TV

Sports presenting on ABC TV

Since February I have been presenting sports on ABC News 24, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s round-the-clock TV news channel. The work is pretty full on – and on any given Saturday afternoon it can involve reporting on four different versions of “football” as well as coverage of sports as diverse as netball, surfing and V8 motorcars.

How do you win the Coleman Medal in the AFL? Where is The NRL Bunker located? And, what’s the original name for 1300 Smiles Stadium? I now know the answers to these very specific questions and more… even if you don’t want to know 😉 Continue reading →

Social media = the news

It’s been a bit of a love-hate relationship with me for a long time: social media is really not my thing. You see – I truly, truly detest it when people showboat their achievements all the time as if they have got nothing better to do. I hated it 20 years ago when kids showed their painting to the art teacher in class saying, “it’s really not that good, Mrs McGregor, is it?”… and I hate it when people these days proudly show me how perfect their last Caribbean holiday was, even if I didn’t ask them to. I don’t know what it is that annoys me so much about it. Call it ‘tall poppy’ syndrome if you want – after all, I am Australian.

On the other hand, as a journalist, social media is becoming an important tool for my daily work. It helps me decipher what our readers, viewers and users want to find out about and it is a practical tool to really engage in dialogue with them. And, it can sometimes offer faster-moving news coverage than traditional media. Continue reading →

Into the woods…

Hi all. It’s been a while since I last headed out to work as a video journalist, so it was high time that I got out and got my hands dirty again as a VJ (that’s what they are called in Germany). It’s always a good challenge: what with running the camera, giving the subject directions, asking good interview questions, checking sound levels and light… all at once!!!… working as a video journalist is the toughest job in journalism, I think.

Together with my colleague Friedel Taube, I set off to meet forester Peter Wohlleben out in the beautiful Eifel forest at Hümmel to shoot this piece. Wohlleben is a fascinating guy – he looks after one of the few remaining original forests left in Germany and he gave us a detailed tour of his ‘backyard’. Hope you like the results!