“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes” – Oscar Wilde
After almost 40 years in Australian journalism, 27 of them at the ABC, I am now in possession of enough mistakes to claim a small amount of experience.
As this will be my last column for you, here are 27 things, in no particular order, that I have learned in that time, some more important than others. The most important involve food. And music. And friends. If you ever have the chance, try to work with friends.
1) The most important person at the ABC is not the managing director (sorry, Hugh), nor is it the Chair of the Board: the most important person is whoever is in the seat at the front desk of an ABC building. That person knows everything, can get you into anywhere — or keep you locked out of the lot. They are diligent, discreet and unfailingly good humoured. Sorry for all those times I didn’t have my security pass on me at 3.00 in the morning …
2) The second most important is the tech, always part of a pair, who gets you on air with minutes to go.
3) There are dust bunnies in some studios that are so old they have myxomatosis. Someone really should clean them, one day.
4) Every mic is hot, every camera is on. You’d think that I would have learned that by now …
5) A small steak and a fried egg is the best start you can have for three hours of live breakfast TV.
6) Spanx are a misogynistic conspiracy designed to make women feel bad about their natural shape. They are also the only thing strong enough to hold up and insulate you from two clip-on microphone packs that will usually heat up to the intensity of a hair iron.
7) Never wear stockings: wear fake tan. With those mic packs on, no woman presenter needs one more thing like a pair of tights strangling her around the waist.
8) We presenters are nothing — NOTHING — without our producers. The day my beloved radio producer, Colin Tyrus — the first reporter on the spot at the Hoddle Street shooting of 1987 — told me he was leaving journalism, I sat and cried, wailing “now they’re going to find out I can’t actually do this”. Every great producer since has made me better. You don’t see them on air, but you should know them.
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9) There is little worse than a bad producer: an hysterical one, a disorganised one, or a nasty one. Going on air with them feels like being asked to figure skate on a half-frozen pond.
10) If you find yourself locked down for the 154th time during a pandemic in Melbourne, drag out the credit card and order a delivery of croissants, tarts and those weird things called cronuts for your exhausted team, make coffee, cry until you start laughing again and then go on air and do your job. To my producers Katrina, Matilda, Kelsey and Julz — I only survived those years because of you.
11) Don’t organise a meeting if it can be sorted with an email. Don’t send an email if you can just cross the floor and have a chat. And if they’re just as busy as you are, don’t have the chat just sort it yourself.
12) Garlic and legumes must be removed from the diet of the breakfast television host. At least for Monday to Friday.
13) The audience comes first. Every choice you make as a broadcaster should be in their service: for their erudition, for the truth they deserve, or for their genuine entertainment. Every other choice bargains with that principle.
14) If in doubt, play some disco: off air, on air, while you’re desperately trying to find the lead story to the show that you’re half an hour away from presenting. It solves most problems, and even if it doesn’t it always helps.
15) You can learn how to listen. It doesn’t always come naturally, especially if you’re a loudmouth like me with lots that I think is interesting to say. But if you quiet your ego and your mind, lean into a conversation with the sole purpose of making that other person as interesting as possible, then listening becomes the state of being that you crave to be in.
16) Coffee is of course hit and miss when you’re out reporting on the road. Take a jar of instant, use the sachets in the motel room. It’s absolutely fine.
17) If you make a mistake, apologise. If you think you’ve made a mistake, apologise. Tell the audience, tell the reader. Costs nothing, means everything.
18) And if you’re working in my team and you make a mistake, as we all do, but you won’t own it, or you deny it, or you get defensive about it — go work somewhere else.
19) Almost nothing should be off the record: it’s either on the record or not said at all. We give too many free passes to people with too many agendas, or as a transactional bit of journalism with people we hope will feed us future stories by taking their “off the record” comments. It’s a disservice to the audience.
Virginia Trioli is leaving the ABC to pursue her own creative projects. (ABC)
20) There are no dumb questions. If you don’t know what your guest is talking about, odds-on at least 25 per cent of your audience won’t either — so park your pride and ask them what they mean.
21) If you must get up at 2.30am for 11 years to present a breakfast television program, make your alarm a song you love and that brings you immediate happy energy. If the song that I chose for all those years comes on the radio now, I still turn it up.
22) Having a couple of small tins of tuna with chilli in your bottom drawer at work on a day when you can’t move from your desk can save your life.
23) Makeup artists are angels. They mop down our tears, put us together, watch our backs, comb down our fly-aways and they keep all our secrets. Thank you Kerrie, Claire, Sally, Belinda, Danielle, Sam and many more.
24) Convene a brains trust: a bunch of colleagues on whom you rely for self-correction, editorial advice, brainstorming ideas or for a good hard talking-to. Your brains trust will save you.
25) Even the most successful and beloved artist worries they won’t be able to do something well: that should be your encouragement to give the thing you love to do a red-hot go. Thank you to Jaya for giving it a go with me.
26) Good editors are rare and they are gold. Thank you to Leigh Tonkin, Catherine Taylor and Gina Rushton for making me a better writer. Sorry for always filing so late.
27) Being able to broadcast live, across the airways or to a living, thinking audience in front of you, is the greatest thrill of them all. It’s terrifying, with everything at stake, and nothing for certain. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to flying.
Thank you for flying along with me.
This weekend we have the dogs who chase seagulls and the humans who battle each year for a coveted place in MOFO’s nude swim. As a winter swimmer myself, there’s nothing quite like the euphoria of bare skin in cold water. Try it.
So, have a safe, happy and dance-filled weekend. I can reveal to you now that I always judged, very harshly, those readers who did not click on the music link at the end of each column: the writing was always just an excuse to get to the music. So, this is your chance to redeem yourself. When the beloved band Wham! decided to call it splits, they called their last album The Final which is what this is too, and they released one of their greatest ever dance tracks as their farewell song. It’ll do fine for me too.
Thank you for being such dear readers.
Take care, and go well, always.
Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.
