Jane Chudleigh
Journalist, Courier Mail, The
Written by Katelyn Andrews on 2009-10-06
Jane is a journalist for The Courier Mail, and also does freelance work for other publications.
Why did you decide to pursue a career in the media and communications industry?
Well I had already been to uni to study theatre and decided that I didn’t want to be an actor and then I went travelling for a few years. When I was travelling, I thought of all the things that I liked doing, I liked researching, I liked talking to people, I liked finding out what’s going on in the world, and I liked writing; and it just seemed that journalism, in particular combined all those things.
What has been your most memorable experience working as a journalist?
In the job you get to meet some incredible people and have an excuse to make conversation with them. I’ve door-stopped politicians and sat down with musicians and met some of the state’s best and brightest people. But I don’t think there is one thing (experience). Seeing your name in print on an actual article for the first time is pretty exciting, to see your name there with the stuff that you’ve written. So when you’re starting out that is probably one of the most exciting things.
What do you think are the most important skills that graduates can bring to your industry?
Just enthusiasm for it, it can be a tough job sometimes. You don’t work regular hours in any of the jobs, even Chief of Staff. You have to ring people who don’t want to talk to you, you have to cover stories you don’t want to cover, and you have to do what we call death knocks, talk to grieving families from time to time. You just have to take the good with the bad and keep going even when it starts to get tough. When you get through and get the story, there’s nothing like that feeling.
What is one of the hardest parts of your job?
It varies, but the hardest thing for me is I sometimes attend fatal car crash scenes with my work on the police rounds. It can affect me, being at a scene like that, but I concentrate on doing my job, it’s part of what I have to do.
Do you want to continue on with journalism, being a print journalist or an editor? Or can you see yourself changing mediums?
I’m happy being a journalist; I think I really want to spend a long time just learning, and working my way up as a journalist. I would like to get into different media, so I think if I change around I’ll swap between mediums, but I’ll probably always stay pretty close connected to what’s happening in the world.
What do you think about the relationship between traditional media and new media? Do you think it’s changing? Evolving?
It’s definitely changing, what I see in newspapers is that they are struggling; struggling to understand what this means for newspapers. There is the online paper and then there is the newspaper and they haven’t quite married the two yet. I don’t know how they are going to do it, but there’s a long way to go and it might take a generation change, maybe..
So do you see that the changes in your industry are online? Where do you see newspapers going in the next five years?
I hope they’ll figure out how to make money out of it (online papers), otherwise there will be a lot of people out of jobs. So I think in the next five years they can’t avoid it so they’ll either sink or swim.