Take a trip through Sydney, and discover some of the venues and bands that helped make the city a rock and roll capital.
Along the way, you’ll see live recordings of bands like AC/DC, Midnight Oil, the Rolling Stones, and many others, playing at familiar venues, and some you may have forgotten.
Josh Taylor is a journalist I’ve followed for a number of years.
Starting as a reporter at ZDNet, he cut his teeth reporting on technology, eventually breaking a series of stories on the NBN, mandatory internet filter, and national security.
After five years at ZDNet, he moved to Crikey, where he continued his reporting, before moving into a new position at BuzzFeed News Australia.
In this interview, Josh discusses the issue that first made him take an interest in news and politics, explains how he moved from niche tech reporting to covering national politics, and gives advice to young journalist’s that are beginning their careers.
Do you remember the first news story that made an impression on you?
So, for background, I studied computer science as my first degree, and I wasn’t really that interested in politics at the time, but like the thing that got me quiet engaged politically, or at least interested in politics and media, was when same-sex marriage was banned. When that all happened it was kind of like a wake up call, that engaged me in politics, but I didn’t really decide I wanted to be a journalist until a couple of years later.
After I finished University, I went to work for a place called Media Monitors (iSentia), and that job forces you listen to radio and TV all day, and you essentially write down what happened. I was listening to press conferences, and I went for a couple of press conferences too, this was around 2006 and 2007, when Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were in Opposition, and I was listening to the questions of these journalists, and I was like ‘I can do a better job than this’, and ‘I could ask better questions than these people.’
I mean obviously when you actually get around to doing it you realise it’s not all that simple, and maybe you’ve got competing priorities, but at the time I was like yeah I could actually do this, and so I went back to uni to study my Masters in Journalism and went on from there.
Funnily enough, I just resigned from the same job as you had iSentia.
So I’d just like to rewind a little bit, about 10 years ago you had finished your degree in Computer Science at Wollongong, but instead of going into that, you decided to take a media job at iSentia – why was that?
At the time I had an offer to go into a graduate job that wasn’t that much different in terms of pay, I thought about it for a while and I thought I’d probably hate myself in a job that was just clock-in and clock-out, and that I didn’t really care about at all. Also iSentia offered me the job in Sydney, which is where I wanted to move anyway.
It’s one of those sliding door moments, when you think about what would have happened if I’d gone the other way, but I never regretted it. I mean I probably would be in a better financial position now, but I wouldn’t be as happy.
So looking back on your time at iSentia, what have you found you took from that role, what experiences have stuck with you?
It was very good at neutralizing my language, you have to learn to write in a way that doesn’t sound too opinionated, catches the information, and is basically the bare bones facts. Because of the time constraints at iSentia, I also learned how to get stories out really quickly, that’s probably why I’m the fastest writer we have at BuzzFeed in Australia.
You’d been working there a two years before you started your Masters in Journalism, why then? What inspired the change?
There comes a point in any routine job that that you have to look at moving into a management position or doing something else, when you have to have a bit of a rethink about where your career’s going. A lot of people I was working with were going to photography courses, and there were quite a few people studying journalism, so it just made sense.
What are the main things you remember from you Master’s degree? What’s stuck with you?
I think it was just the basics of writing, the construction of stories, how to find people to talk to, and basically just the discipline.
As well as that, I remember the first subject, when you start the course you think that the lecturers are going to play nice, and give you positive feedback, but in that first subject they were often extremely brutal.
Now that doing a bit of editing, I’ve realised you can’t be afraid of being critical of your journalists, good journalists realise that feedback is important and they dont take it personally, it makes you a better journalist and makes them better journalists.
What do you think are the other traits that make a good journalist?
I think that there is some innate sense what makes a good story, if you have the instinct you have the instant. Obviously communication skills are important, but more important is being adaptable, not only about when you’re working and being prepared to file across ridiculous hours, but also across mediums.
You can’t just be a print journalist, you have to cover all those other things. When I was studying journalism, I was always really leaning towards print, and stayed away from the multimedia subjects. I mean, I did a few but not a huge amount, but some of those skills I learned when I was doing those I now need everyday.
You didn’t follow the regular path of a graduate journalist, instead of following the received wisdom of working for a regional paper, you went to ZDNet, a tech review site – why was that?
I’m in a bit of a special situation, because I’d finished a Computer Science degree already, and because I knew how tech works, that specialisation was really useful. If you’re a generalist journalist it’s a bit tougher, but I think the trade industry generally becoming more of an entry point for people, and there are quite a few political reporters that started off in those trade publications. I think those rules about, regional coverage don’t really apply anymore.
I think I was fortunate to get work at zdnet, because it allowed me to get on a platform that would eventually let me cover politics, and say if I had followed that usual path, I could have been a junior producer for years before I got the chance to publish or have anything with my name on it.
What did you learn from your time at ZDNet?
Build up your niche, that thing that you’re known for.
I quickly got onto the NBN niche and that gave me a path to politics, which is what I ideally wanted to cover. Just get them to pay attention to you, break news and make stories that people need to pay attention to. I was quiet nerdy in how much I covered stuff, and tried to make it specific to politics.
Part of the reason they hired me at Crikey was that I could break news, I understood tech and I had a good understanding of politics even though I wasn’t from a politics background. All those things help.
Make your niche, and make your name within the industry because that’s really useful. I was fortunate because when you’re a tech reporter, TV and radio stations are desperate for talking heads, and when you are a journalist it’s much easier to communicate in a way that the audience can understand.
The last few years have seen a growth in the importance of security and communications reporting, first with the NBN, and more recently in concerns around data and state surveillance, both topics you’ve followed closely.
How has this impacting your reporting? And what do you think are the repercussions for society more generally?
When I think about this, the thing that frustrates me is that journalists always try and make a special case for themselves.
Well firstly, you’re hardly going to get people to agree with you that when you say journalists should get some kind of special card when it comes to these laws around data retention and surveillance.
I think the approach needs to be the surveillance state more generally, rather than how it impacts on journalists. The approach that journalists should probably take to these things is to say there’s no good reason why the majority of the population should be subject to surveillance.
It’s an interesting time for everyone, I don’t think journalists are particularly special. The problem is that it’s not us that we need to be worried about, it’s the people we talk to, because they’re the ones that are going to get in trouble. It’s the people that provide the source material that are the ones that have to worry, journalists are generally clued-in on how do you things work and know how to protect their communication, but our sources may not be able to.
To a lesser degree, this debate about what we’re going to do with encryption has made people more clued-in around how these things work, and it’s getting a lot easier for the average person to protect their privacy, so it’s an interesting balance and I don’t know where it’s going to end up.
Working for three digital publications, first ZDnet, then Crikey and now BuzzFeed, must have given you had a unique insight into digital as a medium for news. What do you think are its strengths, and the biggest challenges it faces in the future?
I think people often get caught up in setting rules for online, like how often should you publish? Or how long should the stories be? Or what sort of articles it should be?
I mean obviously the same rules of regular journalism still apply to any good online publication, but being digital means you have a lot more flexibility. Newspapers are still governed by column inches, radio is still governed by how much airtime you can get, TV is governed by how small news package needs to be, but for online you don’t need to worry about that.
BuzzFeed in particular is really good at just letting you experiment with what works, the one part I really like about working at BuzzFeed is that you see what works with the viral people, and we can use that in our news articles. I mean, it’s not going to be a one-to-one translation, but I guess just to have that knowledge in a digital publication is an increasingly valuable thing to have.
What story are you most proud of writing?
There’s probably two.
The one I’m proudest about breaking is the story about the government’s plan to introduce a mandatory internet filter right before the 2013 election. I made them backflip on it, and we still don’t have a filter and that makes me happy.
I’m just as proud about reporting on marriage equality. I recently had these photos of marriage equality passing put up in my house, because it’s just one of those moments that I was so happy to be there for. I was saying before that I became interested in politics and media when same-sex marriage became banned, and I got to be there, sitting in Parliament, when it passed, it was just a nice bookend too that whole thing it.
Tell me more about how you broke the story about the internet filter?
That was mainly just a fluke. I’m one of those ridiculously hawkish people who like to check into websites and keep refreshing all the time, just to see what they upload. Sometimes I’ll be able to break stories about things coming out of Senate Estimates because I’ll keep an eye on the pages that have the documents uploaded to them – and that’s what happened.
They uploaded this policy document about children’s safety online that I’d been waiting for it all day, and eventually it went up and had this internet filter policy. I called Paul Fletcher’s office, because he was the Minister responsible for it, and he gave me an interview where said ‘yeah that’s the policy.’ We then published the story and the internet stirred up, later that day Malcolm Turnbull was on The Hack, and he was asked about it, but he had no idea about it at all, but he was the Shadow Communications Minister at that point, and within an hour the policy had been withdrawn.
What advice would you have for young journalists?
Learn be curious, try to learn as much as you can about a subject you’re interested in.
The thing I’ve learnt over the course of my career so far is, essentially, just be don’t be afraid to be nosy about the things that you like, because there are usually other people that are interested in them as well.
Think about them as often as you can, and specialise as much as possible. I mean, I’m a generalist journalist now, so I write across a whole bunch of issues, but if you can find a niche that you like, and you can get known for it, then people will come to you. That’s the way to go about it.
Thanks so much for your time Josh.
This article originally appeared in City Hub
For the students, creatives and musical misfits bouncing around Sydney between 2005 and 2010, life revolved around Friday night. Each week a party called Purple Sneakers would sound its siren call, luring crowds to the sweat-filled dance floor of the Abercrombie Hotel.
Sneakers was an institution, one fuelled by a decade-long promiscuous relationship with guitars and dance music, cheap beer and liberal closing hours. It was the stomping ground of The Rubens, RÜFÜS, and Cloud Control, a cultural epicenter that would inspire a generation, a church of sticky shoes and dark corner pashes.
“We pushed that place to its limits…” Martin Novosel, founder of the club night, wrote recently Continue reading “Developers destroyed Sydney’s nightlife: here’s how we fix it”
This article originally appeared in City Hub
NSW Opposition leader Luke Foley won the ALP rare praise in the Daily Telegraph last week, promising a $339 million tax cut for the racing industry if elected this March. The move has been opposed by critics who accuse Mr Foley of playing populist.
The announcement follows recommendations made by a Legislative Council select committee into greyhound racing, which suggested a staggered reduction in taxation rates on wagering to bring NSW racing in line with other states.
Under Mr Foley’s plan the tax on every $100 wagered in NSW would be cut from $3.22, the highest in the country, to the Victorian rate of $1.28, the lowest.
Mr Foley said Labor’s plan will generate “thousands of jobs created in the racing industry – and more importantly will support the 50,000 currently employed in our industry.”
However a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) analysis of these changes, published as part of the select committee hearings, has already thrown these claims into doubt.
According to the PWC modelling, new job growth in the racing industry would come at the expense of jobs in other areas of the economy. Any initial boost would be offset in the long-run as the cuts draw resources away from other industries across the state. The Opposition is yet to announce where it plans to find the additional $339 million of revenue needed to finance the cuts.
It is these economic concerns that have caused the Liberals to withhold their endorsement of the plan. However, the move is also likely to hurt Labor’s vote in the historically progressive Inner City seats of Balmain, Sydney and Newtown, where the party hopes to compete this March.
The current Member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, expressed his disappointment at the proposal, and told City Hub the move was not good policy.
“It is irresponsible to give tax breaks to bolster an industry… which thrives on financial loss while contributing little to the community,” he said.
During the select committee hearings Mr Greenwich said he was contacted by hundreds of constituents, who raised concerns about the racing industry’s poor treatment of horses and greyhounds. He argues the funds would be better spent on services and infrastructure such as health, education and public transport.
Jamie Parker, the current Member for Balmain said, “of all the issues Labors’ new leader could address, his first commitment was handing hundreds of millions to the racing and gambling industry. Voters want their representatives to stand up to powerful lobby groups like gambling, racing and developers and not appease them by gifting them hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The proposed changes have also drawn the attention of prominent anti-gambling campaigner Reverend Tim Costello, chief of World Vision Australia, who says gambling is already out of control in NSW.
‘One way of at least bringing back some benefits from this complete loss of control is taxation,’ he told Australian Associated Press.
‘It places a cap on gambling, discourages it and returns some benefits to the community. The public good is not served by cutting gambling taxes.’
While Mr Foley has downplayed Rev Costello’s criticism, arguing that the racing industry already invests in programs to address problem gambling, he has yet to respond to the economic and ethical concerns outlined by his detractors.
The NSW Greyhound Breeders, Owners and Trainers’ Association, operators of Wentworth Park Greyhounds, were approached for comment.
The Portfolio of Kieran Adair 