Streets of Your Town

What an incredible couple of weeks this has been. Thank you my Journo Project subscribers, for your support. Without you, I could not keep pushing on during this time. I’ve felt like I’ve been walking through porridge this past week or so as we process the enormity of events around us, and their impact on our lives. But it’s also a critical juncture for press freedom. Never has it been more import...

It’s an important turning point for The Journo Project, my loyal subscribers. Thanks for urging me to keep highlighting the importance of press freedom by interviewing Australia’s top journalists, and highlighting the issues we all face. Your encouragement and paid subscriptions have enabled me to keep the vision alive, travelling to the journos to interview them face to face. Thank you all my Wan...

For renowned journalist and multi-award winning author Matthew Condon, protecting his sources, and listening, make the crucial cornerstone to his successful 35 year reporting career. In this latest episode of The Journo Project podcast, Matthew talks about his undying love for journalism. “The older I get, too, the more privileged I feel to be a journalist,” Matthew says. To many people, Matthew C...

It took ten years of research and writing through some of the toughest times in her life, but journo Helen Pitt’s determination was rewarded. She not only completed her book on the machinations of building the Sydney Opera House, simply called “The House”, but her work was also recognised as winner of the 2018 Walkley Book Award. Helen is a long time journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, and...

Above: “In Tokyo this year for the One Year To Go celebrations for the Olympics. These will be my 10th games.” This episode of The Journo Project features one of the great stalwarts of Australian journalism—Walkley Award winning television reporter Chris Reason. He has travelled the world telling stories, starting his life in journalism delivering papers for the Redland Times in south-east Queensl...

Zoe Daniel was one of the few journos who saw the rise of Donald Trump coming, and that all came from her dedication to reporting beyond the big cities, speaking to real people in smaller communities. Zoe is returning to Australia with her family after finishing her four year stint as Washington Bureau Chief for ABC News. In that time she has travelled from Alaska to Washington and to 44 states fr...

This veteran broadcaster is one of the great journo survivors. Her face and honeyed dulcet tones are familiar throughout Australia, having delivered the biggest news around the world ever since she was the first Australian television journalist to cover news of the September 11 terrorist attacks. For five hours on that night of September 11, 2001, Sandra Sully talked Australians through the unfold...

This three-time Walkley award winner anchors one of the ABC’s flagship television programs 7.30, presenting the current affairs show for a decade in one of Australia’s most competitive work environments. And in this episode of The Journo Project, Leigh Sales still proudly introduces herself as a journalist first. “I think the power of journalism is that we’re telling stories that either give you a...

He was the first reporter in Australia to be sent to jail for not revealing a source in one of his investigations. And while it was 30 years ago, Tony Barrass says he has no regrets, and would do it all again to uphold one of journalism’s most important principles. “I think the fundamental issue is that there’s always going to be friction between what journalists do and what governments do,” Tony...

This multi-award winning radio documentary producer specialises in telling taboo stories that most journos would flinch at, bringing important societal issues out of the shadows. The Perth-based reporter Kirsti Melville tells me on this issue of The Journo Project podcast about her struggles with bringing to light social justice issues that also expose individual people’s pain. “It's always bitter...

This investigative journo, author and broadcaster has brought stories to light from some of the most remote corners of Australia. From a range of rural towns around Queensland, Amanda Gearing has covered national and international news for The Australian, The Times in London, ABC Radio National and Crikey. And it all started from a small office in Mt Isa, where her career began. “I was always a ve...

Speaker, broadcaster and reporter for Channel 7’s Great Day Out program, Karni Liddell, is not only a renowned journo of note. She’s also travelled the world competing as a swimmer at the highest level, ultimately being recognised as the Captain of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic swimming team. She loves that her job reporting for Great Day Out, is not predicated on her disability. “What I loved about...

This fearless journo was one of the founding members of the ABC’s iconic program Foreign correspondent. Since then Dominique Schwartz has been shot at in the Middle East, and reported from the scenes of devastating mine collapses and attempted rescues in New Zealand and Chile, in just a few examples of the amazing journalism assignments she has worked on around the world. “My career has been very...

Angelique Donnellan (in green) reports on a press conference by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott This tenacious journo started her career in some of South Australia’s most remote locations, as a junior reporter for the ABC. This year, Angelique was recognised with the award of South Australia’s Journalist of the Year for the second year in a row, for her relentless investigations. Angelique belie...

This brave journo bravely reported from the highlands of Papua New Guinea before women were given the proper credit they deserved for the stories they gathered. Maureen Mopio-Jane has covered some of that country’s most difficult stories, from Bougainville, to the horrendous levels of domestic violence that continue to haunt the nation’s families. She tells me on this episode of Streets of Your To...

Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Senior Business correspondent Peter Ryan is a firm believer in the importance of breaking down financial complexities in his reporting. His expose of the Commonwealth Bank scandal and more than 53,000 alleged breaches of anti-money laundering and terror financing laws, won him a Walkley Award for the best coverage of a major event or issue. But, as he proudly...

Lisa Millar has been in the reporting game for decades, working as a journo everywhere from small outback Australian towns to New York, Washington and London. The long time ABC foreign correspondent and now co-host of ABC News Breakfast recalls the many moves she has made as a foreign correspondent over the years to go to where the stories are breaking. “I have certainly bounced around a bit over...

This journo has bravely told her story of the racism she’s experienced and overcome growing up as an Indigenous woman in Australia, and how it has informed her award winning reporting. Isabella Higgins confidently says that as a proud Torres Strait Islander, she knows a black and white future is possible for this nation. She is now the Indigenous Affairs Correspondent for the Australian Broadcasti...

By his own description, this journalist has escaped some pretty close calls “by the skin of my teeth” in the 30 countries he has reported from. His time as Middle East correspondent was challenging enough but, as the photo below shows, his time in Baghdad, Iraq, came pretty close to ending his splendid career when he was nearly shot by US Marines. Mark Willacy has won Australia’s premier journalis...

He’s been in the journalism game for more than four decades, and even with that impressive pedigree still proudly calls himself a hack. While his face is familiar to many people around Australia for his Walkley Award winning television work, it’s his mellifluous voice for which he is most well known. Hugh Riminton has worked around the globe in more than 40 countries as a foreign correspondent, an...

She has the reputation as a journalist who goes where many fear to tread, even to the extent of writing the unauthorised biography of Gina Rinehart, the richest woman in Australia. Adele Ferguson is a multi-award-winning business writer whose investigations into the banking sector, franchising and the retirement living industries have sparked numerous inquiries. She’s won eight Walkley Awards, two...

From a young age, Antoinette Lattouf can remember wanting to tell stories. “I was fascinated by human stories and journeys and policies,” Antoinette says. She has now channelled that passion into what she describes as her “dual role” as senior journalist and presenter at Network 10 and director and co-founder of Media Diversity Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that’s working to make news m...

He’s the kid from Brisbane’s tough outlying northern suburbs who went on to win two Walkley Awards for his powerful feature writing.  Now Trent Dalton adds screenwriter and international bestselling author to his credits.  His first novel Boy Swallows Universe recently cleaned up the Australian Book Industry Awards, where all four major prizes were won by the same author for the first time in its...

In this episode of Streets of Your Town podcast—The Journo Project, we feature Peter Greste, a journalist with decades of experience as an international correspondent in countries from Afghanistan to the former Yugoslavia, Africa, and South America.  But it was when he was imprisoned in an Egyptian jail for 400 days that his reporting became truly world renowned.  He says he is still shocked that...

Thanks for joining me on the journey of Streets of Your Town—The Journo Project. Where every week I will speak face to face and one on one with one of the best journalists from around the country, revealing candid audio insights from the the top practitioners of the reporting craft. One of Australia’s leading investigative reporters Hedley Thomas, features in our first episode of The Journo Projec...