Profile: Sandra Symons

Deborah Kirkman interviews Sandra Symons, a journalist and journalism academic, who has been a member of the Council since 1998.

Interview with Sandy Simons

Deborah Kirkman: Sandy, it's now about four years since you applied to become a journalist member of the Press Council. What was it that inspired your application?

Sandy Simons: I was interested in the workings of the Press Council. I didn't think a lot of people knew about its function, and I wanted to learn more myself and be involved in the Council.

DK: As a journalist member, do you have a specific role on the Council, or do you feel your role is the same as a public, editorial or industry member?

SS: I think journalist members have a particular and distinctive role. They sit somewhere between the public members and the industry members. They are freelancers who have come out of the industry, so they are familiar with the way it works. But they are independent.

DK: So you have knowledge, but no affiliation.

SS: That's right. And the fact you have to operate entirely on your own, separated from a mainstream industry perspective, may increase your sensitivity to and awareness of public attitudes.

DK: Did you have any pre-conceptions of the Press Council?

SS: I knew how it operated, but I didn't know there was such heated discussion about various issues of professional practice. You might think that the industry members operate as a block, and the public members operate as a block, but it doesn't happen that way. And every complaint we deal with introduces another human drama.

DK: Is your experience on the Press Council helpful in your lectures to journalism students at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). Are issues raised at the Press Council reflected in discussion with your students?

SS: It's enlightening for the students to hear about complaints, case studies, the attitudes of industry members, the attitudes of public members, and their responses to stories, the way they might adjudicate a complaint. There is nothing like a terrific example to help the teaching process, to help explain why various things happen.

DK: During the Sydney Olympic Games your students produced the Olympic Village Newsletter, and at the Sydney Writers' Festival you produced the daily newsletter, Festival News. What do you think your students learnt from those experiences?

SS: You can talk about journalism practice for as long as you like, but the real test is doing it. Without exception, the students said it was one of the most exciting, valuable experiences they had at university, I think largely because they were frightened at being tested, that they had to meet daily deadlines.

DK: What did you learn from these two experiences?

SS: It took me back to my days working on a daily newspaper, the rush to the deadline, working until the early morning, and being totally focussed on getting the paper to the printer.

DK: Do you miss it?

SS: I do miss it. I pass the big newspaper offices and I want to go inside because I know they know what's going on in the world. It's a special sort of insiders' club. Journalists by their nature and work are outsiders. And you are not supposed to belong to anything. So your own club, the journalists' club, is particularly important.

DK: Hence, so many people want to join it these days.

SS: I am amazed at the number of young people who want to be journalists. Some of them see it as romantic and glamorous but there are always those who want to change the world. What surprises me is that out of any group of say, 25 students, maybe five have what it takes - journalists won't be surprised to hear this. You can pick those five almost immediately.

DK: What is it about them?

SS: They are instantly and identifiably responsive. They are tenacious and fascinated by people, their lives and stories, and the news. And they have the ability to identify a story, follow it through and tell that story. I often send my students out into the local precinct to find a story. They have two hours. They are not allowed to go the police or ambulance or fire stations, the local hospital or other places of daily drama. Their inspiration is the story of the student on such an assignment who stopped at an ATM. He was watching the young chap ahead of him fiddling around the ATM a lot - putting in his card and taking out tiny amounts of money and gathering the receipts until he had a bulging pocket full of receipts. The student was curious and asked him what he was doing. The young chap said, "Oh, all of these receipts offer a free McDonald's, so I'm getting a whole lot together and I'm taking all those street people over there down to McDonald's".

DK: How do papers gain access to stories written by your students? Do you put them out there?

SS: I ask my students to write with a publication in mind. I want them to aim high, I want to see their stories published. If one produces something really good, I personally contact the newspapers. My students have had by-lined stories published in The Age, The Canberra Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun-Herald and the Courier-Mail.

DK: You started your career with News Limited and then went on to Fairfax and Australian Consolidated Press. Was it difficult to break into newspapers then?

SS: I did my cadetship on The Daily Telegraph in the days when you could blow in off the street and get a hearing. Which is what I did. When I was passing the newspaper office not long after I matriculated, I went inside on a whim to see the personnel manager. He was a gruff old former Telegraph editor who gave me short shrift. He growled, "Come back girlie when you can type and do shorthand." I immediately enrolled at the Metropolitan Business College and six months later went back to see him with the required typing and shorthand skills. He gave me a job as a copy kid in the finance and features departments. I ended up making morning and afternoon tea for some great journalists - Kenneth Sleesor, Alan Barnes, Dr Emery Barcs and Ross Campbell. I watched Ross Campbell working on his elegant, amusing little columns about life at Oxalis Cottage - they read like he had tossed them off in 10 minutes when actually they took him two days of pacing the office floor. I eventually got a cadetship on the Telegraph and from there went to The Sydney Morning Herald, then The Sunday Australian and later The Bulletin.

DK: Did you have any preference?

SS: I was lucky because I learnt something new at each newspaper and it pushed my career along. Of course, I still have a fondness for the Telegraph because that's where I started - and in the days of Sir Frank Packer. It was pretty exciting and extraordinary.

DK: Do you have any funny stories about Sir Frank?

SS: Everyone has a funny story about Sir Frank. He took a particular interest in the copy girls and young female cadets. One day when I was on an errand as a copy girl, I got into a lift with Sir Frank. There was just the two of us so I was pretty nervous. I was wearing a snappy little red jersey double-breasted suit with gold buttons. He looked me up and down and then, pressing each of the six buttons in turn with his forefinger, said, "You-look-very-nice-to-day". I thought I looked nice, too, but I certainly didn't want my buttons pressed.

DK: Has any one person had a particular influence on your career?

SS: I was lucky to find a mentor just about every place I worked. The formidable section editor Maggie Vaile at the Herald encouraged me as a feature writer then taught me about subbing and layout and introduced me to the composing room. I still have a note from John Pringle praising one of my layouts. My time at the Herald as a junior journalist made a great impression on me. My funniest assignment was being sent on a job with the paper's social writer Di Arthur to a ball at the Art Gallery with the Cinderella task of bringing Di back before the last stroke of midnight. I failed. We got back at 3am and I certainly looked like an ugly sister by then. Jock Veitch at The Sunday Telegraph gave me my first column, covering Sydney radio. I shared an office with Jock, an alarming experience. The metre-high midden on his desk constantly looked like engulfing me. He found a pair of shoes in it one day. Arnold Earnshaw at The Sunday Australian also gave me a column, covering city life. He taught me the most about layout - he could create a complex broadsheet layout in his head in two minutes and it would work. The stately King Watson made me a section editor. I was mortified when he once carpeted me because he had received five letters of complaint from readers about a story I ran on Playgirl magazine - it was the height of the women's movement, too. But Trevor Kennedy probably gave me my most important breaks. He brought me to The Bulletin from The Sunday Australian. Thinking about it later, I was probably there as the token young female reporter. They were heady days. The Bulletin was at its peak and Trevor had put together a formidable team. Patricia Rolfe was deputy editor with Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Ron Saw, Robert Drewe, Ian Moffitt, Brian Hoad, Emery Barcs among the writers. Everyone was completely committed to the publication but we had a lot of fun, too. Someone sent Ron Saw a blow-up sex doll. I had the adjoining office and could hear intriguing huffing and puffing noises and muffled guffaws and then, through the translucent glass partition, I saw a pink form grow and take shape. After that, we used to take the doll to the regular Friday Bully lunches, dressed in a bikini. She was very homely.

DK: Do any of your stories for The Bulletin stand out in your mind?

SS: I mostly did the 'social anthropology' round. I did a long profile on Sir William Gunn after he had fallen on hard times. After having dominated the news for decades as one of Australia's most influential rural powerbrokers, he had had to sell up all his big properties and was living on his son's property when I met him. He was surprisingly candid; what I didn't expect was that he was so unpretentious. But then he had eaten a large slice of humble pie. It was a great human interest piece. Another was the cover story I did on fashion designer Trent Nathan when he was young, hugely successful and gorgeous. At the time successful, glamorous businessmen, even fashion designers, did not discuss their sexuality but Trent did, and in a brave move, came out of the closet. It's not an issue today but it was news then. I was always aware of the privilege that being a journalist allowed you.

DK: I don't think that some journalists are aware of that.

SS: Some don't even think about it. I constantly suggest to students that they consider the implications of what they are writing. Which is not to say that those who agree to an interview with a journalist shouldn't be responsible for themselves. I make a point of telling journalism students that they shouldn't censor themselves, that it is up to the person being interviewed to take responsibility for their own behaviour. But still it surprises me the way people will engage with a journalist. They will talk about the most extraordinary things. They will expose themselves. And, as a journalist, you know just what that means. I've lost count of the times someone has said something so marvellous, so revealing and unguarded, that I couldn't write it in my notebook quickly enough. John Pilger tells a great story about the magic of words. When he was a young journalist, he worked on a newspaper that didn't encourage the use of adjectives.

DK: It was simply a paper of record?

SS: Yes, and prided itself on it. Pilger tells of having been to some horrific accident and when he came back to the office to write the story, he had to make application to the chief sub to use the adjective 'tragic'. The chief sub thought long and hard about it, and finally said yes. Pilger says he carried the word away with him with tremendous excitement. It's a nice story to tell journalism students. It helps emphasise the need to be careful with the way they should use words. That they should value words. That they should fall in love with their words, but still know how to cut them.

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