Life as a Herald Sun intern: journo students spill
Internships are an essential experience for student journalists. They give us real-life experience in a newsroom and allow students to publish our first tentative copy, our baby steps into the world of journalism. They’re a privilege and they’re a rite of passage.
This is why our world was rocked last week when an anonymous piece was published in Melbourne University magazine Farrago by student Sasha Burden claiming to reveal a misogynistic, callous culture at the Herald Sun. She objected to the “heteronormative, white, elitist opinions” expressed by the paper’s journalists, which included an editorial discussion about breast implants on pigs, or “perky porkers” and a request that a female journalist needed to write an article about liking chocolate.
The first response of many people at my university was that she had crippled internship programs across the profession. There would be less incentive to treat us as adults any more and we could probably expect chillier receptions in the future. As a senior journalist at the ABC tweeted, “Interns will be less trusted from now on”.
A large number of my peers have had internships at the Herald Sun, as well as other publications such as the Colac Herald, the Examiner and the Melbourne Weekly. Many of the people I spoke to felt that a lot of what Burden saw is part and parcel of working in a newsroom, or anywhere for that matter.
“A workplace is a microcosm of society,” said a former journalism student who now works at the ABC and asked for her name not to be published. “You will meet people with uneducated and confronting views. If every intern was to whistleblow on their employer, we’d uncover a shitstorm. An internship is about tact and maturity — something this intern lacked in my opinion. If anything, it just proved she’s far too inexperienced to be working in a newsroom with adults.”
Others said they had simply never experienced anything like what she described. RMIT student Andrea Nierhoff, who has interned at three separate publications, spoke positively of her experiences as an intern at the Herald Sun.
“I didn’t find anything shocking or any evidence of prejudiced attitudes. And I wouldn’t have been particularly shocked if I had. From what I saw, everyone was respectful and understanding. I especially didn’t find anything that made me think twice about the paper or the journalism industry in general,” she said.
A former Monash University student, who spent several months at the Herald Sun and also wished to remain anonymous, admitted she found the experience at times confronting and overwhelming.
“Sometimes I was shocked at the line that the paper took on what their target audience was. They took it so seriously,” she said. “It could make things a bit repetitive. Whenever we went out to do vox pops we had to find a tradie, young mothers, a token old person, the same kind of things all the time. Another reporter and I once spent hours driving around Melbourne looking for a tradie and when we found one I was so grateful I didn’t wait for the car to stop, I just jumped out.”
However despite this she said she never had any problem with the culture at the paper.
“I genuinely found them to be the nicest people. There may be a line that the Herald Sun took on certain issues, but the thing I have to stress with that is that it isn’t the people in the newsroom. It’s just the line they have to take,” she said.
Many of the former interns I spoke to said they found the experience intense and unexpected. Some others thought they had to roll with the punches and learn from the team rather than questioning their editorial policy. All said they had never seen anything particularly offensive in their time working in the industry.
RMIT student Annie Kearney, who also interned the Herald Sun, said perhaps Burden just didn’t know what she was getting herself into. “I think she didn’t understand what it was going to be like. A lot of people finish a degree in journalism and they don’t know what a newsroom will be like. People come out of university and it’s a very PC, learning environment where everyone wants to learn and then they go into an area where it’s high pressure and intense and they’re shocked. It’s not pretend in a newsroom.”
She lost me completely when she suggested that having doors opened for her or being invited to leave a lift first was ‘blatantly s_xist’. And there was me thinking I was courteous (which I’m happy to be for people of either gender, race, orientation etc etc).
Can’t be a journo without a thick skin and a decent helping of diplomacy. And, more broadly, sometimes you just have to deal with people you don’t like, n matter the workplace.
It may have been a bit oversensitive on the interns part, but fascinating to see that many believe an intern telling a story about the inside of a newsroom is somehow taboo. That’s a kind of weird and glass jaw media culture isn’t it? She’s sparked a bit of debate, opened a little crack into a dark place many of us never hear about, but really, if that’s ruined the chances of any future interns blah blah, then there isn’t much point being one it seems.
I don’t think any employer would welcome publication of frank descriptions of their workplace.
What a feeble attempt to get in on this story — a patchy collection of vox pops and opinion quotes.
This adds nothing. It does not address the issues raised in the intern’s piece, aside from reflecting some institutional bias towards the status quo.
Having worked in both Fairfax & New Ltd newsrooms , the happier lot were always at News .
That was well over 10 years ago. It’s probably all fear and loathing now with the everyone facing the axe.
Surely we should be celebrating that universities in this country are still producing thinking individuals who can challenge the dominant paradigm and articulate a different perspective? I don’t necessarily agree with Ms Burden’s views, but I applaud that she can see a future that is vastly different, full of diversity, more egalitarian and less ignorant. Her story reminds me of the kind of articles I wrote for the university newspaper when I was an undergraduate. While it is likely that her approach will, like most of us, mellow over time, I am certainly keen to encourage her to continue to stand by her values speak out for what she believes in. I would like to believe that is what journalism is about. Certainly, when I was 20 I did believe that was what journalism was about.
Thank goodness we can focus on the naivete of a uni student rather than the culture of entrenched bigotry which was just exposed in the offices of Australia’s best circulating newspaper. How will we try to out-cynic each other next week?
Hmmm. Sounds as though the RMIT journalism course continues to manufacture clones who desperately want yes-man jobs rewriting press releases at august publications such as the Colac Herald. Failing that, they do an internship writing muddled pieces for Crikey.
And “investigative journalism”? Investigating what journalists do, instead of what the rubes are up too? How novel.
What good’s a “degree in journalism” for anyone surrendering their future to Limited News, to become a hack? As much use as a pockets in a jock-strap.
“You will meet people with uneducated and confronting views. If every intern was to whistleblow on their employer, we’d uncover a shitstorm”
You are supposed to keep quiet about it, is the attitude of our now ABC journo, since to do otherwise would be so ‘immature’. Wow, how big and adult we are now. Don’t worry, the ordinary views show and that’s why many of us are voting with our coin and not buying a newspaper.
And as for not whistle-blowing , sounds more like conspiring and wimpy, to keep the nasty little culture alive and well. If a few insiders had come out openly, over the years, about the “line” they were supposed to take, while working in our anything but independent media, the fourth estate might not be in the wretched state it is in today.
Imagine if someone in one of Murdoch’s UK papers had outed what they (especially the “investigative journalist bits”, hacking away) were doing? Earlier?
But what would that have done to their Murdochracy and his thrall?
I cannot believe the fuss being made about an article in a student newspaper. Over the years they have published all sorts of things and usually it has to be way more outrageous than this to cause such notoriety. Everyone need to get over it and stop being such whiny babies because someone points out the obvious in a student newspaper. So what if she was sensitive and critical of the Herald Sun? Can’t they happily look after themselves or is it necessary to victimise a 20 year old girl? (I’m just guessing her age here) I really can’t believe I needed to say this at all. It’s a fuss about nothing.
Wot Lance & Klweso sed - not standing up to crap means that it persists and taints all. OH but we got mortgages and anyhoo, what’s the prob with chocolate implants in a pig’s arse?
Its a Disgrace ! And a brutal waste of chocolate !
Don’t worry Ben, I don’t think the article written by Anonymous/Sasha Burden will in anyway endanger your future as slave labour at the Newscorp mill. And if the vox pops of your fellow interns are really representative of the state of young journalist thinking, there’s absolutely no danger that you’ll be treated as adults.
Or to put things in terms to which you “kidlets”can relate - Mad Men is satire, not a reality show.
What SOTTILE6 said…
Seems the public’s right to know stops at the meedja’s front door.
What a bleating, snivelling mob of hypocrites, no wonder they’re one of the least trusted professions.
…. though why someone with apparently some sense of justice and sanity chose to work at the Herald Sun and was then shocked that they were a bunch of bottom feeders would expect sympathy is beyond me.
If only there were more interns with the integrity and honesty to speak out as this woman has done. Bravo Sacha Burden!
Burden’s comments on sexism - which yes, I do agree are over the top and something she’ll probably realise as she gains some maturity and experience in the workplace - have completely overshadowed what I read as her attempt to raise some valid concerns about journalism practice.
Journalism students are taught all the theory of ethics and morals and how to go about writing stories and in this instance, she feels she saw the complete opposite in practice. Being told to write stories in a certain way or ignoring important stories in favour of ‘entertainment’ pieces the reader wants is a reality of newsrooms today - why shouldn’t we question if this is best practice?
Many people are saying ‘that’s just how it is’, but why is that explanation acceptable? Why do we bother teaching journalism students the ethics if that’s NOT how the real world operates?
Her article shows some immaturity and was not written in the best way to present her opinion - which I’m not saying I completely agree with - but at least she’s got balls to speak her mind and stand up for what she believes in.
As a (recent) former editor of a student magazine, I had to cringe reading Burden’s article. It’s not that her idea was bad — an intern’s experience in the newsroom, particularly in the form of an exposé, makes for a great topic — and, like most fashionably-left Crikey-trawling journalism students, I’m always down for a bit of News Limited bashing. What bothers me about her piece, mainly, is its tone: politically correct to the point of obsession; irritatingly over-sensitive; and, most discomfortingly, an acute intolerance for dissenting opinion. There’s a touch of hypocrisy there too: joking about a pinata of Andrew Bolt’s head, for example, is ok; being called ‘champ’, apparently, is demeaning!
What strikes me about her article is how minor most of her anecdotes are. I could only find a couple that could be described as problematic:
1) Transphobia. As ugly and ignorant as transphobia can be, transsexualism remains one of the last bastions of vilification in Western society. That doesn’t mean that the language employed by the journalist is defensible, but it’s important to remember that such attitudes are widespread. The kind of rhetoric quoted by Burden is, I’m sorry to say, on the mild end of the spectrum. If that’s the worst said in the Herald Sun newsroom, they’re doing better than I thought.
2) Weight prejudice: bravo for beginning the article with it, but… once again, hardly earth-shattering comments.
Otherwise, we’re left with the following accusations:
“A photographer at the pressconference dismissed my concerns that he was taking photos of underage people, saying,“they should be older.””
“A female journalist bizarrely insisted that an article debating the benefits of chocolate should be written by a female.”
“On the seventh day, I was asked to writea story about pigs being used to test breast augmentation in a “humorous” tone. I foundthe proposition absurd and informed my superior that I felt the story was essentially government funded animal cruelty.”
“The senior journalist opposite me moved from transphobia to homophobia on the eighth day, commenting on a recent piece on gay marriage. “Why are they [the gay community] making such a fuss? It’s been this way for millennia, why change now?””
“Throughout the week, I was consistently subjected to patronising attitudes, being referred to as ‘Little Bud’, ‘Champ’ and ‘Kidlet.’”
“Men were also continuously and unnecessarily sexist, waiting for me to walk through doors and leave the elevator before them.”
“These encounters all happened in aperiod of two short weeks — I shudder to think of the other wrongdoings that must take place throughout an entire year. Scenarios like this shouldn’t exist. They shouldn’t be ‘the norm’ or ‘expected’ — especially not for those within the media industry. They should be fought against, yelled at, spat on, and changed.”
Spat on! Well, I think that about sums it up. The conclusion I reach from reading her piece is that it says a lot more about its author than about its subject. As an exposé, it tells us that the Herald Sun is not only a fairly normal newsroom, it’s probably less vulgar and offensive than most of us would have thought. As for holier-than-thou student activists — well, is there really any more we needed to know?
David Heslin
There’s nothing quite like the ideology or indignancy of the young. She’s probably right about the mindset at the Hun but to call courtesy sexism doesn’t help and when you get veterans rubbing up against transient newbies with atitude the p*ss is bound to be taken. The Hun following this up only added to the folly .
Oh, it’s been so much fun to read some of the misguided comments here! I feel like a dolt for not making the intuitive leap from “writing an article that looks at both sides of the issue” to “the author is primping for career as corporate puppet”. It’s so clear now that you’ve pointed it out to me, fellow commenters. So, thankyou.
I think we have to agree that it was brave of Ms. Burden to speak up about her treatment (yes, people in student newspapers are “brave” all the time, but that doesn’t diminish the individual achievement), and frankly it’s refreshing to hear undistilled insights into the attitudes of those who are shaping our nation’s mindset, whether we like it or no. On the other side of that coin, her complaints of “sexism” are as naive and misplaced as anyone ever concerned about the “Yellow peril”. However, these allegations - after all, from a young university student - shouldn’t negate the rest of her claims.
What should negate her claims is that before she set foot in the Herald Sun offices, Ms. Burden appears to have never seen Network, never viewed Mediawatch, and possibly never seen a Herald Sun cover! I think the last quote in the article is the defining word on the subject. It happens to all of us when we leave the nest that is university, but clearly the manufactured world of tertiary education is an ill match for the carefully-crafted environs of the newspaper office. Here’s hoping that little injection of reality has done her good.
At the end of the day, those indignant at the “bottom-feeders” who populate the Herald Sun probably need to just relax, and help change the world from the bottom up. In any democratic society, there will always be bad news outlets, as there will be useless medications, inefficient automobile choices, terrible television, needless skin care products that we buy anyway because they have vanilla in them… okay, maybe that last one’s just me. Point is, the lesson to take away from this “scandal” is not that the Herald-Sun is basically just another type of pulp fiction, more 50 Shades of Gray than “Black, White, and Read All Over”. Instead, we need to realise not everyone knows this! It’s about education: educating our children, our friends, our workmates. For those of us who can distinguish between reputable news sources and candy factories, the Herald Sun is a great laugh each week. No-one should be deprived of that.