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piperwrightportfolio · 11 months

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Colour story on a fellow student (week 7)

20-year-old RMIT student journalist Aliyah Bilal describes tertiary education as “a rocky start”

We both sat in a cramped corner of a university building, Aliyah sat confidently ready to tell her story.

“I definitely was not in the best mind frame when I started uni”. She said.

“I had a lot of anxiety and I premeditated that it would be stressful even before orientation,” she said.

“I left high school at year eleven,” and she did “a two-year diploma in music” which helped her gain entry university.

“I never really thought uni was an option for me,” she “didn't want to do VCE,” she said.

“I thought I was going to be a musician that’s what I had be passionate about for most of my life,” she said.

“I went into that diploma at seventeen and I wasn’t taken seriously” and “I wasn’t really supported by my teachers,” she said.

“But I think the diploma helped me with my attitude when it came to university,” she said.

Aliyah started fiddling with her jumper sleeve.

“I’d been professionally trained as a singer for thirteen years and I didn’t really want to do anything else,” she said.

“But when push came to shove,” and when “covid happened I had to think about what kind of life I wanted,” she said.

“Since being out of school for so long I never really knew how to study properly,” she said.

“I always felt a little bit stupid,” and that “I wasn’t as smart as the other kids I still deal with that now,” she said.

“I think studying at RMIT helped me,” I know “I need to be the one asking questions and not be afraid to look stupid,” she said.

“I know I felt more confident,” at RMIT “because I had already overcome those obstacles and completed a course,” she said.

“It kind of cemented the hope I had in finishing this course,” she said.

“My elective economics I find I'm doing the best at,” she said.

“I don’t think any of the work is out of my realm of capabilities,” she said.

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piperwrightportfolio · 11 months

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Pitch (Week 10)

Dear Mr Long, I’m a first-year student journalist at RMIT university. Would you be interested in a hard news and a partner colour story about how a first nations community feel about the issue of the Voice.

The first nations people live on a reserve in Lake Tyers, East Gippsland and have their own secluded community. I have exclusive access to two sources from the reserve the CEO and social health and wellbeing officer. Through research I have found no one else has been able to interview the community about issues they are facing, this story will be of public interest.

Look forward to hearing from you!

-Piper

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piperwrightportfolio · 11 months

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Assessment # 2 (covering local angle to The Voice)

Senior staff at Lake Tyres Health and Children Services express support for The Voice but urge caution.

Mikaila Sharkie is the current CEO of Lake Tyres Health and Children Services .

“It’s a step in the right direction,” but “It's far from ideal and I hope there's more work to be done,” said Sharkie.

“They must have a very clear way they want to approach,” the referendum “but they won't share it,” Said Sharkie

“My fear and because we don’t have enough information about it will work it won't be a fair representation,” Said Sharkie.

“Because its so divided the first nations people its split down the middle whether they want treaty but there's a fear that they’ll loose sovereignty once its put in the constitution,” Said Sharkie.

Carol Woodward is the Ex Social health and wellbeing officer at Lake Tyres Health and Children Services.

“It's personally important to me,” to vote yes “because I worked at Lakes Tyres trust for five years,” said Woodward.

“I highly agree,” the voice needs to be “broadened to include everyone,” said Woodward.

“People in the voice need to be accountable for their actions,” said Woodward.

Woodward and Sharkie are both voting “Yes” for the voice referendum.

Colour story

East Gippsland student social worker expresses distrust with The Voice because of Australia's racist history.

Pauline is a 20-year-old student studying to be a social worker and help incarcerated first nations youth. She has a passion for social justice and hopes to advance reconciliation.

“I'm proud of my heritage I'm a Gurnai women from the East Gippsland region,” said Maynard.

She wears small earrings in the colour of the first nations flag and sits in front of framed photos of friends and family.

Maynard doesn’t trust the lack of information provided about what the voice entails. She described it as “Shooting ducks in the dark” and “Guesswork.”

“I'm not voting for anything,” and “I know I'm an outlier among my community,” she said.

“We don’t even know if we’ll be able to even vote for our representatives on the voice board,” she said.

“80 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people support the Voice.” Reported research firm IPSOS.

This isn’t the first time she’s “distrusted the government” regarding laws about first nations people.

“It’s not just I don’t trust the government I don’t trust they have our best interests in mind,” she said.

Maynard knows this is a “sentiment still held by the First Nations community.”

“People want more information and it’s just not being released,” you can’t “trust people who hide things,” she said.

“I don’t see how the voice can make a difference” she added.

There's a single pamphlet on the coffee table about the rates of incarcerated aboriginal youth.

“Young Indigenous Australians aged 10–17 were 26 times as likely as young non‑Indigenous Australians to be in detention.” reported the AIHW

“Australia can often be divided at times in these situations rightfully so,” but the voice could pass “Possibly” she said.

Maynard understands “The Voice will most likely pass,” but has “hope it won't,.”

“Hell it was only in 2006 that the Victorian government passed cultural heritage laws for us,” she said.

“I think there's better ways to advance the reconciliation journey Australia is taking,” but “the voice can be a steppingstone towards the journey I guess,” she said.

“I believe we should be focusing on a treaty if anything really,” she said.

The treaty is “to acknowledge the sovereignty of First Nations and to improve the lives of First Peoples.”

“I just don’t want to go backwards that would be terrifying,” Maynard said.

Reflection

My hard news story and my partner colour story are vastly different as I expected. With the colour story I of course struggled a bit since it was my first time doing it but the examples in the modules helped a lot. I realized when adding colour and making the news soft you need to make it sound human. I described the rooms where I interviewed my source, and I wrote down some revelations she had so instead of just quoting things directly. I would add “my source understands that” this makes it a bit more interesting and softer.

I quite enjoyed the aspect of adding in some statistics, as I noticed soft news did include them and statistics can be important when it comes to voting situations like The Voice referendum. Furthermore with soft news I experimented with some adjectives but decided too leave majority of them out.

I felt more confident with my hard news story. I kept to the formular of a strong lead, quotes, context, and no adjectives. I used this second hard news story to try and improve my mistakes from my first assignment. I spent more time on my grammar and punctuation as that was an area I was weak in last time. I read some hard news stories and re read my first assignment just to prep myself. Overall, I was fine doing the hard news story It was just a formular I needed to follow.

I felt more at ease interviewing my sources this time. I had one phone interview and two in person interviews. My phone interview was with Mikaila Sharkie who was the CEO of Lake Tyres Health and Childrens services. Because speaking over the phone can be quite awkward, I remained upbeat throughout the whole interview. I'd ask her questions off the record to show that I was interested in the topic she responded to that very positively.

Carol Woodward was my first in person interview. We met at a café and I brought her a cup of tea, the interview was quite easy but I could tell she had rehearsed lines or had response already made up which made some of my quotes from her not very interesting.

Pauline who was a distant cousin of my First source in my hard news story. Breeanna helped me contact her Pauline had some interesting views about some laws the government had passed. Her studying to be a social worker and focus on first nations youth made me believe that her opinion was newsworthy. I held the interview like a conversation, and this put Pauline more at ease I believe.

I kept my questions open ended to get as much information as possible and to understand what viewpoints people held.

Overall, in this assignment I learned how to make news softer, polished my interviewing skills a bit more and practiced hard news writing a bit more. I also believe this assignment will help me with polishing some pieces of my portfolio as well.

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piperwrightportfolio · 11 months

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Assignment #1 ( Covering a public speech)

Patricia Karvelas calls out lack of diversity in Journalism industry.

First Nations people experience pressure from society to “agree” on everything while only having stories of “conflict” and “doom” reported about them said Journalist Patrcia Karvelas.

According to Karvelas “social unrest thrives where we lose the ability to understand each other, "at the RMIT capitol theater during her professorial lecture.

Ms. Karvelas lecture covered “power, diversity and gatekeepers,” and why it needed to be challenged the lecture took place March 9th.

The lecture examined the lack of “diversity” within journalism and how “successful” stories about diverse communities were not reported on but instead “conflict” and “gloom” were.

Ms. Karvelas drew on her own experiences in newsrooms being a queer “Greek woman,”.

Breeanna Maynard a queer GurnaiKurnai person who is a small business owner in East Gippsland believes “conflict” is needed.

“Conflict is an important part of change and differing opinions in the first nations community should be valid,” said Breeanna Maynard.

“White people shouldn’t have opinions on matters affecting the aboriginal community because it ends up invalidating the whole community, "Maynard said.

Ms. Karvelas used her previous experience as an “indigenous affair reporter,” to add perspective to issues the first nations community are experiencing in the media.

“No one ever expects all white people to agree on things,” but as soon as first nations people disagree “lets smash everything they have to say,” Ms. Karvelas said.

Journalist report stories about conflict within the first nations community to “Elevate conflict for conflicts sake,” even though “it’s democracy,” Ms. Karvelas said.

“Voices and experiences should be first nations when it’s relevant to our stories,” and “not anyone else,” said Maynard.

“Our good stories are gatekept because they don’t follow the stereotype and that makes it less interesting too white people,” said Maynard.

Contact for Breeanna Maynard: [email protected]

Hard news story.

My first hard news story had many ups and downs.

Firstly, I recognize that I was able to obtain a source easily. I recognize that they were not the most newsworthy source out of the others I contacted, but I was able to get a young queer First Nations voice as my source. Which was what I aimed for and thought would suit the speech. sources I contacted sources such as elders from Gurnai country they were probably reluctant to speak. One Aunty declined, and others never replied to my emails.

I conducted a phone interview since my source was four hours away in Orbost East Gippsland, and neither of us could make a trip that suited us both. A challenge I found with phone interviews is how awkward they can be. I couldn’t follow techniques to put my interviewee at ease, such as eye contact and smiling. To combat this, I made myself sound enthusiastic and told a few jokes to appear more casual. I also had a list of questions, but I tried to make it a conversation and steer it organically into the direction of what I wanted to ask.

A big challenge I encountered was how journalism writing is different from essay writing in secondary school. As I graduated in 2022, essay-style writing was engrained in me. It took me a while to start using simpler words, such as "said" instead of "shrieked” I second guessed myself a lot throughout that process. Another struggle was keeping each sentence under 25 words and getting to the point each time, I had to be sure each word I wrote was needed and wasn’t taking up space.

To uphold journalism's democratic function, I

I did no harm to my source Breeanna Maynard. I wrote down their quotes accurately and did not take them out of context and checked while writing my hard news story that I represented what they said correctly.

I told Maynard that they had the freedom to say anything they wanted in response to my questions and that I am unbiased throughout my writing of my hard news story.

Throughout my hard news story, I kept it balanced with the number of quotes I used for Maynard and Karvelas. I did not give one source more part of the story than the other.

I kept both Maynard and Karvelas’s quotes accurate. I did not change them, nor did I change the context.

I attempted to be fair in my hard news story as I wanted to feature a voice who has experienced issues brought up by Karvelas. I chose Maynard as my source because they are first nations and experience issues from the media portraying their community as doomed.

A tip I learned from one of the lectures was to read out news stories while having a heavy bass song playing in the background. I believe it has helped and I’ll be reading out my news stories to Daft Punk from now on.

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