies so there is kind of a fear of the shrinking world of journalism. But at the same time I think that it is not necessarily shrinking but shifting.
What do you think it is shifting to? I think this team is on the right track, and I think the ABC is making some smart moves to where they should move to. Smaller, better content, more concentrated things and more tailored content, but when I say tailored content I even mean like recently, or maybe like five years ago, there is the blog Junkee and you know, they sort of did this weird thing where they have created this not quite Buzzfeed, not quite news, somewhere in between thing, and managed to find a substantial audience, a niche. So I don’t think it is shrinking, but in a way that it is kind of breaking apart, so there is still the same amount of stuff but it is just everywhere.
290 It is kind of fragmented…how do you feel about the recent restructuring at the ABC? Yeah, that was just weird. It hasn’t necessarily changed what we are doing, as far as I can tell anyway. Maybe it was just weird being at a company for four months and then being moved.
Were you moved physically? No.
So you don’t really know if anything is going to change? Do you know why they did this restructuring? No, I have got no idea. Like I said before, I don’t really know…like, I came in half way through this digital reshuffle thing that is going on, so I don’t really have any context of what things were like before. I don’t entirely understand the full structure of the ABC anyway, because it is so huge. I understand the structure of the newsroom, I understand the structure of news and the current affairs programs, but how they are all linked up, under what umbrella, and who is here and who is there I don’t know. So all things considered, it hasn’t made any difference to me.
And what is your main motivation to keep going? Uhm…look, I think right now working at the ABC is a huge motivation. I like the work that these guys do. I like the type of work and even just the ABC. It is an organisation that has been a part of Australia forever, and I have always really liked the content that they have put out and I think they are really good with their values. They are a good representation, a good voice, and they are also very truthful. And the other fact is that I am a developer, so at the end of the day if all media organisations crumbled around me, I will kind of be fine, so I don’t really have that fear.
Which communities would you say you belong to? Oh man…uhm…the Brunswick hipsters? I would say that I probably belong more to the arts and animation community than I do to the development communities. Uhm…I spend a lot of my time, like, I started as a animator and I did a lot of work there and got myself in with those guys, which has been good here because you have to be a jack of all trades, you have to work on projects like that cult story and I was able to do some animation on that. So I would say I am more part of the arts community.
And do you have any memberships to trade unions? No. I was a member of the media union over at Fairfax and I dropped that when I came here, just because I wasn’t sure which union these guys were.
But it is the same one right? Yeah, it is the same one. So I just got rid of my membership. I would say I have, but I don’t at the moment.
291 So how useful is the union to you? Yeah, they are really good especially over at Fairfax they were really good because of the redundancies and you sort of need someone to mediate. At the end of the day a lot of people got laid off, but there was a far stronger dialogue but I also know people who have worked at the Herald Sun, who have been going through a similar thing and being the organisation they are – very anti union or establishment – people just rolled in one day and were told they were fired. It was a far more brutal process. And so even though it is hard to feel like the union is doing much because it kind of feels like the same end-game.
So you sat through five of them and with all five of them you had a union representative helping you out? Yeah.
Okay. How about the last one? So you said that you weren’t made redundant but you did get the deal…? What happened? You wanted to leave because you knew about the job at the ABC? Yeah, and that was sort of part of the I guess what the union has helped with, in the sense that it was about having far more voluntary redundancies as opposed to just when the company wants to get rid of people.
So they help out the company too in that sense? Uhm…yeah. But I think maybe at the end of the day they don’t help out the company because the management would just like to do it and be done with it.
Alright interesting. And who do you see as your main competitors? I think as far as what we are doing which is rich digital content, I would say the New York Times is the leader in the field. Wether I can say that they are a competitor is maybe a bit humorous. But I would probably say the Guardian is our main competitor as far as…because the stuff that we are doing in the DSI has a similar audience. They feel like the biggest competitor.
Cool. I see that I forgot to ask a question. Is there a community you would like to belong to but don’t yet? Ahhh. Yeah, I think…there is a community of data-people that I would like to be part of. I should probably try to get in with those guys. This is probably the first time that I have really done heaps of…that I have really had to lean heavily onto data stuff. I didn’t do too much of that beforehand. So now that I am fully engrained I should maybe get involved.
Okay. Back to the other question: have your competitors evolved? Do you have any new competitors? Uhm…well there is yeah I guess the Guardian are the only been in Australia for four or five years so they definitely made a slash when they came in the scene. And even though New York Times has opened in Australia it doesn’t feel like they are doing much more than…as an international paper they are a pretty huge competitor but it doesn’t feel like they local wing has really done much.
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Are they making Australia-specific content now? They do, yeah. They have got an Australian version and are making Australian content. It is not kind of the same local content they produce (??)
Alright, and who are your audiences? Our audience as DSI is definitely…I keep saying younger, but it is young for the ABC, which is under 50. And we kind of fluctuate between hitting 19-year-olds and then hitting 35-year-olds, that is kind the range that we are looking at. So it is definitely younger, but it is the sort of audience that get their news through Facebook and Twitter.
And are you satisfied with these audiences or are there any people you would like to reach that you are not reaching yet? Uhm…no I am satisfied, I think we are hitting all the right people.
Great. How does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? Uhm…I think we are given a lot of freedom, and I think that is the best way to innovate, is not being locked in. And with that comes a lot of trust with that much freedom, and I think so far we have done well to honour the trust that has been given to us. Having the freedom that we do to do the things we want to do, and having the room to experiment has been really good for innovation.
And what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? Uhm…I think a small word count I think is important. I think it is a hard question just because it is such a broad area. But probably the biggest key element and this might be a cop-out answer is just considering the story and all your options and trying to find the thing that fits the story as opposed to trying to make the story fit into something else.
Okay. And do you think the DSI team has learned from possible mistakes made by other innovative teams within or outside of the ABC? Uhm…yeah, yeah I do, because we are always looking at the work of everyone else in the Slack-channel we pass around things. Not harsh, but we try to be as critical of other places as possible. From a technical perspective there have been a few things that we have looked at where we were like ‘that is good, but we can do better.’ I don’t know if you want to know the specifics?
Well it might be interesting if you could name an example? Uhm…there have been a few times that we have looked at things that haven’t worked or have been confusing. We had to figure out why it didn’t work and why it was confusing. What are the things that are stopping this piece from working and actually having a conversation about it. Even some of the stuff like the New York Times, the video template that they’ve based off of a Snapchat model and the interface is kind of bad, the swiping doesn’t quite work. What they have done…the type of content that they are trying to deliver through it is really good and it is a valuable thing, but we try to figure out how we would do that. What
293 would we take away and what would we add in? Remove the swiping, definitely. We are seeing the importance of the type of work that they are doing and the stories that they are able to tell with that content, but then we try and fix it so that it’s not as confusing or hard to use.
Last question: what do you see as the most fundamental challenge for the field that you are working in? Uhm…I think the biggest challenge is that the digital landscape has changed so much in the last two to five years and that it is hard to know what’s going to stick and what is going to work, because you can get on top of things and you can be the first person to have your vine news outlet, and then the vine is gone in a year. And I think six years ago anyone really knew that Facebook would be the newsfeed. And I would say that most places it took them like two years to have their entire system set-up to accommodate that and in the mean time, I think that is how the Guardian managed to get such a strong hold in Australia, is because they managed to figure out social media before everyone else was able to get their brand out there. And, you know, they have good reporting and content but people are reading it…
Okay, thanks so much!
294 Interview Ri Liu
What is your job title? My job title I think officially is editorial developer, but my capacity here is somewhat between writing code, frontend development and also design, as well, as well as like data visualisation, which is sort of my specific specialty.
Okay and how long have you been doing this for a living? In journalism or in doing coding?
The first I guess In journalism, oh gosh, I am trying to think how long that would be. Two years roughly.
How old are you? I am nearly 30. I am 30 soon.
So two years and journalism and what kind of degree did you do? I studied IT and communication design and I graduated in 2009.
And then you got into developing? More doing design, more traditional what you would think of design, more technical, like websites and web development and a little bit of graphic design. That kind of stuff.
And you were saying earlier to me that you were in the US before… Yes, in San Francisco and Chicago.
Was that for university or for work? That was mostly for work. So in Chicago I was working for a tech company and then I wanted to get more into the area of data visualisation and so when we moved to San Francisco I ended up working for a dedicated data visualisation studio in the Bay area. And that is kind of how I got into this area a little bit. So coming back to Australia I wanted to find a job where I could still use those skills, not necessarily get back into making websites.
So then did you start working at the ABC straight away? So I worked first at the Guardian in Australia and I left the Guardian February last year, so until 2016 I worked for the Guardian based in Melbourne. But mostly for the data editor, who is in Sydney.
And then you started in this team? Yes, in June of last year.
Did you apply for the job or did Kimberley find you? Kim originally approached me about the job and then I applied.
295 Is there any similar team responsible for innovation besides the DSI team? The main one that we would have the biggest overlap in in terms of what we produce, I think they are called the IDS, Interactive Digital Storytelling team, in Brisbane. And they do some really good stuff, and we haven’t collaborated directly with them on stories but we get a lot of help from them getting stuff set up and advice for the stories we work on.
And how would you say the DSI fits into the ABC’s innovation history? Ohhh…I don’t feel I have a lot of context about the history of the ABC, but I imagine our team the priority is to attract a more diverse and younger audience who are used to a certain type of digital experience and to translate that into news content.
Cool. So now you have answered my question on the DSI’s mission already. When will this mission be successful? Personally or as the organisation?
Depends, you can answer both. I guess my personal goals are more about the types of work that we are producing, if it is different, if it is something new, if it is a story that hasn’t been told in a particular way and we are using technology in an interesting way to tell that story. I think that is my own personal metric. I think the ABC will have their own kind of more concrete numbers-based one.
Do you know the numbers that they are looking for? Do you feel pressured to reach them? Not from the top of my head, but I do know that my team is positioned to push the news organisation to improve those specific numbers. So we are not here to match the current engagement for younger audiences, we are here to really improve it.
Alright. Do you have a daily routine? Not something that is daily, but I do do a lot of regular research to see what other big interactive teams are doing.
Right. Who do you look at? The New York Times do a lot of really good work. But a lot of the international and some of the local do…obviously the Guardian have their own interactive team – I have worked for them – Fairfax, they occasionally do stuff. SBS even and then obviously there are the big international ones like the NYT, Washington Post and even some of the smaller specialised media like Pudding. They are big these days with data visualisation, so we share a lot of their work in the work we like Slack channel.
So that is part of your routine and then I have notices that you guys have two meetings a week. Yeah, that is true. As a team we meet up, us here in Melbourne with the folks in
296 Sydney. We have a catch up about the projects we work on and what is coming up and what the progress is on everything. Sometimes to discuss a particular project and what to do with it. But a lot of the communication is just done via Slack.
Is that useful? Do you like the way you communicate? Obviously you can’t bidge the distance… Yeah it is not ideal. In person would be ideal, but I think we have set it up in a good way. We have a Slack channel for each project and that’s a good way of organising all the strands of work, I guess, and then we have a general Slack where we can have our conversations that are a little bit more casual. So you know, I do appreciate that on Slack we are still having some of the conversation we would have if we would be sitting together, like some of the more light-hearted banter. That still goes on, which I really appreciate in working with a team of people to be able to communicate in that way. But it can be limiting just communicating via texts, so usually when we are working on a project and we are trying to work through some problem or brainstorm, that is usually when we set up a ‘hangout’ and talk about it.
So that is a bit more personal. Do you feel like the distance holds you back in any way? To not be able to speak to them as you would if you were sitting in the same space? Uhmmm…In the work itself I think the biggest downside is not just being able to read the tone of everyone else, you know, what the vibe is from the guys in Sydney and also not getting all the information. So we get the important stuff, like, the stuff we need to know but a lot of the conversation that goes on I am sure we miss out on because they happen at the office in Sydney.
And what type of activities do you feel like you should be doing in your job? Uhm…activities…I guess, same think, just keep being current in latest technology and what other work is happening and also I guess keep an eye out for potential new ways to tell stories and finding potentially interesting content that we could work on.
So do you guys pitch stories as well? Yeah, yeah, uhm…I haven’t pitched as much, but we do work on our own stories that we come up with as a team.
And how many different tasks do you work on on an average day? I mean yeah, I kind of view it not so much as task-based but as project-based. So I can probably talk you through the lifecycle of a particular project and what is involved with that. So for a given project usually there is some sort of brainstorming ideation, figuring out what we are going to do and sometimes – because I guess Nathanael and me are in charge of the technological component – we will need to do some research when the rest of the team goes like ‘hey Ri or Nath, is this possible?’ and we actually have to go and find out if it is possible. So before we start we need to figure out if we are overcommitting ourselves. And
297 sometimes we do end up doing that, but yeah, just to figure out how long something will take, what technologies are out there that will help us do this. Do we need to do something like code up this feature by hand, because there isn’t an existing library that will do that for us? So there is that and once we have got some ideas we will either prototype them in code or do a mock-up in Illustrator or Sketch. And then play around with ideas and refine it.
Do you always do the mock-ups and sketches yourself? Yeah, and Nath and then we have got Alex, the designer, who does some of it too. It is not really defined who does that, but usually we know fairly well what something should look like before we finish the thing. And then we need to place the story in context with the story on the website, so we put it into Core Media, usually Mark will produce the story.
Do you ever have to make any last-minute adjustments? Yeah, so the other big thing that we would do is testing on different devices all the time and sometimes we discover that something is not working on the app until after we’ve published. It is always not ideal to fix something after it has been published, so we try to test it on a variety of browsers and devices before it goes live, but it doesn’t always happen.
Is that because of time pressure? Yeah, or there are just things that we are not going to know doesn’t work until we publish. So we do try to make it as smooth as possible, because if there is a lot of traffic on it when it is published we can’t really control the experience that people get and we don’t want them to get a broken version on what we have worked on.
And how do you experience having this type of work cycle? Do you like working on a project-basis? Yeah I personally do enjoy working on project by project. Yeah, I mean it is a somewhat…everything is like a new thing. That is exciting but also difficult, it has its challenges because you have got to always invent new stuff. Where possible we do try to reuse the things that we have done, or think about it as a starting point for new projects.
So you create formats that you can reuse? Yeah. At the same time with a new project we don’t want to limit what we can do, we want to make the best possible for that whatever it is, story idea. What we create has to be interesting and then we look at how do we do this and have we done this before?
And do you always work on one project at a time or do you juggle multiple projects simultaneously? Yeah, I mean I would say most of the time we are working on one or two, maybe three. But it is sort of trying to figure out how to balance between all of us. At every one time different people of the team could be working on a few different projects, that is quite common.
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And you personally? Will you balance several stories in one day or will you dedicate a week to one project and then go onto the next? Uhm, look it does happen where, you know, Mark is working on a project but then Inga will go ‘oh, hey, can you have a look at this?’, so we will work on different projects. But some of them are smaller and others are bigger, or one of them is nearly done and the other one is starting up.
So there is a bit of overlap there. And what are the skills that someone needs to do what you do? Uhm…I think the main one would be frontend development, so Javascript, HTML and CSS and for me specifically because I do a lot of data visualisation I do a bit of like being able to work with data, wether that is just being really good at Excel or using code to analyse data and also I use a library called D3 for making data visualisations, so that is another component to learn for that particular part of it.
What have you learned since starting doing this work? And I was particularly interested in the journalism side of it…because working for a tech company would be quite different to working for a media company. Yeah, I mean I feel like every story I work on I learn something new about that world, which is pretty cool to engrain yourself in - you know, someone’s experience or an issue. So I find that pretty compelling. I don’t know if skills-wise I have learned something, I feel like I have learned a lot of things but they have just been as a story has needed it. So I feel like I have learned a lot, but I couldn’t say ‘oh, the big thing I have learned working in journalism is this.’
With every story you have to figure out everything again… Yeah, I feel like the main difference with tech is the day-to-day isn’t really the same. Each story you work on is its own thing, it is not one product that you are working on that you kind of just making better using similar tools. One day you can be working on maps and another day on a really graphic picture, or working with video or photos.
And do you work together with other teams? Yes we do. I guess we were originally set up to work with all of the current affairs broadcast teams in News. A lot of our big projects have been collaborations with other teams, like Four Corners and a few other news teams.
And personally do you just deal with the DSI team or do you also get to deal with people from the other programs talking to you about how they want something to work or look? I haven’t had a lot to do directly with the other teams yet. That doesn’t mean that won’t happen a bit more, I mean, I would like for it to happen a bit more. For our team being part of the investigations team, I don’t know what that will mean for us and the other investigations journalists. Maybe there will be some more collaborations there that is a little bit more direct. I do think the other people in
299 the team work with them more directly. But us not so much and I don’t know if that is a side-effect of the location thing. I mean, perhaps if there was a big project that was more Melbourne based we would do a bit more collaboration.
So would you say you generally work alone or with colleagues? On a day-to-day basis, on specific tasks, yes it is more alone, but when it comes to ideas or a particular direction I want to go with a story then yes with colleagues.
So the idea-phase is collaborative and then you work alone on the execution? Yeah, it is usually you work on a component and then you share it with the rest of the team and go ‘what do you think?’ and then you kind of revise or rework it based on that. And, you know, there is a little bit more collaboration on some things, when you are working on a dataset, I might need help from Inga, I guess that is a bit more direct. But because of the location you feel like you are in your own space a bit. And even Nathanael, I think most of the time we are working on different projects or different parts of the same project, we will kind of chat about what we are working on or have little brainstorms about ‘hey, maybe we can do this.’
Okay. You have already told me a bit about this. So you mainly interact through Slack and Google Hangout. Do you ever see the other team members in person? Do you see them outside of work? Hmmm… a little bit, yeah, occasionally me and Nathanael will hang out a bit. Especially when there is someone else in town, we will get a drink and lunch.
You mean someone else of the team? Yeah. And I imagine, when everyone is in Sydney we would all hang out outside of work, a bit more social definitely yeah.
And are you missing anyone in the team? Do you think the team needs a particular skill, or more of a particular skill or different people or more people? Mostly I think the team is at a good size. I do think it is possible for the team to get too big. I don’t think we are too big. I think we probably have room for one or two more people. I think the problem is that at different points we need different people, sometimes it feels like we need more dev’s but then sometimes when it is quieter we don’t have enough work between the two of us. And then there are times when we are like ‘oh, let’s do this and that!’ and we don’t actually have enough time to do it, but if we had another dev it would be okay. We do have another designer and our Alex does a lot of video as well, so I think it would make more sense to get another designer before a dev, or maybe another producer. Someone with a Mark skill-set.
How many hours would you say you work a week? I do four days a week. So four full-time days, so I think that is 30 hours.
300 And do you ever work overtime? A little bit, but I think on the whole it evens out. Because when we are staying late for stories then when it is quiet you might leave a bit early. So I would say on a whole it would be normal work-hours.
And how much time would you say you spend doing journalistic work? I guess that is the kind of question where you go ‘what counts as journalistic work?’ I feel like it is all journalism in some ways, but it is not in other ways. Uhm…yeah. It is sort of like, I view my role as intersecting journalism as a whole but not quite what you would consider as traditional journalism, but then you couldn’t quite say it is not. It definitely is journalism.
Somewhere in the grey zone… Yeah you would almost say 50/50 but you wouldn’t know where the line is if you had to say. It is very nebulous with working in this part of the media.
Sure. And I am guessing you don’t have any other jobs aside from this one? No, I mean I like to do more personal projects. I do more creative coding or art projects or something, or my own data visualisation stuff that I have done in the past, but no, nothing, you know, at the moment.
And what do you consider free time? I am good about that, I will shut off, I don’t actually have access to email outside of my laptop so if I don’t have my laptop with me…I do have Slack, but I will rarely check that outside of work. I will occasionally when I need an update on something, or just want to make sure that nothing is exploding and no one is trying to reach me. But other than that it is pretty…walk out of the door, close the laptop, end of work.
And do you manage to earn a living from this? Yes.
Comfortably? Yeah.
What do you find the most difficult in your current situation? Uhm…I think the remote aspect is hard specifically for me here. And being from a different background, coming from a tech-focus into a news environment is also interesting.
Interesting meaning difficult? I don’t know if it is difficult. Two very different cultures and worlds, there is just a different way of working, the priorities and structures are quite different. I feel like journalism has this huge sort of legacy and history associated with it and tech is kind of like new and experimental and they try new things with environments and structures around management and all that. So, yeah, coming from being used to that environment and coming into journalism that has been interesting.
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Yeah, so do you think those more traditional structures are holding back the innovation? Yeah, I see it more as just finding…I think the industry is still at a place where they are trying to find out how the two things can work, how technical people and people working in new media stuff can fit into that work. And I think that is still a work in progress that hasn’t been quite defined. And I wouldn’t just say ‘oh, journalism just needs to move with the times’, I don’t think that is true. I just think there is a lot of collaboration and experimenting that needs to happen to find out what that looks like.
And you are part of that now. Yeah, I mean I hope so. I haven’t been here very long, but hopefully slowly, you know, especially with a place like the ABC which has its own unique circumstances, we can kind of push or figure it out, whatever that is.
Unique circumstances meaning it is not commercial? Yeah, it being a public broadcaster. There is no commercial element.
Does that give more room to experimentation? Yes and no, I think that because of the mission to serve the public it has got different priorities to other media organisation. It might not necessarily be able to just throw everything away and start over. I don’t think it is responsible necessarily to do that. So I think to make innovation happen, you know, without upsetting people or the institution that has been built for a long time. I think that is something the whole organisation is dealing with in general.
Do you work mostly from the office here or do you work from home or any other place too? Mostly at the office. On occasion I work from home, but mostly here.
So can you decide yourself if you want to work from home? Uhm…yeah I get the sense that here it is more like you come into the office, but if there are circumstances where you want to work from home it is usually fine, you just need to let your manager know. How do you get to work? I catch the tram most of the times.
And how would you describe your main workspace? Just a desk, two monitors, luckily we have got standing desks that I use occasionally.
There is a lot of discussion about that in Sydney haha. Oh yeah? Haha I think they are all fighting for them there. We have got them and they are electronic. So that is good, but yeah. Laptop, Mac laptop. The main thing is the computer.
302 And do you feel comfortable here at the office? Yeah…I mean yeah, it is in the newsroom but we don’t really have to do much with the rest of the newsroom, but it is kind of nice sometimes to be with the news but other times you are kind of working on your own thing, so you are not really having to do much with that.
Is it a lot of noise? Do you get distracted? No, it is not noisy. I am very surprised how quiet newsrooms are compared to my expectation. It is not too bad, sometimes when there are major events people will be watching TV and get excited, it reflects the pulse of everyone out there in the real world anyway.
Alright and what facilities do you have here? A kitchen, bathroom. Not a cafeteria, I think there are bigger kitchens though on the upper floors that we can use. Uhm…meeting rooms, obviously the ABC does TV and sound and radio so there are all those sorts of equipment that if we ever needed them we can get access to.
What kind of facilities do you find absolutely essential? Not much, mostly just having a computer and a relatively flexible work environment.
And you have touched upon this earlier, but maybe you’ve got something to add. What kind of hard and software do you use? Uhm…hardware, I mean the hardware I have mentioned. Software I use Texteditor, Sublimetext for code and then some sort of image editor so I use Sketch for that. I have also got the Adobe Suite installed so sometimes I will use that. Uhm…those are really the main things. I mean, I have got some mapping tools that occasionally I will need.
And how important are these technologies in your work? They are pretty important. Pretty vital. So if I wouldn’t be able to get access to the right text editor or coder or the right image it would be pretty hard for me to do my job in the best way.
And what do people wear in your main workspace? Oh I think it is a mix. I think the news presenters walking around they are dressed quite formal. But in general it is quite casual. Somewhere between casual and business casual.
Cool. And do you feel comfortable in that environment? Yeah, yes.
So you share your workplace with all of these people and they are all from News right? Yeah. Oh, I think they are mostly local Melbourne news. I think there is news breakfast here as well, which is national, but mostly local news.
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What kind of support is available in your workspace? It could be anything like legal support, or I saw a poster in the bathroom about mental support? Yeah mental support for journalists, I think there is a really good variety of that stuff here at the ABC. Definitely IT, you can call them up and they are also on the third floor I think, so I have gone and visited them for specific things. But the IT are mostly based in Sydney, but they van fix whatever on your computer remotely. But yeah, there is a lot of support. There is the union for journalists, they have a presence here inside of the ABC. I am not too sure how it works but I think most big media organisation have a representative of the organisation. But we will get flyers in occasion about ‘did you know you can get these support things from the union?’
Have you ever used any of these services? Not really. I think if you work in media you get their support regardless of wether or not you are a member, about pay and things. With any changes they will have to have consultations with the union, so with the restructuring they will have a consultation process with the union. And yeah, like you said there are mental support services for journalists, I think there is an LGBT group as well, there are a lot of groups around.
And what would you like to change if anything about your workspace? Uhm, I mean it would be good…I haven’t been here for that long, so I don’t feel like I know the organisation too well, uhm… so if there were ways to help with that that would be nice to be able to collaborate more across teams.
Yeah, and to also get to know how it works… Yeah, the wider organisation. I feel very in my own team, with my own people, which is good but not so much outside of my team. So it would be kind of nice to have more, I don’t know, communication or collaboration there. Yeah…
Why did you start working as a developer here? I really like the mission of the ABC and the fact that it is not attached to any commercial business is attractive as well, so you can kind of work on work that is meaningful and valuable to the public without having that to worry about and as a pressure. That is nice. It also seemed like a good organisation with good values to work for.
What would you say were these values or their mission that attracted you? I guess just the kind of social value, and also they have prioritised culture and diversity a lot. I mean it is probably, they do have a lot of work to do with that still but the motivation is there to improve that. So I think I do like organisations that care about those things. And obviously the work itself looked really interesting as well.
304 And has your motivation changed over time? Uhm…like through different jobs?
Both would be interesting to know… I guess earlier in my career I had more priority on interesting work I could learn and grow in, now it is more about values and meaning and making a positive social change. I focus a lot more on that now.
So your motivation is external instead of internal… Yeah. I have less kind of…I have done the learning part already and now I am looking to how I can use those skills to better the world somehow.
What are your professional goals? Where would you like to go next? Uhm…I don’t know. To be honest I don’t have any specific professional goals. Just more about working on interesting projects and collaborating with interesting and diverse people. I guess that would probably be a big one, doing more collaborations that I haven’t done before. So, you know, working on projects that are slightly different than the projects that I am working on now. We do have Jack who does video, so it would be cool to explore that sort of thing, or even you know, more outside of news even. It would be interesting to see what is out there in the other departments.
What do you mean? What other teams? Even just like the radio or specific content teams that do, you know, science or philosophy or things like that. That would be interesting to work in a specific topic area and doing a project like that. So, yeah, I guess it is more about a broad range of types of projects.
And what are the most important values that inform your work? Hmmm…that is a big question. Uhm…big values would be to create work that is engaging that captures people’s attention, but also something that is honest, not misleading, that presents facts honestly and in a non-harmful and ethical way. Uhm…and I guess another one generally would be more in the innovating corner, doing something that is different and new.
And do you feel your work lives up to these values? Uhm…yeah most of the time, I would hope so. I think on some projects we might be a little bit more rushed for time, or have maybe more the priorities from other teams and might not be able to do the most perfect project, but you know, it is still work that we are proud of at the end of the day. So, more just trying to live up to those values.
So do you feel like you mostly have too much or too little time as a developer in your team? Probably too little in general. But with most projects, the things that we are able to do in that time is still good work. But obviously with a bit more time we could do anything.
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Yeah, it is hard. I have heard some people say ‘oh I wish we had more projects’, and others ‘I wish we could do things a little slower’. It seems to be different across the team. I would say I would want more time for each project. I wouldn’t necessarily want fewer projects, but also sometimes the time is not about the number of projects that we are working on, it is just a deadline or an event or a news cycle that we are trying to keep up with. So sometimes it is out of our control. So there is those pressures, not necessarily that we are working on too many projects. I don’t think the number of projects we work on is that many.
Does you work make you happy? Yeah, it would say mostly it does.
What makes you happy? In my work? To be able to create something interesting that gets people talking or gets people understanding and issue, or knowing something they didn’t know before or capturing someone’s attention and them being like ‘oh, I never thought of it this way and the way you present it, now I care about it.’, or something like that, you know? That moment. That is the most exciting thing about my work is to be able to do that.
The effect, the impact on people… Yeah, yeah. Or to just grabbing someone’s attention that otherwise wouldn’t have engaged in that topic.
And do you ever get angry in your work? Uhm…not angry, maybe frustrated.
What do you get frustrated about? I do get frustrated, but I don’t know about what specifically. I mean, I guess, with coding it is hard not to get frustrated because something always is broken and you are just constantly chasing and fixing broken things, so it is a cycle of ‘urhhhhrrrr!, yay I fixed it! Urhhhhh!’. There is a lot of that when you write code unfortunately.
What about when you are trying to work within the ABC system. Do you find that the app supports what you are doing? Oh yeah, that is…the app and the CMS are frustrating, to say the least. There are some system-things that are confusing and frustrating, the app being one of them. It is frustrating because it is beyond your control. The fact that the CMS doesn’t work on my laptop, I have to install software to make it work and also the fact that if feels like it is from the 90’s. It is just very old and very slow.
So the things that frustrate you are mostly technology based? Yeah. In terms of frustration, yes, those are the main things I can think of.
306 And is there anything that scared you in your main field of work? Uhm…the main thing that would scare me is if there were fewer people doing what I do, or the media and journalism industry struggling in general and not being able to invest in doing interactives and stuff like that.
You mean like them falling behind and not being able to afford teams like yours? Yeah, the ABC doesn’t have that funding-pressure as much, but I mean it has other pressures in terms of funding. But there are other organisations that are trying to stay relevant and trying to catch up with innovations. But if the circumstances don’t allow them to do that, that would be pretty sad for the world.
Alright. And what is your main motivation to keep doing what you are doing in spite of this? Mostly the things I mentioned. The values and the general curiosity, when I am like ‘oh, that is a really cool project, it would be excited to work on this.’
Are there ever topics you don’t like working on? Yeah, occasionally. Some of the stuff…I mean it is good, because we do as a team have final say on what we work on and how that is presented, so we are not just creating someone else’s vision.
Even if you are working together with more traditional teams? Yeah, usually I think most issues can be discussed in you know, a reasonable way.
It is an open environment. You can object? Yeah, I think that there are circumstances where we have gone back and forth, but I guess the other thing is that sometimes the other teams might be a little more protective of their work so that could compromise the end-result if they are not sharing or being as open to doing certain things to create the best possible story.
Okay. So which communities would you say you belong to? Okay, yeah, I mean I guess I loosely identify as being in the tech community, or more specifically being in the data community, which is sort of a smaller world than tech. Yeah…I don’t know, I think those are mostly the things I identify with apart from…
Do you feel part of the journalism community? Uhm…maybe not…yeah I struggle identifying as a journalist and I think that is more of a personal thing because I haven’t studied journalism. Uhm…I do feel I do identify with more of the interactive journalism community, but maybe not necessarily the traditional journalism community. Like, I would say to someone I am a journalist to anyone who would understand the nuances of what I do, even though broadly speaking I am doing journalism work.
307 Right okay. And do you have any memberships to trade unions? No, I don’t.
And would they be useful to you in any way? Uhm…they might be slightly useful, but me personally I don’t think I would get as much out of it as other journalists.
Is there a reason for that? Uhm…I think that kind of speaks to the thing that I was talking about earlier about cultural aspects. I guess I feel like I am coming from more of a position of privilege, being a technical person and these skills are a lot more in demand unfortunately than journalism skills. And a lot of the unions do a lot of advocacy for wage and conditions and I guess working in journalism I get the benefits of some of those, but because I guess the market conditions for my work are different I don’t, I guess, have a lot of the same issues. I have a bit more bargaining power unfortunately. I don’t think that should be the case, but it definitely is.
Is there a community you would like to belong to but don’t yet? I don’t think so. I mean, personally I would like to do more artistic works. So, I would like to get more into that sort of thing but that is the only thing I can think of.
Who do you see as your main competitors? Well we do have a good relationship with the Brisbane team, but because we work on similar projects there is sometimes a little bit of comparison between the two teams, just because we are so similar. Outside of that, I guess just the Australian media, the Guardian, Fairfax. I guess we probably look more to them, but I wouldn’t say it is a strong competitive feeling. It is not a direct competition.
And has this changed? Do you have new competitors? Uhm…I haven’t been at the ABC for very long, so in the time I have been here no, but it is not a very good snapshot.
Who are your audiences? I guess everyone. The Australian public. Sometimes we like to…I mean it is always good if our work reaches outside of Australia, but the main focus is Australian audiences.
And are you satisfied with these audiences or are there any other people you would you like to reach that you are not reaching yet? Uhm…I think I am mostly satisfied. It would be good if we did some more stuff that had an international appeal. But again, you know, it is not the main priority. I guess we do have the mission to appeal to younger audiences and I think our team does a decent job at doing that.
308 What do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? Using technology in a novel way, not compromising on content, having a good collaborative relation between the journalists and people in technology. Making sure that they are equal partners and one isn’t prioritized over the other. I guess playing around with different formats and general experimentation is a big part of it.
And how does the DSI bring about innovation within the ABC? I think the main way is because the combination of skills that we all bring is…because we have got journalists, and video and developers and designers, just having all those people in an equal playing field is really important. I think that is a pretty good template for being innovative.
And has the DSI team learned from possible mistakes made by similar innovative teams within or outside of the ABC? I don’t have the context of what mistakes have been done, but I guess it is taking the experiences we have had in all of our respective previous jobs and learning from that. Just having exposure to other media organisations.
And for you from tech organisations… Yeah.
Do you take any specific lessons from there to your work here? Uhm…I would say I would, but I don’t know what concrete examples to give of that. Uhm…yeah.
Oh well if you think of any later…we are getting to the last question. How do you aim to attract new audiences? I guess our whole team is the ‘how’. But more specific than that I would say to just kind of be informed of how younger or newer audiences are using technology and engaging with other works even outside of news and journalism, how they are engaging in that and what we can take from that into journalism and news.
Last one. What do you see the most fundamental challenge in the field you are working in? I mean the main thing that comes to mind, is to figure out how to collaborate between people with different skills with journalists and just to figure out what that looks like, to make the best work.
Okay, cool. Thank you!
309 Interview Dee Porter
Let’s start with you job title. I am the acting editor of the National Reporting team. Until three months ago I was the supervising producer of that team, but now I am being acting for three months.
How long have you been doing that for? I have been in the role…I have been working in this team for 12 months and before that I was a supervising producer at 7:30 and the supervising producer in the Washington bureau for the ABC.
Good. And what would you describe is your team’s mission statement? Our mission statement is to provide content for the ABC with a diverse perspective on those story ideas, but also to have investigative stories that have an impact on a policy or in the public arena. That would be our mission statement.
Okay, fantastic. Then I just have some questions on the Digital Story Innovations team. What do you know about them? The team, I think, for me, are a highly skilled people in an area that I know little about. So for me they have been a massive resource of intelligence, knowledge and skills and I have tapped into that, embraced them and saw them as an opportunity to basically meet my team’s goals which is to become more digital, to have a digital-first policy. But they have actually made that happen a lot more easier and in different ways. So basically if we have a story idea I can go to them and say ‘how would you approach this? What formats?’. So basically I like to give them free reign, and I think I have, because I respect their expertise and skills. I am a traditional broadcast journalist, so for me, I know…I have the editorial control but I want your input in terms of your skill-base and I think it is a really good and happy marriage.
And did you have any digital people in your team that were specifically… Yes! We have one digital producer, and one digital producer cannot do everything. So filing stories every single day that we do, she is basically the mother of every day. There is no time for special projects, there is no time to work on bigger projects, bespoke pieces…so for anything that is outside of the ordinary day-to- day filing, I have got onto that team.
Because stories come out every day but you also do investigations? Yes.
Okay, that makes sense. And what would you say is their mission? I don’t know what their mission is actually, I have to say. I would say their mission is to make the ABC a true digital-first organisation.
And are there any other similar digital teams at the ABC that you work with?
310 Never. There is one other team, but we never got access to them. They are in another city, they are in Brisbane. So this is the first time we can actually interact with a team with that skill-base. So yes there is something similar in Brisbane, but we have never had the opportunity to work with them, it is not encouraged and they never had the time to put aside for our National Reporting team. So we really made an effort when this team was created to work with them closely.
Okay. And how did you come to know about this team? You know Kim Porteous? She is a friend of mine. We lived in Washington DC at the same time. I knew that she was creating this amazing team and Mark Doman, who is one of the digital producers there…used to work on my team. So he was recruited to be part of this team. So I knew him, I also knew about Stephen Hutcheon as team leader, I knew his background, I knew his sister. I knew that he was a former foreign correspondent and digital leader at SMH. So I knew those two and I knew their skill-base was really high and their level of expertise is amazing. So that is all I knew. But I knew that this team was created to do this amazing work for the ABC.
How did you know that? Did they send an email out or did they do a presentation? Yeah. I think there was an announcement put out by the ABC that this team was created. Then when they all started I called for a meeting with them and they basically…Stephen led the meeting about what their team could do and what the individuals were responsible for and how the all work together. Following that I got individual members of their team to come to talk to my team about what they could do. So Inga with the data journalism, Michael Workman about audience.
In a presentation or really one on one? No, it was an informal presentation, which really worked well. And I think, they were all informal, but I made them happen basically.
Great. And how do you think the DSI fits into the ABC’s innovation history? What do you mean by history?
Well I guess, I presume actually…, maybe I should ask another question first. What other innovative projects did the ABC have before the introduction of the DSI team? To be frank, I don’t know outside of News. I am only in the news department, but I think in the news department there has only been the digital team in Brisbane, which is quite removed from the headquarters here in Sydney. So I think this is revolutionary because they are part of the national network based in Sydney.
Alright. And do you think the DSI team has been successful so far? Extremely successful. I think they have had real impact on different levels. I think their product is so superior to what we have been doing in the past. And also I
311 think what they have done is actually given us an opportunity to think beyond the boundaries of what we normally have thought of in the digital space. So I think they have given us much more freedom to think about what’s possible and they have actually also delivered at the same time. So I think they have really pushed boundaries here that have never been pushed before. And I think for the first time they proved to me that the ABC can walk the walk rather than talk the talk. They are doing what we are supposed to be doing.
Good. In what ways are they innovating? You have touched on that before, but if you can elaborate… Well yes, I just did this recent story on cults and a dad’s…it was a traditional broadcast story for 7:30, a legacy program. So we had done this interview with this dad about realising his daughter is in a cult and the fact that he is basically grieving for her because he doesn’t think she will ever get out. So I went to Stephen with this story idea and he said okay let’s come up with a few ideas and he came up with what we call ‘the graphical’ and employed an illustrator. So, it was working parallel to legacy media, so we were doing our traditional 7:30, but they were working alongside, doing this amazing graphical. It was gorgeous, it was beautiful.
And the TV story, was it an interview or a news item? It was a long-form news item, so current affairs. I can’t remember the duration, probably about 7 minutes. But it was the duration of a long-form current affairs in prime time. So what we did, which was very difficult to do with the 7:30 team, is that we decided on a date that we were going to broadcast. So that morning to achieve maximum exposure, we put out, Stephen’s team put out the graphical at 6 am in the morning. You get most traffic in the morning. That legacy program doesn’t normally do that. It only decided that day at about 11 o’clock what their stories are going to be and then they put it online, so this was a real turning point I think for the program. They decided, yes we need to agree on a date, we need to have it out in the morning. So we were having meeting that were bringing together my team, the 7:30 team and that team.
So the story was announces, and did it then also link to the 7:30 show in the evening? No, it was out in the morning and at the bottom of the story the graphical had said ‘more of this story tonight at 7:30’. So you could see that. And I am not sure if the 7:30 story had a link to the graphical, I am not sure.
But the one that came first linked to the later one. Yes.
Fantastic and did it drive more traffic to the story? I don’t know about the audiences for that night, but we were thinking…for me it was like they are totally different audiences, so I was thinking that graphical was targeting a younger audience that probably would be effected and recruited by cults, whereas the 7:30 traditional story was more about the parents and grandparents, because their main audience is over 65 years of age. So at night…
312
7:30’s audience is 65+?? Yes, so it is very…it is appointment viewing and it is over 65. So you knew that, so I don’t think…I mean, that is what we are trying to do, is basically achieve two things in one story on a man’s journey. And a part of the ABC’s objective is to attract younger audiences and so that’s what was kind of behind this idea.
And what do you think are the key elements of digital storytelling? I think it has to be consumer-friendly, easy to digest, it has to be visual, but not only visual but very strong visuals. I think story choice is very important, what kind of story. And it depends wether you are talking mobile or…I think every…the digital and the mobile-first policies should be dictating what stories we are doing at the moment. So in terms of what kind of stories we are doing, the topic, how we shoot them, how we write and script them, how we edit them. So I think all these things should be important as part of a digital story. So everything…it should be at the foremost of your mind that this product is going to be on mobile, is going to be consumer-friendly and how that manifests itself is different. But I guess always…a good story, a human interest story, or a good investigation piece always needs strong visuals, always.
Sure. Okay. And at what point in your day do you involve the team? So this was one example, did you work with them on other stories? And when did you involve them? Yes, we have. We have worked sporadically over a number of stories. We just did a big exposé on this Australian TV star who has faced all these sexual harassment claims and we worked very closely with Michael Workman from that team. He did all the social videos, which I think there were three released that day. It was a very well-planned and executed roll-out.
So you can also bring them in for social media purely? So basically how we use them is I often go ‘okay, I have this story idea’ and Stephen will say ‘okay, well I think we will all work on that’, or he will be like ‘I can give you Michael Workman to work on the social videos’, or ‘I can give you the video-journalist to do something else’. So sometimes it is the whole team and other times you are kind of plucking members of the team. Whatever is best suited to get you the product that you need. So it works both ways.
And how do you interact with them? You said you go to them, do you just walk over? Yes, I just go and talk to them. Always go and talk to them. I find that is the best way of working with them. And in fact they are, or they were, on the same floor as I was downstairs and I am disappointed that they have gone to another level, because I wouldn’t walk past them all the time. So I think…but we have a very good and open line of communication. I always go down and talk to them and I know Mark will and Stephen will. So I never email or anything, maybe only the first time to ask ‘have you got 5 minutes to have a chat?’ and then I will go down there. But we are always talking.
313
So you don’t think that the floor levels are going to change that communication? I do…I will still go up, but they are not there, not there in my line. I think that is disappointing. I think they would be better down on a floor where people are walking by…more visible. They should be visible.
Yes. Because who are up here? Well, my team has been split in two. They have made structural changes, so the investigations unit will be here with them and then my specialists team will be downstairs. So it is a shame that we are not all on the same level. I think it would have been more conducive to output and relationships.
Just one last question really. Do you know anyone I should speak to who have been working with the DSI or who can tell me anything from an outside perspective on working with them? It can be people who don’t embrace them as much as you do, or it can be anyone who can tell me more about them. Hmmm…I know Four Corners has worked with them. Have you spoken to anyone at Four Corners?
I think they are on leave. I am just trying to think who else. Four Corners has probably been their main clients, if you like. So you are probably better off speaking with them. I mean, I think, or even…I mean, if you want people who haven’t probably worked with them but have seen…some people from 7:30 may have opinions…Uhm…yeah, maybe. Because I think the problem is, I really made an effort when they started to get to know them and I said to them straight up ‘I want to work with you. I want to do some things’, so they instantly knew they were embracing that and my superior at the time of my team wasn’t digital savvy at all. Not that he was reluctant, but he just didn’t want to deal…he wasn’t interested in building relationships, whereas my priority was building a relationship with this team because that is our future. If we don’t have a relationship with them we might as well pack up and go home. That was my philosophy at the beginning. And my team has been slowly embracing them. Because of Mark, he used to be in my team, they are probably more embracing than most other parts of the news division. But still, I think there is still a mind shift that hasn’t happened - that we are truly digital and that we need to start thinking about how we do everything.
Do you think you are one of the exceptions at the ABC? Yes and like I was saying, I think people are talking about it a lot but aren’t actually making it happen. Whereas I have probably spoken about it least and done it. And like I said I am not a digital savvy person at all, but I can see the need and the true worth and that it is an investment not only in the ABC’s future, but my future.
314 And how do you feel the ABC can make that change happen? What is needed to speed that up or for people to understand? I think it comes from leadership in your teams about what is important and what needs to be done and it needs to be reiterated every single day. And every single time a story is mentioned it needs to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds and in discussions. That needs to happen first of all and then it needs to be reinforced when the story starts. And I think secondly, we need…they are getting digital producers in most of the states in newsrooms around, so that is a start which Kim has obviously been part of, and that will help. But they also need to start…I think the change will start when they start respecting digital journalists as equals. And I think at the moment they see them as more junior, less experienced. So I think Stephen’s team has done a lot to change that attitude, that the digital producer is not some junior being paid low wages, but that they are actually very highly skilled. So I think once that shift happens I think things will progress a lot quicker.
Okay, thank you so much!
315 Interview Marianne Leitch
I think the DSI has done one or two projects with Foreign Correspondent right? Ohhh I should have gone back through our stuff to refresh my memory. Yeah, they have done a couple of things with us, let me just get the website up. When did they start?
They started six months ago. Yes we have had a bit of a strange season, a bit on and off. Not long after we started the season we went off air and then we went back on air, so I am just trying to remember what they have done with us. Oh yeah, they did something with…they worked a little bit with us on a project we did on music in Jamaica, they made a little video for us and they have helped us with uhhh, kind of…well they made a video for us for social media and they also helped us with doing some uhm…marketing I guess, in the sense that they were trying to look into interest, groups that might be interested in promoting the story, or groups of people and networks and trying to get it out there. So we have had Michael Workman doing a bit of work for us and Jack Fisher made the video. We had our own person who was doing kind of stuff, so she did a lot herself anyway and then it has actually been quite hard to find the right project to work with the DSI team on in advance, for various reasons. When we did want them they were doing something else and yeah, it just hasn’t been that productive for us. Probably the period of time has been too short to really draw any worthwhile conclusions as to how we should go forward. They have certainly expressed interest in working with us, and this story here on the Dome about the toxic waste in the Marshall islands and we had a really great online piece that went with it, which did incredibly well for ABC news online and got like I think well over 550.000 hits and the social media video did very very well, but we didn’t actually make it with the DSI team and they came to us and asked us ‘well why was that’? and it just so happened that, and this happens all the time in organisations like this, the producer of this story is the Executive Producer of Landline and he produced that story of us and the reporter at that time worked for a team called the NRT, the National Reporting Team, which is the investigative team. He brought that story to us and he works in Brisbane and they have got their own relationship with the Brisbane digital team. I knew I wanted to give it a significant digital component to that story, because it was quite expensive and it’s also got amazing access, nobody goes there, so I know it would do well so that was always a big part of the thinking. So I have always made sure I got the right camera person on it, who is very good at gathering material and is very good with a drone, who is a brilliant stills photographer. And he had a lot of extra material before he went and we had a discussion about what he wanted and that was all in Brisbane. As it turned out, Brisbane actually ended up asking Matt Henry in Sydney to do the online piece and he is actually based in Sydney but works for the Brisbane team, and so Stephen’s team didn’t do it. And so after it aired, they came up to me and were like ‘well why didn’t you come to us with that’? And this is how these things happen.
316 Was it also because you weren’t familiar or even knew they existed? No, I knew they existed but basically Ben Hawke, who was the producer was based in Brisbane and said that he would get it all done by Brisbane because he has had good relationships with the Brisbane team and I had no idea that it was actually being done by Matt Henry in Sydney, but he works with the Brisbane team not with Stephen’s team. So it is almost like they are in competition.
Yeah, there is a bit of rivalry. And to be honest with you I am not unhappy with that outcome, because we got a really good outcome, Brisbane really pushed it and it is sometimes better to be working with the people who control the website.
Yes, because Brisbane is responsible for digital publishing right? Yes, where it goes, the positioning of it, how long it stays up there, what it is called, how it is marketed, all of that.
Interesting. So in the future would you rather go to them if you have got any digital ideas? It is really hard, because I don’t really care who I go to, I just want a good outcome.
To get it done, yes. And the problem with the DSI team is that they are working with a lot of different programs and they have priorities and they can’t always do…I can’t hold off a story until they are free, but I have the same problem with Brisbane as well. It sort of depends on wether they are interested or not.
Yeah, okay. They get to cherry-pick. Yes, and what I would really love is to have those resources inside of my own team. And that is how you get good results.
Do you have any digital people on your team? It is really really limited. So the story is, when I took over the program we didn’t have anyone, and I was told by my boss at the time that one of our KPI’s was going to be doing more innovative digital stuff and I said that is great, so can I have some money to fund a position? No. It all had to be funded from within the program, and this was at a time that roles were being cut, and a number of redundancies were being made and I had lists of producers that had to be on a lower salary and so I made the decision to give up, temporarily, one of the film positions and employ a sort of innovative digital specialist. And that worked out really well in some ways and really bad in other ways. So the first year that I did employ that person we got up a really fantastic project called ‘Freedom Riders’, which I will send you a link to. At the time it was quite innovative, this is a couple of years ago, things have moved on, but we were the first broadcast partner of a company called Verse, and they do…it is like a kind of template for interactive, long-form, storytelling. And we did a project, which was a story about a surfing NGO in South-Africa, helping disadvantaged kids in the township of Capetown
317 through surfing, just to kind of like engage them and give them something to look forward to and get them to do something positive. So it was a very planned story, it wasn’t a reaction to an event, we had a plan and that worked very well for this digital stuff. And so that was really successful, but it was very hard to get it through all of the ABC processes. At that time we had a great contact at a department that was called the Digital Division, which doesn’t exist anymore, and this person had a lot of seniority and so they were able to push through the project and pass some of the barriers. We got it up and it was very successful, the TV broadcast didn’t do particularly well, but what was interesting was that the number for the online documentary were the equivalent for the broadcast, which is very unusual. And in theory you should be able to update this with current events as you go along and in theory we were going to try and push it out, but we just didn’t have the resources to be able to do that because we were always working on the next project, the next project, the next project. So it kind of didn’t go anywhere, but it was great. We tried to do another one of those this year, but we just couldn’t get it up because we had lost that division, that person had left the organisation, partly because of frustration with some of the structural problems at the ABC. This exact issue is that legacy media companies are set up to do one thing and actually I thought, when all of this stuff started happening and I was trying to get my head around it a few years ago I thought, oh we are going to be way ahead of other organisations like the New York Times or whatever, and other legacy media organisations, because video is going to be where it is at and we have got the video storytelling skills. It hasn’t worked out like that, because we are so structurally set up to do TV broadcast and radio, that actually trying to…and we still have to do them, while at the same time trying to do new stuff. And really what I feel that you need, is you need, if not double the amount of resources to do both, you can’t do all the new stuff and the old stuff with the same budgets. And you can just see it in a microcosm in a project like this. So I gave up the film production position for this and I would say the successes were mixed, but we did have some fantastic successes and we did have quite a lot of failures. But there were ramifications for the television product, because I just didn’t have enough people to make the television show and I had to scramble news freelancers overseas and kind of make up…it wasn’t ideal and I didn’t feel like at the end…I rolled out the position for another year, or actually, in fact I upgraded it and made it something different. I increased the salary and the title of the person and took social media away from them, because they spent a lot of time on social media and her argument was that she didn’t have enough time to do that and also do innovative stuff. But in fact, that caused problems because no one knew how to do social media and I wanted the producers and reporters to do it and they just couldn’t do it properly and do their jobs as well. So anyway, she has now gone to another area in the ABC, I have reclaimed the position for a film producer and what I have done is I have actually employed a social media producer, and that is just a three-month…we have had a three- month season that we are doing right now, and so I got someone from a different part of the ABC who is just doing social media and she is just taking care of it and the reporters and producers are just so happy now because they couldn’t really so it and she is doing a fantastic job, she is good at editing social videos, she is
318 fantastic. So that side has been taken care of, now our numbers are back up on Facebook and some of the stuff that she has created…she made one little video that had to do with a story on Italy, about unemployment of young people in Italy and how they are creating their own work now and one of the characters is a guy that is making cheese now, and she has made a little video about how you make mozzarella and that has had almost a 100.000 views on Facebook and has been pushed on Iview at the back of it. So it might improve our Iview figures, but it is not innovative and it is not new and not ground-breaking. It is essentially marketing, which is what social media is for us. I don’t want to give up editorial roles, I don’t want to basically be putting money that should be for making programs and telling stories into marketing.
Yes, I understand. And even though people say that social media is not marketing, well…it sort of is. And so it is a conundrum, you can’t ignore it.
Just out of curiosity, do you have reporters stationed all over the world? We work with the ABC news international bureaus, so we are part of ABC news and have access to all of the bureaus and their resources, but we have to share them with the other programs like news, the news channel, online, 7:30 and up until recently Lateline.
So there are bureaus in every country? Well not every country.
I mean region. Yeah, we have like, I think we have got a big bureau in Jakarta, a big bureau in Washington, a big bureau in London and then we have smaller bureaus in New Deli, Bangkok, PNG, Port Moresby, Jerusalem and Jordan and a big bureau in China. We’ve got two cameramen and two or three reporters in those big bureau’s.
Interesting. So you have had a bit of trouble with that, do you think you’d be able to employ another innovations person at some point in the future? That is not really up to me. I understand the impetus for having a team like the digital storytelling team go between programs, I totally get it. I think it is quite impractical in reality. I think you get a much better result having those people embedded in a team where you are all working together and the priorities are all the same, because there are competing priorities, so it is very hard. But it can work, and I know Stephen wants it to work but now they have gone down to investigations anyway, so it is kind of academic. So I think the fact is that you can kind of see it being taken over by an area. Well isn’t that what they are doing? Aren’t they reporting to Jo?
They are part of it, but no one really knows what the impact will be. Yeah, so they are not going to be working with us.
319 They definitely still want to keep working with other teams as well and I think they are still supposed to work with other teams, but everyone is confused. Well okay…the message that I got is that they are going to be working with Jo and that they are going to be part of her team. So if that is the case I don’t really see how they are going to be working with Foreign Correspondent. I mean, they might work with Foreign Correspondent if they are working on an investigative piece, when it will be in conjunction with them, but otherwise they are not going to come and work with me. And what about Four Corners? Are they going to work with Four Corners if they are in the investigative unit? Why would they if they are working with Jo? So, I think the fact that they have been put there, rather than being kept where they were, is an indication in a way that it wasn’t a successful model to have them work in between the programs, but I don’t know.
Because it hasn’t been communicated properly to you…? Yes, well perhaps I didn’t ask the right questions. We certainly had a meeting where it was announced and I suppose we could have asked but we were all…it didn’t occur to us to ask, we were just trying to absorb the information. But also, it keeps on changing, you know, so it is hard to say. And I think also, there probably was a little acknowledgement from the current affairs program EP’s that the system wasn’t really working that well, so it doesn’t come as a big surprise. It is not that they don’t want to make it work, or that they haven’t tried to make it work. It is not a criticism of any of the people or anything like that, and it possibly could work, but it is really too short a time to say, certainly from my perspective. But I have seen some of the stuff that they have done with Four Corners, that I thought was good, the Nike stuff was good. So yeah, but it is sort of like we need a lot more people working in these teams…and part of the problem by the way is the CMS, so I have got a lot of ideas and I would love to do, with some of the projects that we have looked at, we wanted to do a sort of what Washington Post did with their ‘Borders and Walls’ piece, which was brilliant, but we were told that we can’t really do that stuff with our CMS. There is no where to publish it.
Yes, the DSI team needs to keep hacking it. So it is very difficult to hack, and therefore you have to get them on board, they have to want to do the project, and quite often they will say…and I’ve got more to do with Brisbane, because I have got a longer relationship with them and there are some great people there, and they often will say that when it comes to it they don’t have time and that they’ve got other projects that they are working on. And also if you spoke to them, they would say that look, they don’t have the material they need early enough. Because we go off on a shoot, come back and madly have to make the story, and often the lay time is not big enough for them.
Yes, that is what I was wondering, because how many projects would you do a month or a week? We do a story a week when we are on air. Well this year, the initial season was 30 weeks, so we had a 30-week run, so every week you are pumping out a half-hour piece of TV. We can get it to them sooner than a week, but when we get back
320 from a shoot and we will have perhaps, well this is what normally happens, you might have a one to two-week writing period, and then a two to three-week editing period, and that is not actually very long for half an hour of television. So we are super, super busy, but if there was someone that is part of our team that was just doing the digital project, of course you would get it up at the same time, but if you are talking to Brisbane, and you are here and they have got a lot of other things going on as well, other priorities…
It is very difficult, because also if you would have that one person here they can’t possibly do what a team of eight is now doing. Not one person, you need more than one person. And that’s why I don’t understand that there is only one team that goes between the programs. We need more of them and the very best model is to have them inside of your own team, because then you are working for a shared goal and that is how people work. That way you all have the same priorities, you all know what you are doing, and it is much more productive and more successful. And that is why programs like Four Corners or Foreign Correspondent are successful, because they are a team of people all working for a common goal, with strong direction.
Thank you! Do you have anything to add or any questions? No, not really. I don’t think it is unique to the ABC, these problems. It is a massive period of transition and disruption and we don’t really know, we are just trying to deal with it while continuing to do what we do. And it is not easy and it really requires a lot more money and a lot more streamlining of what we are doing in the entire organisation. Like: what is important? And focus on the important stuff and stop doing the stuff that is more peripheral, or is not getting the numbers or is not the numbers, but the quality and the purpose. We are a public broadcaster, what is our role?
So that needs to be determined top-down. It needs to be managed and prioritised better? I think so. It is not that they don’t set priorities, it is just wether you agree with those priorities. Do you think the ABC’s priority should be that it reaches 100% of the Australian audiences and gets new audiences, or do you think that the priority should be that we do high quality journalism and storytelling that is having an impact on power structures and the direction of the country?
Do you think it has to be either or, or can it be both? It is hard to do both with limited resources.
Yes, it is and it is happening everywhere. Thanks again!
321 Interview Matthew Holbrook
Let’s start with your job title, what is your job title? That is a good question actually. Typically I am a reporter for a children’s program called Behind The News, but for the past year I have been part of a team here in Adelaide working on a virtual reality project. So my job there is researching, writing and producing.
And is this part of Behind The News or completely separate? Uhm…it is separate in that while the team is part of Behind The News (BTN) and well there are some crossovers in terms of staffing, it is not effectively a part of the BTN program. It is separate, it is like an ABC thing.
So the Kokoda is the VR thing and it get’s used on BTN? Is that correct? So basically the idea is that Kokoda is made as an educational tool for upper, primary and secondary school students to use in the classroom and so for BTN we typically have a primary school audience, so we are trying to create an educational experience that is slightly higher demographic, but is still accessible to a range of people.
Alright, okay I got it. And how long have you worked in this team? Uhm..basically it has been a year now on and off.
And how many people are in the VR Kokoda team? So there is a core of three of us at the moment. Nathan Basely who is the executive producer and Luke Gibbs who is the designer.
And who came up with the idea to start experimenting with VR? Nathan Basely, the EP, it is basically his brain child. He wanted to do something for the 75th anniversary of the Kokoda Track campaign, which was on November the 2nd of 2017. So we spent our year working towards that date and releasing the VR experience on November the 2nd. So he has been the brains behind the operation in that regard.
Can you tell me a little more about your own background? How did you get to this role? Yeah, so basically I am a journalist, so I studied journalism at university and I have been working as part of the BTN team for about seven years now. And Nathan who is my producer, had the idea of doing a virtual reality project about Kokoda and asked me to be a part of making that possible basically. So throughout the year we both have been working in various capacities on BTN but also on producing this, so it has been a little bit of multitasking.
Yes, that sounds like it. And was there a set amount of days a week that you would work on Kokoda? Not…hahaha, look, not really, but the last part of the year I spent mostly on this. So Kokoda VR is mostly finished now, there are still some updates and things that
322 we need to do, but hopefully going forward we would like to be doing more VR experiences.
Okay, and when you say it is finished you mean…is it going to be in the form of a movie almost? Yeah, it is available now in various forms. It was designed to be streamed on the HTC vive and downloaded through Steam, but it is also a mobile app for android and Iphone you can use with Google Cardboard or something similar and there is also a 360 degree version on YouTube. So the whole experience is about 40 minutes in length, and tells the story of the Kokoda Campaign, and basically takes you along various points of the Kokoda track attempting to depict it as it would have looked then, you see it kind of play out around you. And there is, well mostly, it is more of a documentary in some ways because you see a lot of archival footage and audio, but there are interactive things that you can do as well. You can pick up objects and shine torches, those kind of things. There are some gaming elements to it, but mostly it is the type of experience where you experience stuff as you go through it.
Great okay, so mostly this is presented to children in schools? Yeah, so the idea is that it is free, so to look at it in its best form it requires the HTC vive or Oculus Thrift, the other headset that is quite big, so those are the two things it is designed for and if schools have access to those things that is great, but there are other options that let them do it. So basically it is designed for secondary students.
Okay alright. And then during school time you would ask teachers to show it, or is it on their initiative? So the idea is that they would incorporate it into history lessons or tie it in with other curriculum work that they are doing. So as well as the experience itself we also have learning educational resources, so teachers have different things that they can teach their students and give them a follow-up.
And how do you get teachers to know about this? Basically, so it is free which definitely helps, but Behind The News has an audience of pretty much primary school aged kids and a lot of teachers too, so that is good. There is probably about a million a week viewership. So through BTN and through news programs, when it launched there was some media around that so people heard about it in that way, but we also have mailing lists and links to Kokoda VR so that teachers and parents and kids can know about it.
And what was the reaction from the ABC or from other teams to the project? So, it was largely very positive. I think for a very long time we were attempting to do it, because VR is a very new technology and it is sort of evolving and changing all the time, so a lot of people that we dealt with initially were more sceptical and didn’t really understand what we were trying to achieve, but once they could see it
323 for themselves they were very impressed by it and excited about the possibilities of the technology.
Right. And did you have some sort of window, like a deadline? How much time did you get for it? Yes, basically this was funded separately to BTN through the ABC so this was a team that was funded to launch the finished version of the VR experience, so we started working on it from the end on 2016, so December on and off and it all had to be done and available to download on November the 2nd 2017, to coincide with the end of the Kokoda campaign.
And did you make that deadline? Yes, we just got it, there are still a few things, little tweaks here and there, we still want to fix some things but we made it.
Good. And that is when the funding stopped, but you are still working on it? Am I correct? Uhm...yes, so at this point there is no extra funding for future VR projects, so we are hopeful in the future there will be more opportunity to make some more VR, but that is not really up to me.
Of course, okay great and just to get an idea, do you know if there are any similar other types of projects within the ABC? Anything that has to do with any kind of journalism innovation? Uhm…off the top of my head I can’t point you to anything I know about, certainly nothing in Adelaide that I know of. This for us was quite a big deal in that something like this hadn’t really been done before and the amount of educational experiences with VR are fairly limited, so in a lot of ways it is so new and different that we didn’t have a lot to compare it with or base it on. Yeah, it was pretty exciting.
And do you have any targets like set audience, how many views you had to get? Yeah, I don’t really know the answer to that, but I am hopeful we get a lot of downloads and a lot of users over time. We have had quite a few so far I think, but I don’t have the stats off the top of my head.
So you have been working for the ABC for seven years now, do you have any idea…I know this is a hard one to answer, but how does this project fit into the innovation history of the ABC? Have they always been at the forefront of innovation or do you feel like they are lacking behind a little bit? Uhm…I would say that the ABC is very interested, at least now, in innovating and doing different things in new ways and attempting to reach new audiences and audiences that we don’t always serve the best or make up a large part of our viewership. So that can be a teenage viewership, or a slightly younger audience, because the ABC has a slightly older audience and a very young audience, so that
324 in between bit can sometimes be a bit harder. But the ABC as a whole, especially now, is very interested in moving forward as a whole and look into new and interesting technologies and new ways in which we can interact with them.
Yeah right, okay and with BHT do you also use other platforms to reach audiences? Yes, so our show is mostly seen as [inaudible] so it is less watched from our broadcast and more either from our website or from Iview and we also have interactions through Facebook, although that is more designed for teachers. Through social media accounts we have a live Q&A every week that is called ‘Ask a reporter’ where we take live questions from kids around Australia about stories from the past week.
So they can call in? Yes, so there is a link on our website and a hashtag #askareporter.
Okay so you really use social media. Do you use Snapchat and stuff? Uhm…rarely, we have occasionally been part of the ABC’s Snapschat, just for the day, but it is not something that we have focussed on.
Okay, so mostly Twitter and Facebook? Yes.
Alright, great. And had you heard of the DSI team here in Sydney? Uhm…no I haven’t personally. I would say that Nathan probably would have had a lot to do with them, so I am the foot soldier on the ground, very much the day- to-day person and he is more of the slightly bigger picture man who would aware of the innovations happening around the ABC. My role is making the content that makes up the program.
I don’t think a lot of people around the ABC know the team yet, just because they have only started six months ago, and probably, like your team, it is unlikely that the whole ABC knows about it, so it is not strange. But I guess it is important to them as well to make themselves known and you have maybe read some of their stuff online. They are making the interactive, long form stories on the website. Yes, I have seen those. They are great!
So you have seen the ones, okay great. Last question before I forget: how old are you? 29.
Okay, thank you so much!
325 8.10 Document 10: Field notes and observations
Field notes
Day 1: Monday December 11th • 9:30 am: Samuel Dunn picked me up from reception. I get a visitors card, without access to the newsroom. • Samuel Dunn introduces me to Stephen Hutcheon, the digital editor of the DSI. • He then showed me around the newsroom, shows me my desk and asked about the ground rules of my thesis. He asked about on/off-the-record and publishing agreements and told me he is willing to talk freely, on the condition that he can check the statements before it would get published. I assured him that my thesis would not get published and that my professor might end up bits and pieces of the results in his articles or book. I promised I would ask my professor what the exact agreements are. • Stephen Hutcheon briefly introduces me to Jo Puccini, editor of the investigative reporter team at ABC. After the ABC restructuring the DSI is as of today also part of her team. • 10 am: meeting with DSI team, led by Stephen Hutcheon. Stephen introduces me and encourages team members to speak freely. There is a bit of friction because this mornings’ production wasn’t published on time, but Stephen doesn’t call anyone out and is very diplomatic (barely expresses the disappointment he mentioned to me earlier). Other than that they talk about the various stories the team is making. Present were reporter Mark Doman, data journalist Inga Ting, designer Alex Palmer, video journalist Jack Fisher and marketeer Michael Workman. Developers Ri Liu and Nathanael Scott were called in through Skype from Melbourne. • 11 am: I go around to make interview appointments with everyone and quickly introduce myself and my project. • 11:15 am: Michael sends me PowerPoint presentation on marketing he is interested in. • 12 am: Jo Puccini will only have time for an interview now during lunch. So she invites me to walk with her to UTS around the corner to get a take- away sandwich. On the way we have casual talk about Italy, her career and house etc. • 12:15 pm: interview with Jo Puccini while eating lunch in meeting room • 2 pm: interview with Stephen Hutcheon in the same meeting room. He notes that he feels like he is talking to a psychologist (laughing), and complements me with my questions at the end. Off-the-record he tells me that Kimberley is very unhappy about the restructuring and that there is quite some friction about it. Stephen said that she has a lot of projects and the DSI was one of them, but now she is not very involved in the DSI anymore. • 4 pm: Write Mark Deuze to ask about confidentiality
326 • 4:15 pm: I was invited to eat vegan birthday cake for Jack’s birthday • 4:30 pm: Stephen tries to help me to get access to the building. Tries to apply for a temporary visitor card, but fails and has to rush to a meeting. • 5 pm: I go home.
Notes: • Team uses Slack to communicate • Team members are all very friendly and passionate • Team is not sitting together in the same space but will be moving one floor up next week and are hoping to sit together there. • Team is confused about restructure and the exact role of the DSI within Jo Puccini’s investigative team.
Day 2: Tuesday December 12th • 10 am: I get in by calling Mark Doman because security at the ABC reception hasn’t received Stephen’s temporary visitor application. • 10:15 am: interview with Mark • 12:15 pm: I switch desks and can now sit on Stephen’s desk as him and Jo are conducting job interviews in Melbourne. I write update my diary and look for flights to Melbourne. • 1:45 pm: I e-mail Stephen about access to Slack, the Intranet and the building and anonymizing team members and/or the ABC. • 2 pm: I go for a walk around the area and lunch by myself. Get buzzed back in by Mark. • 3 pm: interview with Jack • 5:30 pm: I go home
Notes: • The ABC application does not seem to support the DSI digital stories well. The team works ‘mobile first’ but this actually means ‘website mobile first’. • The internal content system is problematic, as it doesn’t support features that are useful for the DSI. So the DSI has to hack the system sometimes to be able to make the story look the way they want it to look. • When I get home I try to download the ABC app, but I cannot find it in my appstore.
Day 3: Wednesday December 13th • 10:30 am: I come in later because I had to move houses with all my stuff in the morning. • 10:30 am: meeting + interview with Kimberley Porteous at UTS • 11:30 am: back in the building I cannot get in, because I still do not have a temporary access card. So I call Mark to buzz me in. • 12:00 am: Mark shows me the article about birthdays that has just been published
327 • 12:15 pm: Jack shows me his photography and filming equipment and e- mails me the links to the productions the team has made. • I spend some time reading the productions • 3:45 pm: Interview Kimberley continues?
Notes: • Kimberley is very critical of the ABC and the head of news who keeps changing his mind about the digital strategy after board meetings. Kim was initially hired to help make the change from broadcast and radio to digital, but after the restructuring she is only working part time on some digital projects such as podcasts and hiring digital agent in various parts of Australia.
Day 4: Thursday December 14th • 9:30 am: I report at reception and still do not have an access card, so I call Mark (again) to buzz me in. • 10 am: I e-mail Samuel Dunn about my access and he writes back that he is on it and will try to push for it to be fixed by today. • 10:30 am: DSI meeting with Melbourne team members on Skype • 11:30 am: I ask Stephen for access to Slack, internal documents and the intranet and he will send me some documents and said he would think about Slack. He said most of the communication about task assignment is in person, not through e-mail. • 12:00 am: Interview with Inga • 14:00 pm: I go for lunch by myself in café next door • 14:45 pm: Interview with Michael • 16:45 pm: Stephen e-mails me some documents and I give him my Slack- details so he can log me into one (not all) of the threads, so I can get a sense of the way the team communicates about work.
Notes: • Even though it is not clear if the team will keep existing in 6 months, ABC seems to be really busy hiring people (Stephen and Jo are hiring producers and reporters for the investigative team and Kimberley is hiring digital people around the country).
Day 5: Friday December 15th • 9:30 am: I get in. Still have no access. Security lets me in and says they did receive an e-mail from Samuel Dunn, though he hasn’t applied via the application form. • 9:45 am: Samuel sends me an e-mail that his application is approved and that he will let me know when I can collect my card. • 9:45 am: I go through the DSI productions made so far, ABC news in general + looking at flights & accommodation in Melbourne for my ABC visit there. I go through internal documents
328
Notes: • Stephen, Jack and Jo are not sitting at their usual desk. Have been about all day (I don’t know where they have been). • Jo talks to me about an investigation one of the reporters is doing on the army in Afghanistan and that a Dutch reporter is talking to the same whistleblower. Ludo Hekman (Middle East correspondent). Apparently they are collaborating. • Jack invites me to his birthday party on Saturday
Day 6: Monday December 18th • 9 am: I get into the building, but everyone’s access card is not working anymore. (They are making new check-in gates). I go to reception and find out that my temporary access card is actually only issued for a day. Reception tells me to ask my manager to contact them. • 9:15 am: I go to the first floor because I presumed the mean would have moved there by now. They are not there and I run into other ABC colleagues who have never heard of the DSI team and ask me where it stands for. When I say ‘Digital Stories Innovations’ they comment ‘well that is a fancy name’. When I say Stephen Hutcheon’s name, they say ‘ahhhh, part of the Investigations team.’ And point me to the end of the newsroom. The team is not sitting there either, so I call Stephen who tells me they are still downstairs at the moment. • 9:30 am: Jo and Stephen leave to do job interviews • 10:10 am: I realise the team must be having their usual 10 am meeting, but because Stephen is not there to invite me, the rest of the team has forgotten to. So I go to what I presume is their usual meeting room and ask if I can join. The meeting hadn’t started yet, so I didn’t miss anything. • 10:40 am: After the meeting I ask the team about the ‘Google fellow’ they keep talking about. Apparently this is a funded Google person specialised in cyber security who will be coming to ABC to maybe help work on one or two projects. The word they keep mentioning is ‘implementing a toolbox’, but no one knows what it actually is. They presume it refers to a secure drop built into the website and stuff like that. According to the rest of the team, Stephen was very interested in him collaborating with DSI productions. • 11:00 am: I book Melbourne flights and Airbnb • 1 pm: I brought my lunch and eat it at my desk • 1:30 pm: I have to go out to pick up my debit card at the bank. • 2:30 pm: I get back to the office and make appointment with Alex for interview. • 3:30 pm: I e-mail Mark Deuze with update and wait to catch Stephen before he goes on holiday. At 5:30 he messages me he won’t make it so I e- mail my questions instead.
Notes:
329 • I went to Jack’s birthday party on Saturday. He said it started at 5 pm, so I got there at 5:45 pm and was the first guest (haha). Stayed until about 10:30 pm and talked to DSI team mates casually about work, Australian etiquette, journalism etc. I meet some of the girlfriends of the team members and some other guests.
Day 7: Tueday December 19th • 9 am: I get in, and access card magically appears to work! • 10 am: Interview with Alex • 1:30 pm: moving to first floor • 4:30 pm: Jack asks me if I want to join to get some food, we talk casually
Notes: • Most of the team members want a standing desk. There are three types of desks. • Jack wants to get plants for his desk • There seems a little confusion about when to move, IT people pack stuff and move it upstairs, team members follow. Everyone is now sitting together. • Chairs from downstairs are taken upstairs. (All team members were instructed by Stephen to put their names on the chairs, because people tend to steal chairs)
Day 8: Wednesday December 20th • 9:30 am: I get in, access card works • 10 am: Stephen comes in, even though he is technically on holiday but he was at the physio next door. I get to chat with him: we talk about access to slack and to the building. I ask him if there is anyone else I should speak to and he gives me permission to e-mail people from ‘Foreign Correspondent’. I also ask if I can come back to the office in January and work from there, so I can ask some questions whilst writing my thesis. He agrees and tells me I can use his desk because he will be away. We also talk about what I want to do after and this. I tell him I want to get into investigative journalism and scout the possibilities. He tells me that the people him and Jo are hiring for the investigations team are senior and experienced and tells me to get on the ABC website to check out the temporary functions and suggests he has contacts within Fairfax as well that he can refer me to. He stresses the digital when I tell him I am mostly trained as a writer and researcher. I feel stupid because I did a terrible job at selling myself because this ‘job interview-type conversation’ took me by surprise (even though I have wanted to talk to him about possible jobs). I told him I felt awkward talking to him about it because I am supposed to be an academic in this role and should probably not be scouting jobs. He tells me not to worry because there is no conflict of interest. • 10 am: I e-mail Dee Porter to set a time for our interview. I e-mail Marianne Leitch and Michael Doyle from ‘Foreign Correspondent’ to try
330 to arrange a context interview. Michael is on leave and tells me to contact Marianne or Emma Moris, the former digital producer. Emma e-mails back that she is probably of not much use because she hasn’t worked with the DSI. Still waiting for Marianne’s response. • 12 am: Interview with Dee porter • 12:45 pm: Lunch by myself at UTS • 1:30 pm: I try to get access to Slack channel and e-mail Kimberley about Slack and internal documents. • 3 pm: I get added to Slack channel (only for this week) and still waiting on documents • 3:30 pm: I clean up internal documents and go through Slack channel
Notes: • Lots of sighing due to downgrade of desks (they are not high enough, to be standing desks). But everyone seems to be collaborating and talking to each other now that everyone is sitting together. • Last week I noticed people of all kinds working at the reception and little coffee stand. People with piercings, heavy make-up, tats and died hair etc. • Now the coffee corner is gone. • The issue of Slack is raised: not that the team is all together will they still be speaking on Slack as much as they did before? This could change the dynamic / cause a disconnect between the Sydney and Melbourne team. • I took photo’s today
Day 9: Thursday December 21st • 9:30 am: I get in and access card works! • 10:30 am: Meeting DSI using Google Hangout. Inga is working from home in the hours before an appointment with a contact, so she calls in from home. Nathanael and Ri call in from Melbourne as usual. Internet connection is better in the meeting room on the first floor. Half way through the meeting gets very technical and Michael and then Jack leave the room. I took photos of the meeting • 11:30 am: I copy Slack conversations into Word-files and download useful PDF’s in Slack channel • 12:30 pm: Michael tells me about what he does and how he targets audiences. We also talk about fake news and he shows me the Crowdtangle tool he works with. He also sends me some of the reports he has written after some of the DSI publications, including summaries of how it went and recommendations. • 1:20 pm: I go for a walk to the shopping center around the corner and have lunch there. • 2:15 pm: I get back and finish cleaning up documents and downloading Slack docs. • 2:45 pm: Jack and Oscar ask me to join them for lunch at the Thai place next door. I do and talk to Oscar Coleman about places to see in
331 Melbourne and the Virtual Reality efforts of his team in Adelaide, the kids show ‘Behind the News’. He tells me he can bring me in contact with the VR supervisor for a context interview in January. • 3:30 pm: I get back in and talk to Oscar about how to contact his team mates in Adelaide and I send an e-mail to most of the team members. • 4:30 pm: I leave to the library to work on thesis
Notes: • In January I should interview Marianne Leitch (Foreign Correspondent), Sally Neighbour (Four Corners) and someone from ‘Behind the News’ in Adelaide for context
Day 10: Friday December 22nd • 9:15 am: I get in, access pass works • 9:30 am: I start working on my thesis • I take photo’s of the building etc.
Notes: • Things have really seemed to slow down in the office leading up to the holidays. Only Michael and Alex are at the office when I come in and most of the ABC people from other teams are on leave • Jo is cursing on the phone about the ‘fucking ABC bureaucracy’ that she can’t get used to no matter how long she has worked here for. Saying she just wants a fucking holiday and she needs to hire people. • Everyone is leaving early because of Christmas holidays
Day 11: Thursday January 4th • 9:30 am: I get into the Melbourne office and call Nathanael to buzz me in. Ri comes to get me at reception and I get a visitors card. • 9:45 am: I get assigned a desk and have some small talk with Ri and Nathanael • 10 am: I try to access the ABC wifi but need another password so ask Ri, who then gets me a new password via the intranet. • 1 pm: We go for lunch, have pizza together and talk casually about the Australian media landscape and about Melbourne • 2:45 pm: I get coffee with Ri • 3 pm: Interview Ri • 4:30 pm: Write this diary
Notes: • Ri tells me about the restructure. There has also been a restructure in the physical space at the ABC Melbourne office. There used to be cupboards behind Ri and Nathanaels desks separating them from a part of the newsroom but those are now taken away and they are making some
332 ‘broadcasty thing’ there. Ri says she hopes she’ll be moved when they are installing it. • Ri added to the interview that she is not too worried about what will happen next, as she feels she will be alright regardless and feels comfortable in changing environments and is used to freelancing and usually thing turn out for the better. She also said that she has a fortnightly meeting with the Brisbane team to talk about the tools they are creating etc. There is also a digital team in Canberra working on more political stuff so she is hoping that the future will bring more crossover with that team too.
Day 12: Friday January 5th • 9:30 am: I get in and start working on my thesis • 1 pm: I have lunch in the kitchen at the office by myself • 1:30 pm: Interview with Nathanael • 3 pm: I get a coffee with Ri • 3:30 pm: I get a tour around the building in Melbourne • 4 pm: I work on my thesis • 5:30 pm: I go home
Notes: • Nathanael wears nail polish and turns out to be gay à ABC diverse + accepting workplace • The team is not really immersed in the newsroom. They know everyone but don’t work with anyone in Melbourne. • The physical distance between the Sydney and Melbourne team seems to be a bit of an issue.
333 8.11 Document 11: Slack communication threads
#audienceinsights kimberleyporteous August 23rd 4:01 PM Nielsen DRM out today and ABC News was *up from 3rd to 2nd among News sites* with an audience of 4.7 million Australians, or *23% of online Australians* News.com.au had the largest increase among top News sites, up 11% to 5.9 million following a decline in June. ABC News ranked 2nd on both smartphone (up from 3rd for this first time since November) and desktop
#audio No interaction
#engagement No interaction
#general hutch 9:49 PM Border security – Illegal immigration issues in Europe, U.S. - Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/border-barriers/global-illegal- immigration-prevention/ Washington Post How the world is heeding the call to ‘build that wall’ The world now has more border barriers than at any time in modern history, an increase driven by war, waves of migration and the threat of terrorism. (139 kB) Wednesday, August 23rd katiecass 12:27 PM joined #general. Thursday, August 24th kimberleyporteous 10:14 AM Hi guys, Irene Jay Liu from Google News Lab is visiting Australia to deliver training sessions at Storyology and also for a few of the country’s major news media orgs — and she’ll be in the Ultimo newsroom on Monday morning. This is your chance to learn immediately useful skills to enhance your investigative reporting and storytelling from one of the world’s leading names in journalism innovation. *Monday Aug 28 from 9.30am in the M1 room* and also *via YouTube Live*
9:30-11 Research tools for investigative reporting: Discover new trends in search, find useful datasets for investigative reporting, and get a masterclass in how Google Search works to improve the quality of your in-depth and investigative research.
11:00-11:30 Google Trends: Step-by-step guide on using Google Trends, a tool that gives you insights into what our audiences are consuming and searching for
334 online. You’ll learn the skills every journalist needs to know for reporting in the digital age. Also learn time-saving methods to verify the authenticity and accuracy of images, videos and reports.
11:30-noon YouTube Live demo: Learn about YouTube Live and how media outlets around the world are using live events to create compelling content and connect with audiences. We’ll cover step-by-step instructions on how to run a Hangout and live stream it on your own homepage or YouTube channel. We’ll also cover YouTube best practices so that you can immediately make the most of this powerful video platform. clareblumer 10:20 AM Hi @kimberleyporteous I'd love go get the YouTube live link for the 9:30 session kimberleyporteous 10:27 AM Sure thing: we'll share that when set up clareblumer Hi @kimberleyporteous I'd love go get the YouTube live link for the 9:30 session Posted in #generalAug 24th at 10:20 AM katiecass 11:17 AM @kimberleyporteous I've flagged with Neil that I'm keen to come along, so I'll hopefully be there Tuesday, August 29th katiecass 11:04 AM @kimberleyporteous How can we get our hands on Irene's presentation - there was loads of really great stuff I want to explore a bit further :grinning: kimberleyporteous 11:12 AM We've chased up Irene to send a copy and will share that once it arrives. Glad you enjoyed it -- I reckon it was the best editorial training session I've encountered at the ABC katiecass @kimberleyporteous How can we get our hands on Irene's presentation - there was loads of really great stuff I want to explore a bit further :grinning: Posted in #generalAug 29th at 11:04 AM markdoman 11:15 AM Brilliant, I'd love to check it out as well kimberleyporteous 6:04 PM Hey @katiecass and @markdoman here's Irene's epic slidedeck from yesterday's training session: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5rhvFNS8stPVndJMV9PWkR4bzg/view 1 reply 4 months ago View thread kimberleyporteous 6:04 PM 2017.08.28 - ABC - Research, Investigative, Data, Trends.pdf
37 MB PDF from Google Drive Click to open in Google Drive Wednesday, August 30th hutch 6:20 AM All the rain that's fallen over Houston so far, in one massive water drop - Vox
335 https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/28/16217626/harvey- houston-flood-water-visualized Vox All the rain that's fallen over Houston so far, in one massive water drop It’s hard to imagine what 15 trillion gallons looks like. Let’s try. (113 kB) Aug 29th at 8:00 AM Wednesday, September 6th rileystuart 9:47 AM joined #general. Thursday, September 14th katiecass 11:15 AM I got to this via some rabbit hole, and it made me nod and giggle to myself... https://medium.com/xocas/look-what-you-made-me-do-i-illustrated-10-of-my- professional-sins-bb53028553a Medium Look (what you made me do): I illustrated 10 of my professional sins The #distractedBoyfriend meme was such a low hanging fruit. I wasn’t expecting the 3.5K likes. I can’t handle the fame. Reading time 4 min read (125 kB) Sep 1st at 11:15 PM 2 replies Last reply 3 months ago View thread Wednesday, October 4th hutch 7:34 PM Could we do something like this? https://medium.com/@puntofisso/i-calculated-the-average-face-of-a-uk- member-of-parliament-and-heres-what-i-found- 37f31b72b5d9?source=userActivityShare-d0e3b8dc40d2-1507106063 Medium I calculated the average face of a UK Member of Parliament and here’s what I found The UK Parliament Digital Service has recently released an archive of official portraits of MPs shot by photographer Chris McAndrew (under… Reading time 4 min read (71 kB) Sep 12th at 7:39 PM Tuesday, November 7th simon 10:24 AM @nathanael/@ri Still keen for a chat today? ri 10:25 AM yes! :wave: nathanael 10:25 AM Yup 10:26
336 I'll set up a hangouts simon 10:27 AM Cool–give us 5. Josh & Nathan just went to re-caffeinate. ri 10:28 AM v important :coffee: nathanael 10:29 AM No rush 10:30 Here's a hangout 10:30 https://hangouts.google.com/call/pR-wITPSXgkOSh1TWbLFAAEM simon 10:34 AM ready when you are nathanael 10:35 AM Ri and I are here 10:36 https://hangouts.google.com/call/pR-wITPSXgkOSh1TWbLFAAEM Tuesday, November 21st Tim Leslie 2:11 PM joined #general along with 3 others. slackbot 2:34 PM Welcome newcomers! Josh 3:01 PM Hi there inga_ting 3:14 PM hey peeps! jackfisher 3:21 PM Hey DIT colin 3:48 PM joined #general along with . Wednesday, November 29th katiecass 12:12 PM I just watched a 5 min vertical video on my desktop. And I liked it. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/arts/internetting-with- amanda-hess.html The New York Times By AMANDA HESS and SHANE O’NEILL Internetting with Amanda Hess Everything that’s weird, wrong and totally sad about internet culture. 4 replies Last reply 21 days ago View thread Tuesday, December 5th nathanhoad 10:15 AM @nathanael & @ri Are we having our interstate thing this morning? nathanael 10:16 AM Yup @nathanhoad , we're both in the office today, so let's do it nathanhoad 10:16 AM Sweet
337 10:16 quick coffee time Clippy APP 10:29 AM It looks like you're trying to have a meeting. ri 10:30 AM omg markdoman 10:30 AM Not now Clippy Thursday, December 7th Ben Spraggon 12:32 PM @alexpalmer Pretty sure this should be standard issue kit for us http://palette.com/ :heart_eyes: :rainbow: Palette Palette Pico Measure the color of anything with Pico. No more taking photos of a color or searching through a color book. Just walk up to a color and record it — instantly, precisely and forever. 2 replies Last reply 13 days ago View thread Friday, December 8th katiecass 4:28 PM This looks pretty cool https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morphology- abstracted-map-cartography?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page but I did have trouble with the actual tool Atlas Obscura How Far Can You Abstract a Map? Morphology, an exploratory cartographic tool, turns the whole world into swoops and lines. (77 kB) Dec 7th at 10:05 AM Today Livia 2:52 PM joined #general.
#longformstorytelling kimberleyporteous 4:43 PM ICYMI -- some very creative long-form journalism here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-21/how-interest-rate-rises-could-affect- home-loan-stress/8798274
#mobile katiecass 5:29 PM Found this super interesting - but I imagine this will scare the heck out of some... "Young people don't have televisions, and don't give a damn about the broadcast infrastructure. The only thing they are interested in is content, and they are not
338 fussed about how that content is created, it comes down to an engaging story," he said. https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/why-mobile-will-dominate-news- media-by-2020/s2/a708993/
#statenewsrooms No interaction
#summit No interaction
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#video katiecass 12:27 PM joined #video along with . Friday, September 22nd jackfisher 1:58 PM Very well scripted 9 minute video here https://www.facebook.com/quartznews/videos/vb.444654488901592/17403434 09332687/?type=2&theater Facebook Quartz Tuesday, October 3rd jackfisher 4:23 PM https://twitter.com/jrhennessy/status/915084570877247488 j.r. hennessy @jrhennessy i watch everything in 1079p. the top row of pixels is of negligible value to me. nothing good happens in it TwitterOct 3rd at 4:22 PM Tuesday, November 21st Tim Leslie 2:11 PM joined #video along with 6 others.
#vr-ar No interaction
#workwelike clareblumer 11:45 AM The New York Times used this site to make their frightening story today on the North Korean missile capability https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ 11:46 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/22/world/asia/north-korea- nuclear-weapons.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=g- artboard%20g-artboard-v3&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top- news&WT.nav=top-news
339 The New York Times By WILLIAM J. BROAD, MIKA GRÖNDAHL, JOSH KELLER, ALICIA PARLAPIANO, ANJALI SINGHVI and KAREN YOURISH Can North Korea Actually Hit the United States With a Nuclear Weapon? Six systems that North Korea needs to master to achieve a long-sought goal: being able to reliably hit the United States. katiecass 12:27 PM joined #workwelike. Friday, August 25th kimberleyporteous 7:19 AM Hours of digital journalism inspiration here with this year's ONA awards finalists: https://awards.journalists.org/winners/2017/ Online Journalism Awards 2017 Online Journalism Awards Finalists Winners of the 2017 OJAs will be announced on Oct. 7, in Washington, D.C., with Joshua Johnson, host of WAMU and NPR’s 1A, emceeing the awards banquet. Monday, August 28th markdoman 11:28 AM Some great before and after/side by side vids from Hurricane Harvey: https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/videos/10151280452194999/ Facebook The New York Times Wednesday, August 30th kimberleyporteous 8:46 AM This is awesome. Worth keeping in mind should more statues become targets of graffiti on these shores https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/29/upshot/100000005396126.m obile.html Thursday, August 31st hutch 6:33 AM In maps: Houston and Texas flooding - BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41094872 BBC News In maps: Houston and Texas flooding - BBC News Maps and graphics show the extent of the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston and Texas. (52 kB) hutch 9:29 AM http://mentalfloss.com/article/80652/largest-religious-group-each-county mentalfloss.com The Largest Religious Group in Each County Using data from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. (16 kB) Jun 8th, 2014 at 5:25 AM hutch 6:04 PM https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ng- interactive/2017/aug/31/quiz-how-much-does-a-ceo-earn-compare-pay-and- expectations
340 the Guardian Quiz: how much does a CEO earn? And what do you think they should get? This quiz tests your knowledge of income across six jobs, as well as recording how much you think someone in a specific job should be paid (45 kB) Sunday, September 3rd hutch 6:24 AM https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/flooded- homes/?hpid=hp_no-name_graphic-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory Washington Post How water damages a flooded house — and how parts can be saved Floods can leave thousands of homes beyond repair, but many can be saved. (692 kB) hutch 6:32 AM http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2017/afl-team-of-the-century/ The Age We crunched the numbers to find the best AFL team this century 17 flag winners. 7 key statistics. 11 footy experts. Our quest to find the best of the best. (223 kB) 1 reply 4 months ago View thread Monday, September 4th hutch 1:32 PM https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/22/world/asia/10000000536380 5.mobile.html hutch 3:52 PM This could be adapted for bowling in cricket for the summer https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/03/sports/tennis/us-open- serve.html The New York Times By JON HUANG, BEN ROTHENBERG and JOE WARD Making the Women’s Serve a Bigger Weapon Many in women’s tennis believe that the standard of serving can improve. Here are nine components of good serving technique. markdoman 4:04 PM If anyone is look for any data vis inspo, Mona Chalabi's Twitter/Insta is a good place to start: https://twitter.com/MonaChalabi twitter.com Mona Chalabi (@MonaChalabi) | Twitter The latest Tweets from Mona Chalabi (@MonaChalabi). Trying to take the numb out of numbers, left with lots of ers. Data Editor @GuardianUS and illustrator. Email me… [email protected]. NY via LDN markdoman 4:06 PM As a lefty, this is one of my faves jackfisher 5:25 PM Hahaha Mona is my hero Wednesday, September 6th rileystuart 9:47 AM
341 joined #workwelike. markdoman 10:04 AM https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/05/arts/music/25-women- making-best-rock-music- today.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story- heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top- news&_r=0#playlist The New York Times By JOE COSCARELLI, CARYN GANZ, JON CARAMANICA and JON PARELES Women Are Making the Best Rock Music Today: Listen Now Guitars may seem to matter less than ever. But just beneath the mainstream, dozens of female bands are making some of the most acclaimed, urgent, politically relevant music around. Thursday, September 7th kimberleyporteous 7:11 PM You won't regret the 10 minutes you'll spend on this: http://www.sbs.com.au/kgari/ SBS K’gari: the true story of a real fake An SBS interactive that uses the natural forces of K’gari to explore the story behind #FraserIsland from Butchulla artist, Fiona Foley’s point of view. (172 kB) Friday, September 8th jackfisher 7:15 AM http://www.sbs.com.au/aviolentact/ SBS A Violent Act - Perspectives on a double murder He claims he slept through the first murder and was woken by the second. Acquitted after eight years in prison, Ram Tiwary is now a free man. But the case of the 2003 student murders in Sydney remains open. Who killed Tony Tan and Chow Lyang? (330 kB) Saturday, September 9th hutch 6:30 AM Mortgage Magnitude https://nation.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=de7f932e3a1d4 94f9c9d9a67fb0de646 nation.maps.arcgis.com This story map was created with the Story Map Cascade application in ArcGIS Online. Monday, September 11th markdoman 11:29 AM https://xkcd.com/1732/ xkcd Earth Temperature Timeline [Title text] "[After setting your car on fire] Listen, your car's temperature has changed before." (823 kB) markdoman 11:41 AM Another great example of using scroll depth to tell a story :point_up_2:
342 katiecass 3:53 PM Brilliant Tuesday, September 12th hutch 8:21 AM The Air Quality-Life Index (AQLI) - EPIC Pollution Index https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/ jackfisher 10:58 AM The first 30 seconds of this are incredible https://www.facebook.com/thefeedsbsviceland/videos/507497052917339/ Facebook The Feed SBS VICELAND markdoman 10:59 AM Was just watching this @jackfisher 11:00 The text caption things for the kids are brilliant jackfisher 11:00 AM Totally hutch 10:42 PM Watching Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia From 22,000 Miles Above Earth - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/12/us/hurricane-irma-satellite- images.html Thursday, September 14th hutch 5:59 AM FlowingData http://flowingdata.com/ flowingdata.com FlowingData Strength in Numbers Thursday, September 21st hutch 3:40 PM Another scrolly-teller story http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/us-nuclear- arsenal Union of Concerned Scientists We visualized every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal Bet you don't know how many nukes we have—or what they're capable of. (477 kB) 3:43 and another one: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2017/09/cassini- saturn-nasa-3d-grand-tour/#rings Science Here’s What Cassini Saw During Its Tour of Saturn Follow along with the NASA spacecraft and its 13 years of amazing discoveries in our immersive 3-D experience. (632 kB) Sep 8th at 9:08 AM Friday, September 22nd markdoman 2:41 PM
343 http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/MYANMAR- ROHINGYA/010050XD232/index.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=S ocial Reuters Mass exodus Visualizing the scale of the Rohingya crisis. (730 kB) hutch 3:45 PM amazing work hutch 3:49 PM Progress bar Tuesday, September 26th markdoman 9:45 AM This is great: https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion/videos/184152792129578/ Facebook The New York Times Opinion Section 3 replies Last reply 3 months ago View thread hutch 7:45 PM Who Earns More Income in American Households? | FlowingData https://flowingdata.com/2017/09/25/who-earns-more-income-in-american- households/ hutch 8:00 PM Nine charts which tell you all you need to know about North Korea - BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41228181 BBC News Nine charts which tell you all you need to know about North Korea What can statistics tell us about life in Kim Jong-un's secretive country? (133 kB) Wednesday, September 27th hutch 10:41 AM What you can do with 100 years worth of data http://visual.ons.gov.uk/causes- of-death-over-100-years/ visual.ons.gov.uk Causes of death over 100 years We are living longer than we did 100 years ago because of advances in medical science as well as better sanitation, nutrition and hygiene.Just over a century ago the average life expectancy at bir Thursday, September 28th hutch 9:46 AM @kimberleyporteous spotted this http://honisoit.com/2017/09/food-fault-lines- mapping-class-division-through-food-chains/ Honi Soit Food fault lines: mapping class through food chains How might the distribution of food chains intersect with the division of wealth in Sydney? Have a play on the map below. Are we missing something? Let us know and we’ll add it to the map! (The Source… (303 kB) Sep 22nd at 5:00 PM hutch 11:16 AM
344 Another scrollyteller yarn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt- sh/Grenfell_21st_floor BBC News The 21st floor - BBC News Fifteen people lived on the 21st floor of Grenfell Tower. What was their story? (178 kB) hutch 10:35 PM Hooked: how pokies are designed to be addictive | Australia news | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng- interactive/2017/sep/28/hooked-how-pokies-are-designed-to-be-addictive the Guardian Hooked: how pokies are designed to be addictive Poker machines use a range of design features that leverage psychology to keep people playing. Here, we break them down so you can see exactly how they work, and how it affects people (67 kB) Wednesday, October 4th hutch 9:13 AM Interesting use of audio and graphs to show difference between automatic, semi- automatic and "standard" guns: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/02/us/100000005474434.mobile .html markdoman 10:43 AM Geez that's scary 10:45 WaPo using the Genius web annotator for Trump's press conf. Allows reporters to provide analysis and readers to comment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/03/trumps-half- baked-puerto-rico-press-conference- annotated/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.fd1a3b26422a#annotations:12796725 Washington Post Analysis | Trump’s half-baked Puerto Rico photo op, annotated Everything is great, folks. Believe me. And if it's not? Not my fault. (119 kB) jackfisher 10:47 AM I love Genius so much. There’s a really Longform interview with Leah Finnigan who they hired from Gawker, crazy https://longform.org/posts/longform- podcast-195-leah-finnegan Longform Longform Podcast #195: Leah Finnegan · Longform Leah Finnegan, a former New York Times and Gawker editor, is the managing news editor at Genius. “After the Condé Nast article, Nick Denton decided Gawker needed to be 20% nicer, and I took a buyout because I was not 20% nicer.” Thanks to MailChimp, (20 kB) hutch 12:31 PM Simple use of flat graphic to show the enormity of the gun violence problem in the US
345 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/02/opinion/editorials/10000000 5474681.mobile.html 1 reply 3 months ago View thread Friday, October 6th hutch 7:49 PM The Uber Game https://ig.ft.com/uber-game ig.ft.com The Uber Game Can you make it in the gig economy? (Not automatically expanded because 3 MB is too large. You can expand it anyway or open it in a new window.) Wednesday, October 11th hutch 2:00 PM https://awards.journalists.org/ Online Journalism Awards The Online Journalism Awards – Honoring the Best of Digital Journalism The OJAs honor excellence in digital journalism around the world. With more than 30 awards given there’s plenty of amazing work recognized. (35 kB) Thursday, October 12th markdoman 2:39 PM This has some interesting elements: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/puerto-rico- hurricane-recovery/?utm_term=.879dfbdaeaf1 Washington Post Analysis | After Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico is still in the dark How the island’s troubled finances, a weak electrical infrastructure and a Category 4 hurricane plunged 3.4 million people into an ongoing power blackout. (622 kB) Tuesday, October 17th markdoman 12:01 PM The illustrations in this are a little cheesy, but the piece is pretty fun: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/sports/nba-top-100-players- 2017/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.32bbd62f4e2e Washington Post Analysis | The Top 100 players for the 2017-18 NBA season Post national NBA writer Tim Bontemps surveyed the NBA and ranked his top 100 players according to their overall talent level heading into the new season. (331 kB) Wednesday, October 18th hutch 3:54 PM @markdoman Wonder if we could do something like this for The Ashes maybe doing head-to-head comparisons? First test if Nov 23 (edited) Friday, October 20th ri 1:11 PM Not sure if I 100% *love* the execution of this.. but the progressive reveal is interesting https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-wall-street-robots/
346 Bloomberg.com These Are the Wall Street Jobs Being Replaced By Robots Prepare to adapt. (801 kB) nathanael 2:22 PM https://www.missyempire.com/you-vs-the-kardashians/ missyempire.com You vs The Kardashians How long would it take The Kardashians to earn your salary? (92 kB) alexpalmer 3:21 PM https://news.northeastern.edu/2017/07/westeros-and-beyond/ news.northeastern.edu Westeros and Beyond How much time did Tyrion Lannister spend in the Crownlands in the season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones? Where was Jon Snow in the… (834 kB) Monday, October 23rd hutch 9:45 AM https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005473328/las-vegas-shooting- timeline-12-bursts.html?smid=tw-share The New York Times By MALACHY BROWNE, DREW JORDAN, NICOLE FINEMAN and CHRIS CIRILLO 10 Minutes. 12 Gunfire Bursts. 30 Videos. Mapping the Las Vegas Massacre. The shots began at 10:05. Twelve bursts of gunfire later, police broke down Stephen Paddock’s door at the Mandalay Bay. Using forensic analysis, The Times mapped 30 videos that show a vivid picture of what happened that night. markdoman 9:58 AM Scary stuff Wednesday, October 25th inga_ting 8:53 AM The latest from nick evershed and andy ball at the guardian - a joint project with propublica https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng- interactive/2017/oct/25/revealed-how-australians-are-targeted-with-political- advertising-on-facebook?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other the Guardian Revealed: how Australians are targeted with political advertising on Facebook This database shows political Facebook posts that have been promoted into news feeds as advertisements, and how they are being targeted (112 kB) Thursday, October 26th michaelworkman 11:14 AM They're spilling my secrets. markdoman 11:26 AM They're onto you Mike inga_ting 4:06 PM lol that was my first thought too Monday, October 30th hutch 9:14 PM Lewis Hamilton: The strangest moments of the British Formula 1 driver's career - BBC Sport
347 http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/41717129 BBC Sport Lewis Hamilton: The strangest moments of the British Formula 1 driver's career Lewis Hamilton is now a four-time world champion so we've taken a look at some of the stranger moments of his career. (26 kB) Tuesday, November 7th alexpalmer 9:26 AM https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/three-degree- world-cities-drowned-global-warming?CMP=soc_567 the Guardian The three-degree world: cities that will be drowned by global warming The UN is warning that we are now on course for 3C of global warming. This will ultimately redraw the map of the world (149 kB) inga_ting 11:31 AM oh the globe is so pretty hutch 2:12 PM http://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/women-killed-by-men/ thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org Women killed by Men Women killed by Men in 2015 (69). Data via @JointDestroyer & @DeadWomenAus. #CountingDeadWomen (89 kB) hutch 2:15 PM http://paulvaartj.es/projects/australian-survivor-2/ paulvaartj.es Australian Survivor Season 2 Visualised Follow the alliances and eliminations of Australian Survivor, Season 2 in this interactive data visualisation (636 kB) 3 replies Last reply 1 month ago View thread hutch 8:57 PM Scroll to the bottom of this story http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/the- ashes/ashes-2017-mitchell-starc-takes-amazing-second-hattrick-of-match-in-nsw- win-20171107-gzgpyx.html The Sydney Morning Herald Ashes 2017: Mitchell Starc takes amazing second hat-trick of match in NSW win Mitchell Starc has completed his Ashes preparations in astonishing fashion in Sydney. (47 kB) Nov 7th at 8:37 PM hutch 10:11 PM More cricket stuff. Shareable. Ashes 2017-18: Pick your all-time Ashes XI - BBC Sport http://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/41836192 BBC Sport Ashes 2017-18: Pick your all-time Ashes XI Bradman or Ponting? Botham or Flintoff? Lillee or Thomson? Pick your all-time Ashes XI. (24 kB) Wednesday, November 8th
348 alexpalmer 9:33 AM This feels very familiar...really pretty nonetheless. Really nice animation: https://www.svt.se/special/the-swedes-in-paradise-papers/ svt.se The Swedes in Paradise Papers Take a closer look at the Swedes in the Paradise leak. What do we know about them? (436 kB) inga_ting 9:44 AM that's awesome. that's what I wanted to do for mortgage stress, but we had too many circles :disappointed: michaelworkman 11:11 AM I love the slickness of the transitions. hutch 2:45 PM another scrollyteller! simon 2:50 PM We thought the number of circles thing was also a challenge for http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-22/election-2016-who-really- decides/7395568 but it turned out that it was d3's force layout (combined with number of circles). Colin managed to ditch the force layout and rely as much as possible on CSS animations and it worked beautifully in the end. ABC News Whose votes will really decide the winner on July 2? In Australia, all votes are created equal but some are worth more than others. Jun 22nd, 2016 at 6:05 AM inga_ting 2:57 PM Oh I loved that Australia votes story! Yeah I think our problem was also that we wanted the circles sizes to reflect the number of mortgages in that postcode, so it was much harder to work out the animations... simon 3:11 PM Another strategy if you're going to use force directed stuff is to pre-calculate all the positions and use CSS animations. Much quicker than on the fly JS, but a bit more fiddling around (and increases download size). Thursday, November 9th ri 9:22 AM Yeah the circle sizes made the force layout slow down a bunch, but precalculating might have worked... we had a lot of a transitions though Friday, November 10th hutch 9:07 AM nice charts: http://wid.world/country/australia/ WID - World Wealth & Income Database Australia – WID – World Wealth & Income Database Australia The source for global inequality data. Open access, high quality wealth and income inequality data developed by an international academic consortium. inga_ting 9:33 AM ah yes, those are highcharts. Conrad and I used to use them a lot at SMH - they require a bit of javascript so more complicated than Datawrapper or Infogram but
349 still much simpler than Tableau or anything requiring proper coding skills. I like them a lot - the animations are really smooth and the more javascript you know, the more flexible they are inga_ting 9:41 AM this is one of the stories we did with Highcharts (before we cared about mobile!) http://www.smh.com.au/world/ebola-nine-charts-show-why-it-matters- 20141121-11r78g.html The Sydney Morning Herald Ebola: nine charts show why it matters It's killed more people than SARS or bird flu, and has one of the highest mortality rates in history. But how serious a threat is Ebola? (23 kB) Nov 21st, 2014 at 5:13 PM 9:43 Highcharts can be made responsive with a bit of code though markdoman 12:39 PM https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/health- science/monkeypox/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.37ebb76f46e2 Washington Post CDC scientists pursue deadly monkeypox virus in Africa A mysterious disease is causing outbreaks that could easily spread across the world. (32 kB) katiecass 3:49 PM This is a total tangent - but it's weird how the newspaper thing of putting location in caps at very start of story - like in the above @markdoman continues to hang around on digital stuff. Like, why not just write it into par? :thinking_face: 1 reply 1 month ago View thread markdoman 4:35 PM Yeah that is a weird hangover. It's essentially saying "GUYS, WE LEFT THE OFFICE FOR THIS ONE" simon 5:21 PM http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/11/the_year_in _push_alerts_how_breaking_news_became_our_lives.html Slate Magazine The Year in Push Alerts: Why We Couldn’t Look Away Since Nov. 8, 2016, we’ve been flooded with breaking news. Here’s what it’s felt like to live through the onslaught. (43 kB) Monday, November 13th hutch 1:02 PM More scrollytelling .... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/10/opinion/gabriel-zucman- paradise-papers-tax-evasion.html The New York Times By GABRIEL ZUCMAN How Corporations and the Wealthy Avoid Taxes (and How to Stop Them) The Paradise Papers confirm what we already know: Many are not paying their fair share. Here’s how.
350 Wednesday, November 15th markdoman 12:50 PM https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/mapping-the- dmz/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6e7aff34d536 Washington Post Analysis | This thin ribbon of land separates North and South Korea. Why should we care? The Korean Demilitarized Zone was established as a buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea following the 1953 armistice in the Korean War. It divides the peninsula roughly in half and is about 160 miles across and 2.5 miles wide. More than 25 million South Koreans live under threat from North Korean heavy artillery just across the border. (212 kB) Thursday, November 16th markdoman 4:10 PM Oh this is cool (no scrolling involved). It's a world cup draw simulator: http://ultra.zone/2018-FIFA-World-Cup-Group-Stage-Draws ULTRAZONE 2018 FIFA World Cup Final Draw Simulator This simulator can try the draw of the 2018 FIFA World Cup group stage. (edited) simon 5:44 PM I must be missing something—is it just randomly shuffling pots into groups? Friday, November 17th markdoman 9:16 AM yeah it's just hit the button and see what happens - simulating the world cup pool lottery alexpalmer 12:36 PM https://paintingbynumbers.dxlab.sl.nsw.gov.au/ paintingbynumbers.dxlab.sl.nsw.gov.au DX Lab: Painting by Numbers State Library of NSW's DX Lab brings together over 300 exquisite works by botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer from leading international museums and libraries. (257 kB) 4 replies Last reply 1 month ago View thread Monday, November 20th markdoman 9:43 AM So this is a bit clunky, but super awesome at the same time: https://teropa.info/ teropa.info Tero Parviainen, Independent Software Developer Tero Parviainen jackfisher 12:38 PM Very good NYT video - kept me the whole 10 minutes https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005115187/ice-deportation- texas.html
351 The New York Times By JONAH M. KESSEL, BRENT McDONALD and JOHN WOO His Daughter Graduates. He Faces Deportation. Juan Rodriguez entered the U.S. illegally from El Salvador over a decade ago. Now, after years of checking in with immigration officers, he is told he will be deported as his daughter prepares to graduate from high school. Tuesday, November 21st Tim Leslie 2:11 PM joined #workwelike along with 5 others. Wednesday, November 22nd jackfisher 9:57 PM Nothing special that the journos did but damn this kept me the whole way https://www.facebook.com/sydneymorningherald/videos/10156131082676264/ Facebook The Sydney Morning Herald hutch 10:02 PM Yeah. Not sure about the music. But annotated, it makes more sense Thursday, November 23rd hutch 9:21 AM https://pudding.cool/2017/10/asne/ The Pudding Newspapers: A Black & White Issue Measuring racial diversity in journalism. (119 kB) markdoman 9:59 AM This is like a more elegant version of that UNSW student project @hutch https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/escape- time/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e03e195fb2e7 Washington Post Analysis | Leaving downtown at rush hour in America’s largest cities Here’s how far you can get from America’s largest downtowns if you leave at rush hour. (355 kB) 6 replies Last reply 26 days ago View thread inga_ting 12:19 PM This is cool https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/22/upshot/the- jobs-youre-most-likely-to-inherit-from-your-mother-and- father.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20171122&nl=upshot&nl_art=0&nlid =81080951&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0 The New York Times By QUOCTRUNG BUI and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER The Jobs You're Most Likely to Inherit From Your Mother and Father The tendency of sons to follow in their fathers’ occupational footsteps is well known, but the effect of mothers is also powerful, it turns out. Friday, November 24th inga_ting 10:54 AM this is very pretty https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#10.70/150.93197/- 33.84867/hot/all Strava Labs
352 Strava Global Heatmap Over 1 billion activities, 13 trillion data points create the ultimate map of athlete playgrounds. (444 kB) 3 replies Last reply 26 days ago View thread Monday, November 27th hutch 1:20 PM Apparently Freshwater, a beach near Manly, is the hotbed of winter sports activity in Sydney markdoman 3:03 PM This is important: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/images-from- kyrgyzstans-annual-cat-show/2017/11/26/396fbc72-d2d5-11e7-b62d- d9345ced896d_gallery.html?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.c1f5814f66ff
Washington Post Images from Kyrgyzstan’s annual cat show Cat lovers gather in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, for a chance to exhibit their cats. (205 kB) Tuesday, November 28th markdoman 10:05 AM Love this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/entertainment/tech- generations/?hpid=hp_hp-visual-stories-desktop_no- name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f67e41f72737 Washington Post What ‘tech world’ did you grow up in? How did people watch videos, listen to music or access the internet in other generations? (82 kB) 3 replies Last reply 22 days ago View thread inga_ting 10:58 AM oh woah @ri is that the gif you tried to make for your profile pic? (edited) ri 11:01 AM yeah mr party parrot alexpalmer 11:03 AM :partyparrot::partyparrot::partyparrot::partyparrot::partyparrot: 11:03 So great inga_ting 11:06 AM That is siiiiiiiick markdoman 11:06 AM #WorkILike :partyparrot: inga_ting 11:06 AM although ... I don't get how it relates to your name ;( 11:07 :partyparrot:
353 nathanhoad 11:07 AM :partyparrot: ri 11:07 AM I dont think we could find a Ri appropriate pun :disappointed: 11:08 @nathanhoad I like how the party parrot in your name parties when you hover over it markdoman 11:09 AM .party_on_hover Party Parrot APP 11:09 AM There ain't no party like a hover party. ri 11:41 AM whoa today in cool animated chart gifs https://twitter.com/robertoglezcano/status/935278748366229504 Roberto Alonso González Lezcano @robertoglezcano Changes in fertility rates over time http://www.randalolson.com/2015/08/23/small-multiples-vs-animated-gifs-for- showing-changes-in-fertility-rates-over-time/ by @randal_olson TwitterNov 28th at 9:46 AM markdoman 11:44 AM oh cool. For some reason this is the first thing I thought of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W_gfpkbgtQ YouTube masertus Alex Mack Morphing clips 2 replies Last reply 22 days ago View thread ri 11:44 AM lol resemblance is uncanny 11:45 is today 90's flashback day @markdoman, this and the dialup thing inga_ting 11:47 AM @ri that's cool! @markdoman you are a weirdo markdoman 11:52 AM everyday is 90s flashback day in my mind @ri ri 11:58 AM https://media.giphy.com/media/ggKMDmjkGZ5ZK/giphy.gif (981 kB) alexpalmer 12:03 PM https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/cmp/junior/gamesfram es.html Some inspo for future interactives ri 12:04 PM OMG we need to bring frames back big time 12:05 frames = new scrollyteller nathanael 12:06 PM :sad:
354 alexpalmer 12:18 PM If anyone wants (needs) Bob Dole wallpapers, the wait is over: http://www.dolekemp96.org/interactive/computer/computer.html nathanael 12:20 PM You know I do @alexpalmer hutch 7:19 PM I like the map zoom element at the start Operation kill http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/PHILIPPINES- DRUGWAR/010051VF46X/index.html Reuters Operation kill Unfolding Manila's anti-drug police operation on October 11, with security camera footage. (375 kB) 2 replies Last reply 21 days ago View thread Wednesday, November 29th markdoman 10:00 AM Scary stuff inga_ting 11:36 AM This is awesome. We should do this story! But I don't know where to get the data ... I will hunt :bow_and_arrow: http://flowingdata.com/2017/11/28/career- paths/ (edited) inga_ting 11:36 AM nathanhoad 11:41 AM inga_ting 11:42 AM data jokes LOLZ katiecass 12:02 PM replied to a thread: I like the map zoom element at the start … Operation kill… http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/PHILIPPINES- DRUGWAR/010051VF46X/index.html 2 replies from katiecass and inga_ting Fark. This story is *brilliant* Tuesday, December 5th ri 9:20 AM interesting... https://pudding.cool/2017/12/hater/ The Pudding 10 Things Everyone Hates About You Exploring over 30 million feelings towards 3,000+ topics. (468 kB) inga_ting 10:14 AM haha awesome dataset. I like the "Most contentious topics" viz at the end. fun delayed animation effect hutch 2:16 PM
355 Don't think this has been posted before .... Some fun stuff here from one of the applicants for the Google Fellowship: http://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/ thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org The People's Republic of Couch In Couch We Trust. (17 kB) ri 2:19 PM oh I know that guy :slightly_smiling_face: 2:19 ex-Guardian hutch 2:21 PM Yes. Brett. He's done some interesting stuff. ri 2:22 PM yeah he's great :thumbsup_all: alexpalmer 2:23 PM This is important: http://thepeoplesrepublicofcouch.org/magnums/ markdoman 3:30 PM I love it all Wednesday, December 6th hutch 1:38 PM Greenland is leaking ... badly (scrollyteller variation) This is NOT the one you pointed out the other day @markdoman https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/climate/greenland-ice- melting.html The New York Times By HENRY FOUNTAIN and DEREK WATKINS As Greenland Melts, Where’s the Water Going? Each year, Greenland loses 270 billion tons of ice as the planet warms. New research shows that some of the water may be trapped in the ice sheet, which could change how scientists think about global sea levels. 1 reply 14 days ago View thread hutch 10:19 PM Do you know the state of your country? Take the test, as poll reveals perception gap | Politics | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2017/dec/06/perception- reality-gap-global-poll-overestimate-bad-stuff-murder-rate-prisoners-pregnancies the Guardian Do you know the state of your country? Take the test, as poll reveals perception gap Around the world, people tend to overestimate murder rate, number of foreign prisoners and teenage pregnancies, Ipsos Mori survey shows (82 kB) Dec 6th at 5:00 PM Thursday, December 7th michaelworkman 9:15 AM http://time.com/5027497/top-10-viral-moments-2017/ Time The Top 10 Things The Internet Couldn't Stop Talking About From Beyoncé's twins to Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad (286 kB)
356 Friday, December 8th ri 11:15 AM https://www.ft.com/content/ad74ba76-d9cb-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 Data journos caught out companies reporting 0 gender wage gap Financial Times Cluster of UK companies reports highly improbable gender pay gap Data from 16 of 311 groups disclosing so far show zero difference on two measures (2 MB) Dec 7th at 4:01 PM 9 replies Last reply 12 days ago View thread Monday, December 11th ri 9:56 AM When the gif is more compelling than the story https://twitter.com/benflan/status/939203720616861696 Ben Flanagan @benflan London's beating heart - one of the test animations we created for today's @BBCNews rush hour story. Graphic shows how far you could drive within 60 mins, setting off at hour intervals throughout the day. Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_friday_night_rush #Cartography #ddj #esri TwitterDec 9th at 5:43 AM Tuesday, December 12th simon 11:49 AM This is a really nice use of annotations (not to mention a beautifully written essay). https://story.californiasunday.com/raising-a-teenage-daughter The California Sunday Magazine Raising a Teenage Daughter* *With Comments and Corrections by Hannah W Duane (her teenage daughter) (141 kB) Nov 30th at 4:00 PM (edited) 11:50 And serves as a reminder that we have a really quite nice annotations tool which I'm sure we can put to better use than a Pauline Hanson speech (not that there's anything wrong with that). http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-20/pauline- hanson-maiden-speech-annotated/7852522 ABC News Pauline Hanson's speech annotated Pauline Hanson's was a wide-ranging affair. What's it all about? We've checked statements and gathered the background. Sep 20th, 2016 at 11:11 AM katiecass 1:13 PM @simon why haven't we used that more? simon 1:16 PM Good question. Friday, December 15th
357 ri 10:10 AM there are a lot of interesting things going on in this article http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/ The Huffington Post Generation Screwed Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression. (93 kB) Josh 10:45 AM This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen ri 10:46 AM I wonder how long it took them nathanhoad 10:46 AM I like that the 8bit artist is credited as their 'Spiritual Guide' ri 10:51 AM I quite like that the interactions are separated from the reading experience Monday, December 18th michaelworkman 7:44 AM https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/year-in-polls/ Washington Post Analysis | America’s chaotic, crazy, challenging, great, tumultuous, horrible, disappointing year A look back at the ups and downs of public opinion in 2017. (428 kB) ri 9:52 AM :arrow_up: incognito lets you get around the paywall Yesterday ri 9:39 AM https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/pessimists-guide-to-2018/ Bloomberg.com The Pessimist’s Guide to 2018 These eight potential shocks could shape the next decade. (511 kB) michaelworkman 10:39 AM so cool! The Pessimist’s Guide to 2018 These eight potential shocks could shape the next decade. Posted in #workwelike (511 kB) Today markdoman 11:49 AM The 3D modelling in this is pretty... the rest I find a bit chaotic! https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/puerto-rico-life- without-power/?utm_term=.eaba5c8b1c31 Washington Post Life without power in Puerto Rico — and no end in sight Three months into the longest blackout in U.S. history, Puerto Ricans are in limbo. Millions still have no safe water, schools remain shut and the tasks of daily life are exhausting and dangerous. Full electricity may be months way. (154 kB) nathanhoad 12:23 PM The progress indicator is kind of cool
358 markdoman 12:35 PM oh woh. Turns out this wasn't working for me at all in Chrome. 12:36 Looks much better when it works and makes a lot more sense 12:38 And yeah, digging the indicator. Shows you exactly how much scrolling you're in for Livia 2:52 PM joined #workwelike.
#summerdeaths (DSI story) markdoman 10:06 AM joined summerdeaths along with 5 others. Pinned markdoman 10:07 AM Causes of death, 2007-16
Spreadsheet from Google Drive Click to open in Google Drive ri 11:08 AM seriously can we please interview the person that has to come up with these category names markdoman 11:14 AM "So we need a name for people who are killed in storms, but not just any storm.."
"How about CATACLYSMIC storm!!???"
"Ok" ri 11:15 AM I worry this will be how I go "Other lack of coordination" 11:20 there could be an interesting 'dangerous australian animals' thing in this inga_ting 1:10 PM hey @nathanael is this where the data from your shark interactive came from? http://www.sharkattackdata.com/gsaf/place/australia nathanael 1:10 PM Yup, that's the one. 1:11 You can download a excel file someone from the site (unfiltered) 1:12 http://www.sharkattackfile.net/spreadsheets/GSAF5.xls 1:13 "No attack, shark made a threat display" inga_ting 1:31 PM Moving desks! gotta go bye inga_ting 3:56 PM Some examples of user-generated sentences
359 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in-context The Marshall Project Crime in Context Violent crime is up in some places, but is it really a trend? (82 kB) Aug 19th, 2016 at 4:20 AM 3:56 This Vox one is cool too https://www.vox.com/a/teens#year/1972 Vox.com Today’s teens are better than you, and we can prove it The kids are all right. (153 kB) inga_ting 4:46 PM greetings @ri and @nathanael , from our new desks (not that it matters to you at all)! 4:47 @markdoman is just making a mock up of some ideas we've been talking about for this thing, but in the meantime, I thought it would be good to give you a run down so you can start thinking/building... 4:49 The data is pretty much done (see worksheet called FINAL in that google spreadsheet) 4:50 So we're envisaging a customisable sentence like this one in the Marshall Project link I posted inga_ting 4:50 PM inga_ting 4:52 PM https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/puerto-rico- hurricane-recovery/?utm_term=.da41cebe032c inga_ting 4:54 PM Users would pick two ways to die to complete the question: "ARE YOU MORE LIKELY TO DIE ... THAN ... ?" and the chart would tally the numbers of deaths by each method markdoman 4:56 PM Deaths Test.mov
3 MB QuickTime Movie Click to download Your browser does not support HTML5 Video. Try . markdoman 4:57 PM All the action starts at 0:04 Yesterday michaelworkman 9:12 AM commented on markdoman’s file Deaths Test.mov that's heaps cool. alexpalmer 9:19 AM Like this: http://www.hindustantimes.com/static/olympics/race-two-countries- 100m/ Hindustan Times The 100-metre sprint where you get to choose the runners
360 Choose any two countries' fastest runners and go! (64 kB) inga_ting 9:41 AM We will need an option to choose/filter by gender too markdoman 10:29 AM Just thinking we should put in spider deaths, because it’s interesting that there are no spider deaths 10:31 @nathanael what are your thoughts about examples above? nathanael 10:41 AM I like the concept, I'm just trying to think how it can better fit with the data markdoman 10:54 AM Ok cool, in what way? nathanael 11:14 AM Not sure yet markdoman 2:44 PM Alex this one that @inga_ting shared is cool because it already gives you a complete sentence: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/18/crime-in- context The Marshall Project Crime in Context Violent crime is up in some places, but is it really a trend? (82 kB) Aug 19th, 2016 at 4:20 AM 2:48 and the sentence changes depending on the words you select Livia 2:53 PM joined summerdeaths by invitation from . inga_ting 2:54 PM Welcome to summer deaths @Livia, where we discuss important topics with the appropriate respect markdoman 2:56 PM :domanhappy: markdoman 3:13 PM @inga_ting http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-20/grieving-family-calls-for- older-drivers-to-be-taken-off-the-road/9269858 ABC News 'I have nothing': Grieving family pleads for more testing of elderly drivers The family of a young man who was killed by an elderly driver calls for political courage to restrict older drivers before more lives are lost. Yesterday at 1:42 PM 3:14 "Elderly drivers involved in 20 per cent of all fatal crashes" inga_ting 3:15 PM Yes! This is a thing. Japan is paving the way forward https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/swap-driving-licence-cheap- noodles-discount-japan-older-motorists the Guardian Swap driving licence for cheap noodles, Japan urges older motorists
361 Country tries to fight worrying rise in accidents caused by over-75s by offering discounts on ramen if they give up driving (66 kB) Nov 29th, 2016 at 11:03 AM markdoman 3:16 PM Wow 3:20 @inga_ting this link that @ri shared was interesting https://twitter.com/benflan/status/939203720616861696 Ben Flanagan @benflan London's beating heart - one of the test animations we created for today's @BBCNews rush hour story. Graphic shows how far you could drive within 60 mins, setting off at hour intervals throughout the day. Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_friday_night_rush #Cartography #ddj #esri TwitterDec 9th at 5:43 AM markdoman 3:21 PM Obvs doesn't fit 100% with road toll data 1 reply 19 hours ago View thread inga_ting 3:22 PM I also looked into something a while ago about over-75s being the fastest-growing group to acquire driving licences, while under-25s were the fastest-declining group. More and more old people want to drive. It's like a symbol of independence markdoman 3:23 PM Yep my Nanna was like that, she never had a licence because she just used to drive on the farm without one 3:23 Then she moved into the city and got a licence 3:23 Then she lost it 3:23 For driving the wrong way up the highway inga_ting 3:24 PM omg 3:25 that's hectic michaelworkman 4:39 PM granny theft auto markdoman 4:51 PM were you thinking of cancer @alexpalmer 4:51 ? markdoman 4:51 PM As the missing death, I mean! 3 replies Last reply today at 9:24 AM View thread
362 alexpalmer 4:56 PM Deaths_mockup_comparison.pdf
47 kB PDF Click to view alexpalmer 4:56 PM Deaths_mockup_everythingdeathrace.pdf
47 kB PDF Click to view new messages alexpalmer 5:03 PM @here This is similar to @markdoman’s except all deaths are visible, and the 2 in the comparison are coloured/highlighted. You can also choose to show everything, where I suppose it'd just be a full animation all deaths at once like this: http://www.hindustantimes.com/static/olympics/every-country-fastest-woman- in-one-race-100m/ Hindustan Times Every country's fastest woman in one race Hit play to find out who holds the world record and by how much. (552 kB)
#australian-babymaking inga_ting 3:31 PM joined australian-babymaking along with 2 others. inga_ting 3:31 PM set the channel purpose: Australia's most and least common birthdays hutch 3:31 PM joined australian-babymaking by invitation from , along with 4 others. ri 3:31 PM this project name is the best michaelworkman 3:34 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz1eXWUzcRU YouTube Retro Channel Anglo Barry White & Love Unlimited Orchestra - Love's theme (video/audio edited & remastered) HQ Pinned markdoman 3:34 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIa3ftX20yo YouTube M4U Album KENNY G: Greatest hits Of Kenny G - Best Songs Of Kenny G 3:34 I'm just going to pin this inga_ting 3:37 PM i can already see where this channel is going to end up markdoman 3:37 PM tbh these people making babies on xmas day are doing something wrong 3:37
363 eat more food people 3:38 Food babies > real babies inga_ting 3:50 PM Damn straight :white_check_mark: 3:52 I feel like we need some RnB in the mix tape 3:52 maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNixxH8dvBw YouTube Peanut000 Usher - Making Love (Into The Night) (2010) inga_ting 4:15 PM Alright, comments please. Which video opening do you prefer:
_Busy this Christmas? You’re not alone. Turns out the holiday season is Australia’s favourite time of year to get busy … if you know what I mean._ _The first ever release of Australian data on birthdays has uncovered some pretty strong national preferences when it comes to baby-making. _ 4:16 OR... _Most Australians don’t fancy spending their holidays giving birth to a baby but they certainly like spending the holidays making them._ _That’s just one of the insights from the first ever release of national data on birthdays._ _So what else do the figures reveal about Australia's baby-making habits?_ 4:18 *Edits/other suggestions also welcome* Monday, December 11th markdoman 12:53 PM No-one voted in your poll @inga_ting :disappointed: nathanael 12:53 PM _Most Australians don’t fancy spending their holidays giving birth to a baby but they certainly like spending the holidays making them._ 12:54 :arrow_double_up: best line markdoman 12:54 PM Haha yeah that's my fave as well nathanael 12:55 PM :black_medium_small_square: Getting busy :ballot_box_with_check: Making babies inga_ting 2:05 PM With two votes and no allegations of corruption, I think this qualifies as one of our most successful polls yet ri 2:06 PM is this a non-binding poll also inga_ting 2:19 PM hmmm. good question.
364 2:19 my morals say no, but history says yes 2:19 @alexpalmer I made you a square line chart https://public.tableau.com/profile/iting#!/vizhome/171129_most-common- bday/alex-stuff ri 2:22 PM man no one wants to have their babies on public holidays inga_ting 2:22 PM birthing a baby does not a fun holiday make ri 2:23 PM I wonder if the dec 18/19 peak is 'holy shit let's get this thing out before xmas' rush inga_ting 2:23 PM bahaha :scream: nathanael 2:25 PM Or maybe noone is working at the hospital on public holidays so you have to wait until the next day to give birth ri 2:26 PM maybe for the caesars... but pretty sure babies come when they come inga_ting 2:45 PM You are both correct! :trophy: 2:45 and I'm not even being diplomatic 2:47 australia has a really high rate of C-section, so those parents are picking their kids' birthdays (within reason, obvs) 2:47 and doctors also don't like to work weekends or public holidays, hence the really jagged pattern to the line 2:47 (that's the weekly cycle) alexpalmer 3:57 PM @inga_ting could I get the tableau chart as a solid colour? :pray::skin-tone-3: 3:59 Also could you make the line about half as thin? Tuesday, December 12th alexpalmer 11:28 AM @inga_ting do you mind if I get the audio soonish? :domanhappy::kennyg: inga_ting 11:38 AM yup - sorry, ABS dragging their feet 11:38 will get it to you by midday inga_ting 11:54 AM Video script - Australian baby-making3.docx 246 kB Word Document Click to download Latest script @alexpalmer, will record voice now
365 inga_ting 1:45 PM @alexpalmer your square chart now has the updated numbers Pinned inga_ting 2:37 PM Article preview here http://nucwed.aus.aunty.abc.net.au/news/2017-12- 12/australian-baby-making/9241978# 2:37 @michaelworkman ri 2:39 PM that first graph looked v familiar :stuck_out_tongue: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng- interactive/2016/mar/15/the-feral-senate-how-often-do-the-crossbenchers- actually-vote-against-the-government the Guardian The 'feral' Senate: how often do the crossbenchers actually vote against the government? This interactive graphic shows how often each crossbench senator votes with, or against, the government (55 kB) michaelworkman 3:19 PM inga_ting 3:23 PM That baby is really something 3:25 Please post your christmas/holiday season sexual innuendo/puns here and I will incorporate them into the story 3:25 I know @markdoman is all over this 3:26 (Seriously though, headline suggestions most welcome, as I am shit at headlines) markdoman 3:29 PM I'll kick things off:
Basting the turkey 3:30 I don't know what that means just sounds like it could mean something else inga_ting 3:30 PM Glazing the Christmas ham 3:30 I also don't know what that could mean markdoman 3:31 PM A food baby might not be the only baby you make this Chrissy... nathanael 3:32 PM Go, go, go, go go, go, go, shawty It's your birthday We gon' party like it's yo birthday We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday And you know we don't give a fuck It's not your birthday!
366 _(But we do actually give a fuck)_ (edited) markdoman 3:32 PM lol michaelworkman 3:33 PM nice. 3:34 The ultimate cake day guide is finally here. inga_ting 3:34 PM hmmm. Not sure how to incorporate that one into the story @nathanael but I will try nathanael 3:34 PM That's your headline 3:34 In full 3:34 It's good SEO alexpalmer 3:37 PM Go, go, go, go go, go, go, shawty It's ~your~ Jesus' birthday We gon' party like it's ~yo~ Jesus' birthday We gon' sip Bacardi like it's ~your~ the Lord's birthday And you know we don't give a fuck It's ~not your~ Jesus' birthday! _(But we do actually give a fuck)_ (edited) michaelworkman 3:48 PM I like this but it's been done https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/christmas-eve-busiest- time-year-get-busy/327997/ The Atlantic Christmas Eve Is the Busiest Time of the Year to Get Busy This week, several media outlets rediscovered an old New York Times chart that tells you how popular your birthday is, ranking each day of the year from 1 to 366. While it's fun to learn the most common birthdays in the U.S., it's much more fun to think about the most popular conception dates! markdoman 3:50 PM Oh gosh that thumbnail! 3:50 Turtle neck to the *MAX* inga_ting 4:01 PM Those are the cheesiest people ever 4:01 They do not look like they want to get busy michaelworkman 4:02 PM true. michaelworkman 4:13 PM michaelworkman 4:13 PM ri 4:13 PM
367 can the baby in the pic wink too michaelworkman 4:14 PM haha, a creepy baby. 4:14 @alexpalmer if Inga likes the baby creative can you please engineer a wink? alexpalmer 4:15 PM Something unsettling about a baby winking. Maybe santa winking? ri 4:16 PM yeah I think I'd be a bit unsettled if I saw the baby winking tbh nathanael 4:17 PM The baby winking is like "you totally boned and then I was born, am i right, wink wink" ri 4:18 PM hey, this is all biologically correct they can't cry 'fake news' on that one markdoman 4:22 PM I thought we decided we weren't going to use the emoji...... We did it for the kids worrying story and we'll be spamming it next week. Might be worth trying something else? A couple embracing awkwardly in front of a xmas tree maybe. nathanael 4:22 PM A photo of a baby crowning markdoman 4:22 PM markdoman 4:22 PM @nathanael woh 4:22 hahaha ri 4:23 PM max awkward levels michaelworkman 4:23 PM yeah true. alexpalmer 4:24 PM @nathanael please don't make me do pic research for that nathanael 4:25 PM http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nMR- 6JtwZnM/Ts1zIAHH_DI/AAAAAAAAB0k/oBhZSmurmA0/w1200-h630-p-k- no-nu/Christmas-birthday.jpg (120 kB) alexpalmer 4:35 PM alexpalmer 4:36 PM inga_ting 5:03 PM bahaha these are terrible 5:04 santa winking is much better than creepy baby winking 5:05 babies are already creepy. that's why we have the Chucky movies. Wednesday, December 13th michaelworkman 9:44 AM michaelworkman 9:44 AM
368 jackfisher 9:44 AM What is going on michaelworkman 9:45 AM we're evaluating creative sells. 9:45 if anyone has baby photos we might need them. inga_ting 9:45 AM not just posting baby photos like obsessed mums inga_ting 9:45 AM inga_ting 9:46 AM this is sort of what I meant by a pile of babies michaelworkman 9:47 AM inga_ting 9:48 AM i think we need an awake baby 9:48 to look lively, and like exciting things are happening michaelworkman 9:49 AM agreed inga_ting 9:49 AM I think you could put a pile of babies in front of this chart inga_ting 9:51 AM Or zoom in on the December part and go with something like "The nation is about to entering baby-making season" 9:51 or like you said @michaelworkman, something about the curious pattern to Australian baby-making habits michaelworkman 9:52 AM yeah, the chart needs a headline that gives context about why it's a curious chart. Pinned michaelworkman 9:59 AM these two owned abc images could be suitable but we'd need hutch or mark to confirm usage http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-21/baby-generic/8967056 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-19/baby-sleeping-generic.jpg/9065602 2 replies Last reply 8 days ago View thread michaelworkman 9:59 AM both are abc owned and are from lighter stories. Pinned inga_ting 9:59 AM Final voiceover text @alexpalmer
Turns out most Australians don’t fancy spending a holiday giving birth to a baby. But they certainly seem to like spending the holidays making them. That’s just one of the insights from the first-ever public release of national data on birthdays. So what else do the figures reveal about Australia's baby-making habits?
369 This chart shows the number of babies born on each day of the year over the past 10 years. You’d probably guess the least common birthday is February 29. But did you notice something else about the timing of the other dips in the chart? After February 29, Australia’s five least popular birthdays are: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Australia Day and Anzac Day. Apparently, Australians don’t rate giving birth as a fun holiday activity. Another thing you might have noticed is that the line isn’t particularly smooth. Look closer and you’ll see that – public holidays aside – the peaks and dips in the chart follow a weekly rhythm. That’s because some dates over the 10-year period fell on a Saturday or Sunday less often than others. And since more births these days are induced or C- sections, fewer babies are born on weekends, when fewer doctors are working. Australia’s most popular birthday is September 17, while September 23 and 24 are ranked third and fourth. Count backwards roughly 38 weeks from these dates, and we land on two of the nation’s most popular conception dates: Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Happy holidays, indeed. markdoman 10:42 AM Can hear some pretty sensual Sax coming from your area @alexpalmer markdoman 10:47 AM @alexpalmer https://www.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/huggys- strut_56757 Audio Network Huggy's Strut - Production Music Audio Network’s production music library has 144,482 high quality music tracks for TV, film, advertising and corporate video. Search, listen, download. (14 kB) inga_ting 10:49 AM bahaha sexy times are here markdoman 10:49 AM https://www.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/three-cups-full_8795 Audio Network Three Cups Full - Production Music Audio Network’s production music library has 144,482 high quality music tracks for TV, film, advertising and corporate video. Search, listen, download. (14 kB) jackfisher 10:49 AM “Count backwards roughly 38 weeks from these dates, and we land on two of the nation’s most popular conception dates: Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Happy holidays, indeed.” @inga_ting THIS IS EXTREMELY SLEAZY 3 replies Last reply 8 days ago View thread markdoman 10:50 AM This one starting @ 0:33 10:50 https://www.audionetwork.com/track/searchkeyword?keyword=sexy%20music &facets=instrumental&page=4 Audio Network
370 Quick search for sexy music - Production Music | Audio Network Audio Network’s production music library has 144,482 high quality music tracks for TV, film, advertising and corporate video. Search, listen, download. (14 kB) 10:50 sexy af inga_ting 10:54 AM i am slightly worried about how good you are at finding sexy time music @markdoman 10:54 but i guess this is a useful skill at this moment markdoman 10:56 AM I have a playlist _just_ for sexy music inga_ting 10:57 AM The bigger one is my nephew markdoman 10:59 AM I don't say this lightly but: Skweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 10:59 (the noise you make when you pinch a cute baby's cheek) inga_ting 10:59 AM inga_ting 10:59 AM inga_ting 11:00 AM inga_ting 11:00 AM inga_ting 11:00 AM inga_ting 11:01 AM That's quite a statement @markdoman, coming from this baby-hating crowd. I will pass on your comments to my brother 11:01 @michaelworkman what think you? michaelworkman 11:01 AM images are perfect inga_ting 11:02 AM fair use of babies michaelworkman 11:02 AM I will get generic mocks made but try avoid sexualised language as that's just wrong for this kind of imagery. inga_ting 11:07 AM hey @hutch are you there? 11:07 did you want to have a squiz at the final story? Mark has subbed it 11:11 @alexpalmer do you have an opinion on whether we use the photos as they are or if we should do them up as thumbnails with graphs or something behind them? 11:11 @michaelworkman, opinion also? michaelworkman 11:12 AM I prefer photos of the thumbnails with the graph behind it, if we could use the photos you've supplied too that'd be ideal
371 inga_ting 11:16 AM hey @alexpalmer do you have time to make thumbnails at the mo? alexpalmer 11:17 AM I could make something, but might have to delay until 12? 11:17 If not, generic baby is image is ok inga_ting 11:18 AM Could you do a thumbnail quickly, and we'll swap the generic over when it's ready? markdoman 11:20 AM I've got the baby photo as the thumb currently 11:20 It's fine for now inga_ting 11:20 AM Embargo lifts at 11:30am but no one else has the embargoed material, so not disastrous if we're a bit late either (although I'd prefer to get in before 12, to ride that lunchtime wave inga_ting 11:26 AM hey @nathanael ... 11:26 I have a fat chart problem nathanael 11:26 AM hey @inga_ting 11:26 Data diet alexpalmer 11:26 AM Oh could I also get the source for the data? @inga_ting 3 replies Last reply 8 days ago View thread inga_ting 11:27 AM inga_ting 11:28 AM inga_ting 11:28 AM Any idea why the bar charts are so wide, compared to the other charts? michaelworkman 11:30 AM michaelworkman 11:30 AM weigh in on which of these people hate least. inga_ting 11:30 AM They're set to the same widths at my end @nathanael (edited) michaelworkman 11:30 AM nathanael 11:30 AM Hang on, just submitting my JJJ hottest 100 votes..... inga_ting 11:30 AM hahaha. Oh okay. 11:31 :alarm_clock: 11:32
372 oooh 11:32am! I WILL NO LONGER GO TO JAIL IF WE PUBLISH. Woohoooo 11:32 :champagne: nathanael 11:32 AM Are the graphs supposed to be fat? Do you want them all to be fat or thing? 11:32 *thin alexpalmer 11:33 AM oh btw. My vid has 17 mins left of rendering. Should we just attach it when it's done? inga_ting 11:33 AM I reckon I prefer the second one @michaelworkman , with "New research on teh timing..." michaelworkman 11:33 AM sweet let's do it. 11:33 thanks @inga_ting nathanael 11:33 AM @inga_ting Do you want the graphs to be thinner or for all of them to be fat? inga_ting 11:34 AM erm... I think thin in this case 11:34 for this particular article, I mean nathanael 11:35 AM :thumbsup_all: I'm on it inga_ting 11:36 AM hurrah! 11:38 @alexpalmer 17 minutes woot! yes, we'll attach whenever its done 11:38 do you know yet how to upload it into Core? alexpalmer 11:39 AM Yup - it's very complex. I give it to @markdoman inga_ting 11:39 AM LOLZ I thought we were levelling up?! alexpalmer 11:39 AM On a computer stick inga_ting 11:41 AM fancy nathanael 11:43 AM @inga_ting I slimmed down your graphs. I think Collin changed something with Odyssey, so the thing we were doing to make the graphs sit out a bit wider than the middle column broke and was just looking funky, but now looks p good 11:43 So I just removed the wrapper
373 awesome thank you 11:45 do you mean you removed the
374 New research on the timing of births shows the holiday season is the nation’s favourite time of year for baby-making: http://ab.co/2BXTVeK https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQ40usqU8AAA8J8.jpg TwitterDec 13th at 11:57 AM (15 kB) michaelworkman 12:07 PM FYI I want to deploy the social video at 1pm. michaelworkman 12:13 PM and it's on reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/7jfkxu/australias_most_an d_least_popular_birthdays/ https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/7jfjfg/australias_most_and_least _popular_birthdays/ reddit Australia's most (and least) popular birthdays revealed • r/dataisbeautiful 1 points and 0 comments so far on reddit reddit Australia's most (and least) popular birthdays revealed • r/australia 2 points and 0 comments so far on reddit inga_ting 12:31 PM No. 2 on Chartbeat homies! Despite homepage placement below the fold :slightly_smiling_face: markdoman 12:34 PM Woo woo woo 12:34 And NSW still don't have it on their homepage 12:35 I'll msg Clare 12:36 It's moving up the national page now as well 12:40 And it's now going on the NSW homepage :domanhappy: inga_ting 12:41 PM Woooo! Work those contacts @markdoman inga_ting 12:44 PM Is this yours @nathanael? inga_ting 12:46 PM oh I found him in the frag. Gone now! hutch 12:47 PM Great work! Looks great inga_ting 12:48 PM michaelworkman 2:14 PM michaelworkman 2:14 PM @markdoman do you like? markdoman 2:15 PM oh god michaelworkman 2:15 PM
375 needs more drop shadow inga_ting 2:47 PM @alexpalmer when you've had a chance to breathe, can you post a few thumbnail options with the santa babies and line chart? Please :slightly_smiling_face: alexpalmer 2:48 PM By santa babies do you mean the santa and elf babies you posted earlier? Or creepy winking Santa emoji? @inga_ting (edited) inga_ting 2:49 PM the santa and elf babies 2:50 not creepy santa. as much as we all love him 2:51 feel free to photoshop edit - they're my brother's photos alexpalmer 2:52 PM Will do. I'll apply all the work I've learned from my Cosmo/Cleo Bauer days alexpalmer 2:53 PM I joke - I'm almost mad about how adorable the babies are 1 reply 8 days ago View thread michaelworkman 2:55 PM @alexpalmer I actually would like GIFs of the elf babies and winking santa too. alexpalmer 4:29 PM alexpalmer 4:29 PM alexpalmer 4:30 PM Something along these lines @inga_ting? (edited) 4:30 Let me know if you have preferences for charts inga_ting 4:32 PM yeah cool :slightly_smiling_face: 4:33 I think the chart with the highlighted circles looks more chart-like 4:33 @here does anyone else have an opinion/thoughts on thumbs? (edited) alexpalmer 4:34 PM I prefer the dots as well. Not sure about the green bg, but not many other colours make both the babies and charts pop inga_ting 4:34 PM I'm wondering if we need dates on a couple of the highlighted chart points ...? Or do you think that will look too busy? 4:35 I'm not sure about the green either, although it is christmas-y alexpalmer 4:35 PM Yes maybe that's why I don't like it 4:35 The only other colour is purple but it looks a little silly inga_ting 4:36 PM haha ! Did you try it with a flat background colour ?
376 4:36 maybe the pattern is a bit distracting or something alexpalmer 4:36 PM Yep can get rid of it. 4:37 The dates might be a little random out of context 4:37 but I guess it might not matter inga_ting 4:37 PM have to imagine it with the headline though michaelworkman 4:42 PM The dots are much better, I love it inga_ting 4:43 PM should we try a more exciting part of the graph? michaelworkman 4:43 PM But can they be more of a clear pattern as seen with the weekday v weekends? inga_ting 4:43 PM I mean, all of it is exciting, but I mean SUPER exciting alexpalmer 4:43 PM :domanshock: 4:44 I could move it over to the 29th of April michaelworkman 4:44 PM How about, one that shows the drop in Xmas babies and you make the dot a Christmas ornament? alexpalmer 4:44 PM there's a bit of a dip there 4:44 and I mean a really really exciting dip michaelworkman 4:45 PM Good idea, an exciting visible dip would speak more to the articles' points. 4:45 It's still great nonetheless inga_ting 4:46 PM alexpalmer 4:47 PM @inga_ting could you send me that section as a pdf? michaelworkman 4:48 PM Nice. inga_ting 4:50 PM inga_ting 4:50 PM ok yep, will do alexpalmer 4:50 PM 1st one is better inga_ting 4:51 PM okay. shall I get rid off the black dotted line? alexpalmer 4:51 PM I think the babies will get in the way of a lot of the 2nd chart
377 inga_ting 4:53 PM true dat inga_ting 4:54 PM chart for thumb1.pdf
478 kB PDF Click to view inga_ting 4:59 PM will that work? it's not quite the same alexpalmer 5:00 PM alexpalmer 5:00 PM haven't put dates on yet. This is just a preview 5:00 Had to crop in a bit to the graph to get a better view of the dots and jaggedyness 5:01 I think I prefer the original because of the blue inga_ting 5:01 PM I liked the blue too alexpalmer 5:01 PM There was a wider range of colour inga_ting 5:01 PM indeed alexpalmer 5:02 PM blue with dip inga_ting 5:05 PM hmmm. is it because my pdf spacing is out? 5:06 hey what are the thumbnail dimensions? alexpalmer 5:06 PM 16x9 5:07 so I just do 1920x1080 inga_ting 5:09 PM mauybe this is better?
379 kB PDF Click to view inga_ting 5:11 PM i'm not sure about the solid green now btw ... I'm also just being annoying, so you should ignore me at your leisure alexpalmer 5:11 PM Blue babies inga_ting 5:11 PM ooooooh 5:11 blue isn't bad alexpalmer 5:12 PM Yes this is a game-changer inga_ting 5:15 PM
378 :boom: 5:17 here's where the PDFs came from btw, just in case https://public.tableau.com/profile/iting#!/vizhome/171129_most-common- bday/Dashboard8?publish=yes 5:19 shit i just realised i'm late for something 5:20 i have to go soryr! but i will take laptop with me so i can upload the thumbs to core when ready alexpalmer 5:20 PM @inga_ting alexpalmer 5:20 PM No probs. I have to head off in about 20 minutes inga_ting 5:21 PM ok cool 5:21 is thumb6 your favourite? alexpalmer 5:21 PM Yes 5:21 Should I put some dates on it? 5:23 Ok it's too busy with dates on. Go with 6 if you're happy with it inga_ting 5:28 PM SOLD 5:28 Thank you muchly! 5:30 woohoo that worked - thumbnail changed 5:30 :partydeal: alexpalmer 5:31 PM :ibis: Thursday, December 14th inga_ting 4:16 PM check out this rad email I got from a reader: 4:16 ------Hi. I enjoyed the article and appreciate your good use of descriptions for the real data.
I did however felt it lacked for not showing the underlying pattern of frequencies with which the dates appeared on weekends.
379 To clarify that I devised a simple Excel pivot chart to show the underlying dips and troughs - i.e. with no births data at all - for the section “Peaks and troughs follow a weekly cycle”.
You're welcome to email for a copy, although I can happily give here the simple Teradata SQL that I used as a base for the pivot:
SELECT day_of_month , month_of_year , CASE WHEN day_of_week IN (1, 7) THEN 'W' WHEN day_of_week BETWEEN 2 AND 6 THEN 'D' END AS Wknd_Cd , Count( *) AS Date_Cnt FROM sys_calendar.CALENDAR WHERE year_of_Calendar BETWEEN 2007 AND 2016 GROUP BY day_of_month , month_of_year , Wknd_Cd ORDER BY day_of_month , month_of_year , Wknd_Cd ;
Yeah I know, a Teradata is a bit overkill but it's what I use everyday anyway and besides it has a neat built in system calendar for this kind of thing.
Cheers. (edited) ri 4:17 PM did they attach a pic of the chart? nathanael 4:17 PM BYO chart ri 4:18 PM build your own I presume? inga_ting 4:28 PM Build your own for $5 corkage (edited) 4:29 What I especially like is that I did actually try to devise a calculation to normalise weekdays vs weekends but I was quite hungover, so my brain was like "No." inga_ting 4:39 PM And now he has done it for me. Excellent michaelworkman 4:50 PM who is this mystery person!?
380 inga_ting 4:57 PM Gerald. From an ATO email account :slightly_smiling_face: ri 4:57 PM ooh so official 4:57 I thought it was some rando phd type Tuesday, December 19th michaelworkman 8:49 AM @inga_ting https://www.facebook.com/NewBornBabyAU/posts/10155091987071981 one of the more interesting syndications of your content facebook.com New Born Baby Interesting...who's born in September? Yesterday Livia 3:48 PM joined australian-babymaking by invitation from .
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