My initial break in the industry was the quintessential experience, exiting university as a fresh-faced journalism grad and starting work at a regional newspaper for Seven/West in Broome, then later in Port Hedland.
Becoming a journalist was all I had ever wanted to do. I realised pretty quickly that there’s really no comparison to working in the regions, sourcing stories in country towns and becoming part of the community at the same time.
It was only along the way that defence and military stories started to surface as a personal passion, although at that time there was not much public interest in that style of reporting and it largely remains a niche among writers and audiences in Australia.
I imagine the defence journalism news cycle would look much the same as editors in many other areas. My mornings are consumed by replying to the overnight emails and covering our immediate priority breaking news stories for defence and aerospace.
Taking a catchup meeting to keep the conversation flowing with our commercial teams to discuss upcoming events and trade shows to attend. Then writing and filing a longer form feature article around noon and hitting some podcasts.
The day usually wraps up with writing some daily defence and space stories into the early afternoon, sending podcast invites out and ending the day with a last minute check of the emails to make sure nothing was missed.
A tricky question, it depends on the topic but we try to strike a balance between fast and hard breaking news stories that generally last a day or two, alongside longer form feature articles discussing geo-politics or national security lasting a month or two.
For new journalists in defence, I would chiefly recommend that they strike to be a trusted conduit between Defence, industry and the public. Content involving national security can be prickly at times, trust must be earned and there are often better stories to be gained by off-record conversations than ‘gotcha style’ questions at on-record media conferences.
Secondarily, I would advise that Defence personnel, veterans and defence industry are traditionally used to a more straight-forward and formal way of interacting in their introductions, conversations and contacts. So, I would recommend to new journalists in the defence space, that they partially mirror that way of life. A journalist can travel far on only a strong handshake and proper introduction.
In my opinion, a good pitch is designed to pique the interest of the journalist – it offers general defence or space industry perspective without being overly blatant in its commercial aspects. A pitch with a tangible news angle and three or four good quality photos can’t go wrong.