Another TV scribe exits print game
Senior journalist Amanda Meade writes her final media story after 18 years with The Australian.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
It’s not just in television that the redundancies are happening, but in print media too.
The latest to exit is The Australian’s Amanda Meade, who has taken redundancy after 18 years with the newspaper.
Meade has broken numerous stories, many of which have been aggregated here, including editing the once-glorious Media Diary column for 10 years.
Today she reflects on her time, “Writing about the media is a dangerous game but always good fun if you don’t take yourself too seriously. The personalities are big and the stakes are high. The Australian’s Media section, which started in 1999, has always been a must-read for journalists and for the media industry in general.
“Back then it was a Thursday tabloid lift-out and the copy deadline was Monday. Yes Monday for a Thursday section! It seems unimaginable now, but we would sit on stories and column items for three days and rarely were we made fools of.
“But it was the tail end of the age of old media. There was little competition from blogs, websites or social media, there were just five TV channels and we didn’t write for online. There was no crikey.com.au (2000) and certainly no Mumbrella. Of the original Media team, only myself, Errol Simper and Mark Day remain writing today.
“And on Friday, I took voluntary redundancy from The Australian after 18 years, 15 of which had been spent on media in general and TV in particular.”
She also gave an interview to Radio National where she speculated that she may consider writing a blog if she gets a story and has nowhere to direct it.
Meade’s ability to break a story has been outstanding and ABC could do a lot worse than hire her as a producer on Media Watch, pronto.
A number of other TV journos have also exited the print game in recent months and I’m planning to acknowledge these in a longer post soon.
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One Response
Just another sad example of what’s wrong with the Australian media sector. Why any newspaper would let someone with Amanda’s talents and connections go is beyond me.
Meady was the best in the business. She understood the industry, the personalities and the politics. And in the midst of getting a scoop she never once forgot the people at the centre of her stories.