Assessment Item - Factual Storytelling

Living in the Dark

My story is her story.

Words on a page she will never see. 

Marjorie Wood – visionary, far-sighted, blind. The woman with the softest gaze and the most piercing perception has had her sight stolen from her. It happened slowly at first, letter by letter, and then cruelly in a sickening rush. Once the Queen of observation, memory is now her only liberator. The grip she has on her world loosens as her grip on the walking stick tightens. Her hands, now a personal navigation device, carefully take in life’s contours.

Marjorie is my mother’s mother. My truly grand mother.

Blind. Handicapped. Vulnerable. If that is too hard to say, then ‘vision impaired’ may be more comfortable for you. Whichever label, she has been robbed of her most precious sense. Marjorie – and please do not spell that name as Margery or somehow she will know – lives alone in the black and white of her blindness amongst a riot of colour. The maintenance of her house and garden might now be the job of others, but Marjorie remains the artistic director of their strong tones, a reminder of the days when she could see in all the shades of the spectrum. Always impeccably dressed, the perfect shade of pink lipstick applied meticulously - her lips’ doll-like shape etched into her memory after 70 years of this daily ritual.  No need yet to wonder if she has drawn a snarl where a smile should be. Her memory is her mirror. 

Even though her undeniable determination is so evident in our every encounter, I can’t help but feel she is increasingly lost to the swirling world around her; the one I belong to. When will I receive my last handwritten birthday card? Her once perfect cursive is now a spidery guessing game. She is a fighter - fighting against the perception others have of her. She refuses to disappear. I can see she is fighting now to make even her 30 x magnifier help in her painstaking crawl through beloved newspapers, the tiny sector of blurry vision at the very corner of one eye bearing this load.  Her lips move as she talks to herself.  You see, she needs to repeat the words she has deciphered as she adds each new word, a bit like stringing beads onto a wire.  The process is so tortuous that those without her fine powers of recollection would have forgotten the earlier words by the time the later words are added. Her much-loved movies are a thing of the past. Audio books have given her a range of stories back again, but have stolen the luxury of that special process reading brings you and me – the words of our favourite authors personalised by our inner voice.

For an elderly, blind woman, living alone means she loses more than just her sight. Her personal safety, guarded by the systematic routine of carers three times a day, plucks away at her privacy. Yet surrendering this privacy is the price she pays for a different kind of freedom. A freedom that only the familiar can bring.  Decades of vivid memories are stored carefully in each room of her house, with her mind map never failing her.  It illuminates all she can’t see and guides her as she performs the small tasks she can still undertake. I can see that these tasks provide comfort beyond the obvious now.  They are a reminder to Marjorie of ‘before’ – of the days when her home sang with large family gatherings and the mingling of friends.  She stood proudly at the epicentre of this happy chaos, cooking and serving and directing the traffic.  It is quiet in the house now as she moves deliberately along the hall, but for her, these crystal clear memories fill the rooms, burst outside and sweep towards the ocean just as they always did.

Old age, the winter of our years, can be so unpoetic.  In Marjorie’s case a flurry of health problems have meant the years after 80 have been a series of cruel medical diversions from the business of living life.  Each event has meant a new recalibration, and although her superpower has always been her resilience, blindness has proven to be her Kryptonite. Bit by bit we are losing her to her inner world, that inner world made all the more seductive to the blind.  If you can’t see, then do the things you can’t see even exist?

She has lost her sight. We, her family, continue to lose indefinable pieces of her. Her dependence robs her of sharing our perspective.  Marjorie now has a different perspective. Her endless love, curiosity and fascination for the world has been bruised by the dark veil blindness casts over her. She must decide now how she will craft her own ending. For all the urgency she feels to live life as she always did, her acceptance of these limitations grows. Now we are being challenged to adjust.  We need to manage our rising panic over her acceptance, while celebrating her feisty refusal to be the acquiescent little old lady she so dreads becoming.

We need to be more like her.

Lucinda Grant (s4291365) 27th April 2012  

Ethics and Journalism - The SPJ Code of Ethics

"A reporter is a man without virtue who writes lies...for his profit" - Dr. Samuel Johnson


Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society's principles and standards of practice.


The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced by thousands of journalists, regardless of place or platform, and is widely used in newsrooms and classrooms as a guide for ethical behaviour. The code is intended not as a set of 'rules' but as a resource for ethical decision-making. 

Marshall McLuhan on Commercial and Public Media

In June 1977, McLuhan visited Australia and was a guest on Monday Conference, a popular live ABC television show hosted by Robert Moore.

In this excerpt Professor McLuhan takes a swipe at public broadcasting, then he can be heard just off-mic, saying to Moore, "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have to sneak off and have a pee!".

McLuhan debated his ideas with Moore and took questions from a feisty studio audience made up of members of the media and advertising industry, including TV boss Bruce Gyngell (see Part One at 14 mins), and young Derryn Hinch (see Part Two from 3 mins). For full interview go to http://abc.net.au/rn/mcluhan/videos.htm


McLuhan had been brought to Australia to address a broadcasting conference organised by Sydney radio station 2SM, and the Monday Conference was broadcast from the ballroom of the Sydney Hilton Hotel.

Lecture Seven

As defined in the 2006 WGBH Educational Foundation Conference: Open Content and Public Broadcasting, public media is, "in general, media whose mission is to serve or engage a public". In this, its primary focus is not to turn a profit, but to be of public service.  

Including traditional publicly-funded broadcasters and networks as well as public uses of new platforms and distribution mechanisms (eg. Internet, podcasting, blogging), the public media landscape is comprised of ABC, SBS and their digital channels in the realms of television and radio. 

The international public media landscape is far-reaching:

Unlike profit-driven commercial media, whose business is in generating audiences, public media is primarily government funded and exists in support of public and democratic processes. This public value, according to the BBC, concerns imbedding a 'public service ethos', weighing public value against market impact, and public consultation or interactivity. 

More extensively, the Broadcasting Research Unit defined public service broadcasting as involving:

- Geographical universality

- Universality of appeal 

- Special provision for minorities

- A special relationship to the sense of national identity and community

- A distancing from all vested interests

- Competition in good programming rather than competition for numbers

- Guidelines which liberate rather than restrict 

The ABC is responsible for producing television channels such as ABC, ABC 2 and 3, ABC News 24, as well as ABC radio stations like Radio National and Triple J. It comprises many interest areas such as documentaries, comedy, religious programming, science, drama and news. It was founded as a "nation building project" - a tacit answer to the kind of nation we thought we would be - and is seen as reaching far and deep into Australian minds. 

The SBS produces SBS, SBS 1 and 2 and SBS radio. It was launched primarily as a result of Paul Keating's 'Creative Nation' initiative as a keen multicultural channel, "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". Therefore, its interest areas were highly concentrated on world news, current affairs, Indigenous cultural works as well as sport, comedy and reality. 

The function of public media can be seen as nationally centred - thereby encouraging nation building, nation heritage, national identity and national conversations - focussing on 'the press', entertainment, utility, social and propaganda. Although public media is of public service, it is still commercially associated. These associations evidence themselves in programs like BBC Worldwide, ABC Commercial as well as things like The World Game Shop and PBS. These are money-making mechanisms which are put into action in order to recycle as funding towards further publicly-concerned programs. Of course, a primary component of public media is news, with 41% of the Australian public getting their news from the ABC. Considering the number of news outlets available in our country, this is quite an outstanding figure!

The serious, broadsheet, importance-focussed and considered style of public media is criticised as being boring, elitist, of limited interest, poorly presented and out of touch. However, as Robert Richter maintains, public media is the last bastion of long-form investigative media, voicing opinions largely "ignored by commercial media". 

Challenges of public media, like commercial media, is attaining and maintaining an audience. In order to do this it may be necessary for public media to improve its quality, become more relevant, engage with the democratic process, inform the public and aim for independence - which is difficult when it is government funded. However, its ownership by the government means an ownership by the people, thus public benefit must prevail. Its independence, however, must survive possible allegations of bias and agenda, opinion and funding difficulties. 

The SBS and ABC are highly influential broadcasting mediums within our Australian society. I believe the ABC is governed by a character to ensure independence, objectivity and national representation. However, in programs such as The Drum, the shift to more opinion-based commentary is prevalent. I see SBS as reflecting the diversity of Australia in its championing of a multiplicity of voices. I fully support its privileging of ethics, which I believe should underpin the practice of journalism. 

Distinguishing public from commercial

Nigel Milan

"The difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens"

- Nigel Milan, former Managing Director of SBS

Trust and Interest in Commercial Media

Nine's, "The ones you can trust" and Seven's, "The one to watch" are words heard in almost every Australian household. Commercial media seeks to familiarise itself with its audience - gaining their trust and attention in order to survive.

For example, Seven's Sunrise, the country's top-rating breakfast television show, aims to achieve a familial environment . "There is a suggestion of a living room in the arrangement of chairs and furniture", and keen faces press against the windows that open onto Martin Place - Sydney's main thoroughfare. These faces are those of the 'Sunrise family'. Being a proper member of the sunrise family involves signing up online, where you receive newsletters and discounts at certain shops and are able to send stories into the show - "The show's website boasts that its point of difference is that viewers set the agenda."

As Margaret Simons said in her fabulous book, "The Content Makers",

"Mel and Kochie are parents. They know what it means - they smile ruefully at the audience and at each other - to be up all night with a crying baby. The Mother's Group will be up soon. Breaking news passes on a ticker at the bottom of the screen - war, politicians' claims, the weather - while Kochie and Mel smile and chat and follow up the issues that drive viewers' lives, still trying to send them into the day with a smile."

The competition between news stations is palpable. They need to be creative with not only their content but their method of distribution. Channel Nine is known for its closed-off culture, where what they give is dependent solely on the value of what they can take. Simons spoke of not even being able to get an interview with the network, one of their corporate public relations "hacks" in fact saying, "What's in it for us?". Contrastingly, she presents her interaction with Channel Seven as "light and friendly" as she was "welcomed into the newsroom" personally by their news director, Chris Willis.

Ratings are the tell-all of commercial media success. "Every morning they hit the desk of the newsroom executives, and there are teams of specialists who analyse them. They show, minute by minute, how each channel rated the previous day. It is possible to see the movement of the audience - not only what they watched, but when they switched channels, where they went and for how long, and who switched off altogether." It has been found that there are some "reliable turn-ons and turn-offs", which lend themselves to the value of that which is concerned with everyday life - health and transport news, for example, followed by what is happening in the viewer's locality and "stuff about the weirdness of folk". It is also said that any picture of politicians in Parliament causes the ratings graphs to dive. "It's so grey in there", Chris Willis says, "People switch off in droves".

It is also made evident that television news cannot cover everything, or even most things. "Television must have pictures...It's not like newspapers, where there are dozens of people and dozens of stories. A camera crew and reporter might hang around somewhere all day waiting for the shot. A news item that takes one and a half minutes to tell might take an hour and a half to edit, and getting the story might take a whole day. 'You have to be selective' says Willis...The big push at Channel Seven is to be more proactive, to move away from following up what was in the morning's newspapers." In this, it shows the need for individuality in order to attain interest from which they can gain trust. They must strive for originality and interactivity.

"The way of the future is interactivity, says Peter Meakin. That's why Sunrise has been such a success, 'because of the feel and the reality of constant interaction with the viewers.' Interactivity is the means by which free-to-air television can, if it wishes, campaign - at least on issues the public is already concerned about. In 2006, Sunrise launched a 'Cool the Globe' campaign on global warming, including regular items on how to reduce power consumption and offers of a free kit for viewers with a form letter to be sent to politicians...In November the Sunrise presenters took part in protest marches calling for government action on global warming. The Sunrise program became greenhouse=gas neutral, adding up all the energy used by cameras, lights and so forth and reducing it or offsetting it by planting trees. It became the first media outlet to be declared Greenhouse Friendly by the Federal Government. The proper position for a television station, says Meakin, is to be a little ahead of the audience but not too far ahead."

 VS. 

The role and influence of media

To be able to participate in community life and make political choices, citizens heavily rely on information. They need to know what is going on and the options that they should weigh, debate and act upon. An essential element for a functioning public sphere, therefore, is information. 

Whereas formerly, communication mostly happened on a face-to-face basis in large and complex societies, (mass) media has evolved as the principal source of information. It acts as a transport medium for the information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere. Ideally there should be a wide range of media, that represent the diverse opinions and viewpoints on issues of public interest existent in a society and which are independent of the state and society's dominant economic forces.

Media, therefore, decides which topics and issues are on the agenda or not; which individuals or societal groups are given broadcasting time or publishing space and which aspects and facts are presented or suppressed. The media has the ability to influence public opinion and those controlling the media are to a certain extent capable of altering the nature of discourse in their desired direction.

The Public Sphere - Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

According to social critic and philosopher Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."

The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publications of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. This notion of the public sphere is produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies, the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.

Media Watch

"There was a time, not so long ago, when running a media company - be it one that specialised in newspapers, in radio, in television, or in all three - was a pretty simple job.
Keep the costs within bounds, use your clout to ensure that governments didn't permit too much competition, make sure your content delivered audiences of a quality and in a quantity that your advertisers expected, and the money rolled in."

- Johnathon Holmes

Johnathon Homes speaks to Fairfax Media's CEO, Greg Hywood:

Some very interesting and quite profound words, I believe, were spoken by Hywood in this interview:
"Just because you're interested in celebrity...doesn't mean that you're not interested in what's happening in Libya, or...in the Japanese earthquake, or what's happening with economic policy out of Canberra. People can juggle a lot of balls"

Lecture Six

The Australian media landscape is comprised of commercial and public media. This week's focus was on that of commercial media.

As we discovered in the lecture, commercial media is a proft-driven media production which exists so that, according to Dr. Bruce Redman, advertisers can "get to the eyes and ears of the viewer". A risky business, its survival depends solely on business success generated through its selling of advertising to the audience. Thus, commercial media is driven by this audience and the quality of its ratings.

The major players in the Australian commercial media arena are News Limited, Fairfax Media, APN news and media, Nine entertainment company, WIN corporation, Southern Cross Broadcasting, Seven West Media, and the Ten network holdings.

We learnt that their production varies within the commercial realm. News Limited produces newspapers, cable TV, film, magazines, books and sports such as The Australian, Foxtel, 20th Century Fox, Harper Collins Publishers and NRL coverage. Fairfax produces chiefly newspapers and digital media such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, domain.com.au and RSVP. APN generates regional newspapers, digital media, radio and outdoor advertising such as The Gympie Times, finda, 97.3FM and Adshel. Nine entertainment co. are obviously associated with free to air tv, but also magazines, digital media and events like Channel 9, GO, Women's Weekly, ninemsn and ticketek. WIN is interested in free to air TV, radio, sport and tele-comms such as WIN television, i98FM, St. George Illawarra football team and TPG, whereas Southern Cross is only concerned with free to air TV and radio like Southern Cross Ten and b105 (105.3FM). Seven West Media has its interests vested in free to air TV, newspapers, magazines and digital media such as 7 and its associated channels, Sky News, Who and Yahoo 7. Finally, Ten is more focussed in its commercial interests, only producing free to air TV like ten, one HD and 11.

The more minor players in the commercial media field are Telstra, Optus, Macquarie and Austar.

Commercial media's form is obviously commercial, fuelled by subscription (eg. foxtel), sponsored (eg. channel nina) and subsidised (government) dollars. Its function is threefold - commercial, propaganda and social.

The Hutchins Commission of 1947 established that the social responsibility of the media in a democracy was to be:
1. a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning;
2. a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism;
3. the projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society;
4. the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society;
5. full access to the day's intelligence

Despite this, it is still queried whether or not commercial media can deliver on both commercial and social functions. I believe this is a very appropriate question to be asked in today's society where money is so frequently the primary concern. Like anything else which impinges on the goings on of everyday life, commercial media is controlled by formal state requirements, legal prescription and state oversight.

In order to guarantee these commercial-social functions, there exists something known as "the public sphere" (Jurgen Habermas), which is a space between commerce and government where people can debate freely and form public opinion.

The style of commercial media proves to produce quite negative results. John McManus explains it as being "corrupt" and "lack[ing] quality". Not only this, but he sees it to be something where "profit over-rides social responsibility". Professor Michael Bromley sees the sheer commercialisation of this form of media to be "at the expense of their social function" which is "a zero-sum game". The style lends itself to a universal 'dumbing-down' of news and information as well as tabloidisation, the 'desire to please' and 'mickey mouse' news. 

There are numerous challenges associated with commercial media these days. Firstly, advertising revenue is down and continues to go down. A loss of revenue leads to a loss of investment which leads to less money for quality production and finally more bought-in, unoriginal content as well as sitcom repeats. On the Internet the evidence is in the number of 'clicks' that each story attracts. This reveals that the popularity of tabloids and the superficial trumps hard-hitting news. Despite this, there are business solutions such as an increase in quality, greater competition and a move to digital by enforcing paywalls or the like. 

The future of commercial media can be seen alternatively in relation to corporate media dominance vs. an expanded public sphere, government interference or a new business plan like that of The Global Mail which almost heroically proclaims, "our audience is our only agenda". 

A heavily content-based lecture, it is interesting to reflect afterwards on the immense commercialisation of broadcasting in the Australian media landscape. The decrease in news quality in favour of money, through superficial tabloid stories, says an awful lot about the similarly diminishing values of our privileged society. Considering the fact that we are so incredibly immersed in commercial media on a daily basis, it is worrying to know that its content is frivolous at best. Triviality is a primary issue in relation to commercial media quality. I think it is important that my generation reconsiders the focus of Australian media's efforts. 

Wall Street Journal and TIME

My two favourite news blogs:

http://lightbox.time.com/

LightBox, a new blog by TIME’s photo department, explores how photography, video and the culture of images define today’s world. They seek to immerse the viewer in the visual side of the news and highlight photography that pushes boundaries in the art world. Working with some of the most iconic image-makers of the day, TIME magazine has always tried to showcase the best photojournalism - letting readers witness what is happening on the front lines and giving them a chance to examine, through portraits, the faces of the people who are changing history. 

http://blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/

Photo Journal is produced by the photo editors of The Wall Street Journal. From their commissioned projects to world news stories and national coverage, Photo Journal shares the best of news photography. Not only featuring enthralling images and their supporting articles but also links to other areas within the WSJ site, this blog gives an in-depth and aesthetically pleasing view into the stories featured in the renowned Wall Street Journal.

Take a peek: blogs I love

Here are the links to my five favourite blogs:

http://www.thesartorialist.com/

The pioneer of fashion photography in the blogging arena, Scott Schuman's 'The Sartorialist' is my very favourite fashion blog. In creating this blog, he sought to develop a two-way dialogue about the world of fashion and its relationship with every day life. Most of his images are raw street-photography shots, echoing how the eyes of the fashion industry view everyday trends.

http://www.garancedore.fr/en/

A French illustrator and keen fashionista, Garance Dore's blog began simply as an arena for the display of her drawings and snippets of her daily life in an attempt to connect more directly with readers. It has now grown into an extremely successful site, with her love of fashion at its core. Inspired by The Sartorialist, her focus is now chiefly on fashion photography, shooting international editorials and ad campaigns. Her blog is her source of freedom.

http://www.stylelist.com/

Stylelist is a go-to blog for all things from fashion and celebrities, to journalism and culture. It is a hybrid of photographic pieces, journalistic entries, advice forums, videos, news, design and entertainment. I love how it employs a range of interest areas within which all different voices are heard. It is very socially-aware and it accumulates the knowledge of professionals from every field. Always a good read!

http://elephantine.typepad.com/elephantine/page/1/

I stumbled across Rachel Ball's blog, Elephantine, only recently. However, it has now become a daily fixture in my blog crawl! An endearingly simplistic and 'pretty' blog, she uses her page as a forum for collecting and sharing the things she likes, specifically fashion, accessories, housewares and photography. Her history in design evidences itself in every element of her blog. I love her unique and natural photography, beautifully shot videos, and 'Friday Fiction' - a weekly installation in which she writes very short narratives which are always a pleasure to read.

http://lingeredupon.blogspot.com.au/

I found this blog, Lingered Upon, by clicking on its link which was featured on Elephantine's favourite blog list, and it has become one of my new faves too! Alice Gao, the blog's creator, says the title was taken from one of her favourite T.S. Elliot poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". This literary reference immediately had me interested! She said that in this arena the words lend themselves to her lingering upon a moment, a simple reality, and capturing it in photograph form - "photos and accumulations of small realities", she says. Her images are absorbing, her words beautifully crafted and the layout homely and clean.

Jouir!!

In the words of Goodman, Woolf and Duras...

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

ELLEN GOODMAN, Boston Globe, 1993

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Common Reader

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.

MARGUERITE DURAS, foreward, Outside: Selected Writings

Lecture Five

Having explored, in the last two lectures, the innate value of text and imagery in the field of journalism, it was only natural to address the one remaining sensory element - sound.

A uniquely structured lecture, it required us to listen to two radio interview podcasts - one with Richard Fidler, a well-known ABC radio reporter, and the other with Steve Austin, a Brisbane-based broadcaster who currently hosts the Morning show on 612 ABC. As they spoke of their personal views on becoming radio journalists and the nature of their role, they agreed upon the fact that they can be viewed as doing a public service - asking questions the public seek answers to, probing contentious topics and harnessing raw emotion. Both reporters held the position that interviews on radio have the ability to carry much more impact than those in newspapers and magazines, as the listener is presented with not only what the answer is, but how it is answered. As Fidler communicates, radio is a much more "intimate" forum than many other journalistic mediums. It is free from the distractions of advertisements or competing headlines, thus able to focus completely on a single story, emotion, word or breath.

Both Fidler and Austin's associations with talk-back radio mean that their interaction with emotional interviews rather than mere informational interviews, are plentiful. Although this dialogue can be tricky to navigate at once probingly and respectfully, good reporting has the power to cover all shades and colours of human emotional experiences - from the happiness of the sporting record breaker to the helplessness of a mother whose child is missing. Both reporters maintain that in these journalistic environments, silence is as powerful as any spoken word. And this pertains to both parties. Silence from the interviewee can express a state of incommunicable turmoil or thoughtful pause, while the same from the interviewer can illustrate an environment of respectful listening and comfort. Fidler and Austin both place great value in employing silence in this regard.

There also seems to be great importance in putting aside the interviewer's personal agenda and approaching the subject both objectively and curiously. A genuine interest in what the person has to say will create a comfortable atmosphere, which increases the possibility for deeper, revealing responses. As Austin said, "a magic moment is when someone reveals something about themselves personally", where the interview flows so effortlessly that the knowledge of place and time is no longer necessary.

Radio is an arena in which one can let their guard down - but only if the interview is conducted effectively with utmost investigative grace.

The Radio Reporter

The job of the reporter is to "get the information, get the audio, get it right, and get it on the radio - and fast." Radio reporters know where to go to get information and the best people to talk to. They have an instinctive "nose for news". Hard work, enthusiasm, determination and attention to detail lie behind every well-reported story.

As broadcast journalists, Paul Chantler and Peter Stewart proclaim: "Reporting is probably the most exciting part of radio journalism. By doing what radio does best - going on air from a scene quickly and describing a dramatic event so listeners can visualise what is happening - we are using the most powerful tools we possess: immediacy and imagery."

A good reporter needs a touch of scepticism or suspicion. They tend to accept little at face value and often realise that lurking behind a chance remark, a single fact, a few obscure sentences or an official silence, there may be more to be revealed. The ability to create 'word pictures' which so vividly recreate an event, a mood or an emotion is one of the most powerful and compelling tools available to journalists in every field.

Radio Journalism

Radio journalism is the most primitive broadcasting form. Its purpose has shifted over time from being an instrument of propaganda, to one which circulates news and debate (as well as a source of entertainment). In the last few years we have begun to experience the impact of a new technological revolution which has radically changed the efficiency and way that radio journalists can operate. The digital age, 'multimedia' and the implications of communication through the Internet have liberated journalists from the viewpoint of individual research, and expanded the opportunity of freedom of expression and commercial application of radio news operations.

Gone are the days where the word 'journalism' conjured up images of newsrooms thundering with the clatter of manual typewriters, the cries of copy tasters and the litter of analogue tape. Radio is now a fast-moving medium of broadcast news, where journalists are at the mercy of a telephone call and a clock, seeking the fastest possible release of quality information. There has undoubtedly been widespread warning that radio is a dying medium; a mere victim of television's popularity and remorseless expansion. Yet much evidence points not only to radio's survival, but its success far beyond the expectations of its fiercest critics.

Radio paints the pictures that television shoots, honouring the beauty and power of language. It is this assertion that eliminates the lingering criticism that radio journalism is simply an interruption of music output. The innate value of news as being discovered through individual efforts must prevail over that which simply appears on a screen.