This is a continuation of a series of posts on my problematic pregnancy against a backdrop of recurrent miscarriage. Please share the journey with me. (Read Reborn Part 1 first)

When the Fetal Medicine Unit doctor called us in to his rooms, looking apprehensive and clutching test results in his hand, we knew something wasn’t right.

The results were from sophisticated blood tests which form the second component of the Nuchal Translucency Screening Tests. They’re correlated with the ultrasound results and background risks, such as age and obstetric history, to produce more accurate readings for significant birth defects.

Firstly, he pointed to the very low risk recorded for Down’s Syndrome (Trisomy 21) considering my age (1:1341), but it was clear that wasn’t the end of the story.


Running his finger down the adjacent column of results, he lowered his voice, saying “But you have a very significant risk - 1:16 - of carrying a baby with Trisomy 18 and also worrying is the 1:74 risk of Trisomy 13”. Neither my partner nor I knew what either of these lesser known syndromes entailed but it was obvious from the look on the doctor’s face that both were more grave than Down’s. Apparently I had a low reading of a 'maternal serum marker' labelled PAPP-A…whatever that meant. I felt like somebody had punched me in the stomach. Like I’d free-fallen from a great height.

He began talking about options. My concentration faded in and out. I could opt to have an amniocentesis there and then or I could wait a week and return for the test. Or, I could choose to do nothing and monitor the baby’s growth and development until 20 weeks. But after that point, termination wasn’t an option. Perhaps, he said, there might not be a problem with the baby at all – the tests results could be indicative of the underlying issues connected to my history of miscarriage which may have been affecting the development of the placenta. But this would place me at risk of late term miscarriage, premature birth & low birth weight.

I decided against having an amniocentesis on the spot without too much hesitation. There is a significant risk of miscarriage associated with this test, which involves extracting amniotic fluid from the sac for definitive genetic testing. The purpose of the test is to give the mother the necessary information to make a decision about an abortion where birth defects are suspected. And as I wrote to a friend later that night, “Today I chose to wait and live in hope. Couldn't bring myself to put the baby at risk. And I really don't know if I could choose to abort a baby I am now so bonded to at any rate – especially considering my history of miscarriage.”

The Survival Plan

So we made a plan with the FMU specialist to have another high-level diagnostic scan at 18 weeks. The hope was that the scan would discount the bad blood tests by showing a baby continuing to thrive. A still active baby viewed at 18 weeks with an examination of vital organs, facial features, skeletal structure, on target growth etc, indicating 'normal' development, would provide reasonable confidence that the baby had defied the risks with regular scans thereafter to track ongoing development. But if the scan results were poor, they'd recommend I have an amniocentesis. And if those results confirmed one of the suspected syndromes, I'd then have to make a decision about a late abortion.



When I got home I felt like I was in a bad dream but rather than curl up on the couch I began voraciously researching Trisomy 18 and 13 – knowledge is power to a journalist and research is a coping mechanism for me.

According to Dr Google, both of these chromosomal abnormalities manifest horrendously…much worse than Downs'. Characteristics include severe mental retardation and very serious defects involving the heart, kidneys and other organs along with additional physical symptoms. But worse, most babies with these conditions don't survive to term or are stillborn. And of those who survive birth, 50% and 80 % respectively die within 7-42 days, although a handful have lived up to the age of 10 with significant medical intervention.

Before I went to bed, I wrote to a friend “As I'm sure you can imagine, this is a pretty awful experience…I was so looking forward to being unreservedly, publicly joyful about this pregnancy. And now I have an agonising 6-week wait before I know more. And a building sense of premature grief as a large question-mark clouds the baby's future. Why, for once, couldn't things just be 'easy'? I realise that sounds self-centred and plenty of others are worse off…but don't I deserve a break from the universe…some genuine, unadulterated pleasure?”

“I really am trying to focus on the positive. And, from the 'happy thoughts' annals, a 1:16 chance of having a baby with one of these conditions – a rate 20 times higher than other women my age who already face elevated risk - is still a 15:16 chance that it won't be affected. And I'm holding onto the anecdotal wisdom that a baby on-target in terms of growth at 12 weeks, who appears very active on ultrasound, is a good indicator of one who'll ultimately thrive and arrive healthy… How could I not live in hope that this little human being is meant to survive and make a stellar contribution to human kind whatever her capacities?”

I eventually drifted into sleep, worried about the decision that lay ahead regarding the amniocentesis and praying for a healthy baby.

But I woke up to a nightmare.

Threatened Miscarriage

Feeling feverish, crampy and wet, I touched my thighs and was alarmed to feel liquid. I sat bolt upright and threw the covers back to find sheets covered in blood. “No!!” I cried. “I’m bleeding!” My partner jolted awake and sat speechless on the bed while I angrily blinked back tears. “Not again!” I stuttered. It was 7am and we didn’t know what to do. There was no way I was going to a hospital emergency room after previous scarring experiences of mistreatment in the midst of miscarriage. Instead, I lay back down and, despite passing blood clots, I prayed the bleeding would stop. At 8.30am we got in the car and drove to the obstetrician’s, alerting the surgery before we arrived.

I sat in the waiting room surrounding by pregnant women with babies and small children in tow. It was a harrowing wait. I could no longer stem the tears but just hoped I could stop my quivering bottom lip from progressing to a state of full-blown, heaving sobbing. My obstetrician ushered me into her office next. She tried to prepare me for bad news on the ultrasound…I was oblivious – I just wanted to see my baby.

But I couldn’t look at the ultrasound screen until I heard her say, after a few moments’ hesitation, “She’s OK. There’s her heartbeat”. The baby was lethargic but her heartbeat was strong. We still didn’t know the baby’s gender but the obstetrician had concluded she was a girl “Girls are tougher, they’re survivors", she said.

While seeing my living baby was extraordinarily reassuring, I was now officially in the grip of another 'threatened miscarriage'. The obstetrician surmised that the cause of the bleeding could either be a very ill baby in the process of miscarrying or a poorly formed/functioning placenta which could also trigger miscarriage but may be 'survivable' if the bleeding stopped.

I narrowly escaped hospital admission on the condition I agree to three weeks' bed rest at home and to "avoid stress at all costs". But, if the situation deteriorated further, I was warned I’d inevitably wind up in hospital. Unfortunately there was nothing else I or the medicos could do at that point but 'wait & see'. An incredibly frustrating treatment plan. The hope was that the bleeding would abate and the baby would recover…but the chances were not brilliant. Nevertheless, I continued to hope – in the context of reality.

Admitting I Needed Support

As I wrote to a friend that night, my biggest underlying fear was grief: “I don't know if I can withstand more loss in the form of another miscarriage. Yes, I'm strong and resilient and I have survived much and thrived in the aftermath...but I'm only human. That said...deep down I seem to know I'll somehow find the strength to keep walking independently no matter what happens. But this is definitely one of those times where I have to concede I need help in the form of care & support from others.”

In the grip of this crisis, my partner withdrew emotionally and he wanted to keep the pregnancy quiet until the 18 week scan - assuming I didn’t miscarry the baby. These were very trying times. But I was already ‘showing’ and it would be beyond obvious that I was pregnant at 18 weeks. Besides, I really needed the outside support now that things had grown so difficult. So, I broadcast the news to an extended network of friends and family via email.



“Everyone keeps telling me how strong I am...strange...I feel weak, afraid & exposed. But I do seem to have relocated my funny bone, which is probably a good sign,” I wrote to a friend as I lay on my couch a few days later, so exhausted – emotionally and physically that I could do no more than watch Harry Potter DVDs.

On February 19th I wrote: “The bleeding has escalated again & it's just shattering :( Why isn't it stopping? Is the baby OK? It's awful to feel so out of control of your own body when another life is dependent upon it.”

We would have to wait until the following Monday – the next scheduled obstetrician’s visit - to discover whether or not the baby had survived the ordeal.    [read more]

The Bambina @ 12 weeks


She kicks me in the guts and I feel only love.

It’s been a long, painful journey to motherhood for me. At 38 and with a history of recurrent miscarriage I’d almost resigned myself to childlessness. But now I’m eagerly awaiting the delivery of my baby girl.

The Bambina, as I’ve called her since she was just the size of a peanut and her gender was indeterminate, is now 25 weeks old and will be a resident of my womb until August.

Last November, 15 months after my last miscarriage – a perfect little boy who died inexplicably at 11 weeks in utero – I went to see a fertility specialist to progress inquiries into the cause of my previous three miscarriages. I’d put it off as long as I could. I still wasn’t sure I could risk the pain of another pregnancy loss but the doctor was upfront: “It’s now or quite possibly never.” This was because of my partner’s low fertility due to cancer treatment and my ‘advanced maternal age’ in conjunction with my history of miscarriage. IVF would be required to get results quickly. First, though, I would undergo surgery in an effort to identify possible causes of miscarriage.

I left the specialist with my partner, feeling like I no longer had options – to choose to do nothing now would probably deny me a choice down the track. So, we agreed uneasily to ‘throw it up to God’.

Beating IVF

In mid-December I underwent investigative surgery and, amidst extreme work-related stress, I began to prepare mentally for commencement of IVF in January. Part of that ‘preparation’ involved immersion in an alcoholic haze over Christmas. But the day after Boxing Day I awoke feeling queezy…breasts tender…period late. I joined the dots and the ‘piddle-stick’ confirmed the result: these symptoms weren’t just the product of stress and exhaustion, I was pregnant! Fear and excitement merged and stole my breath. I summoned my partner and we sat staring at that stick in disbelief. Then we laughed, acknowledging our earlier decision to ‘throw it up to God’.

My first instinct was to consult the medicos…I needed to know what the surgery had uncovered. I was 5 weeks pregnant and I lost my first baby at 6 weeks, the second at 8 weeks and the third at 11 weeks. But this was the period between Christmas and New Year and my fertility specialist, my obstetrician and my GP were all on holidays. Limbo.

Not content to sit back and wait, though, my partner tracked down a nurse at the fertility centre where we were tentatively enrolled and she bridged the gap. She contacted the holidaying specialist who confirmed that the surgery and associated tests had uncovered possible causes of my previous miscarriages. I had a high level of ‘Natural Killer’ cells in my uterus along with the presence of cardiolipin antibodies and phospholipid antibodies. Both of these factors have been linked in research to multiple miscarriages during the first trimester. It’s believed they inhibit the implantation and growth of the embryo and may cause an immune-system triggered rejection of the baby. It was a terrible thought to confront: my own body may have effectively killed my babies...

I was then was sent for blood tests which indicated hormone levels consistent with a normally progressing early pregnancy and I booked in for an ultrasound to establish the viability of the pregnancy. I felt physically ill in the lead-up to that ultrasound appointment – I was desperate to see my baby’s beating heart on that screen. These scans had ended in heartache in previous pregnancies on all but one occasion. A heartbeat was detected at 6 weeks during a threatened miscarriage with my last pregnancy, but at 12 weeks a follow-up ultrasound revealed my baby had died in the interim.

Scanning For Life

So, as I lay on the clinic bed this time around, with a stomach covered in ultrasound gel, I stared at the monitor, holding my breath. The radiographer was too quiet for my liking and my partner & I shared pained expressions as he squeezed my hand. But after what seemed like an interminable period, she said “Can you see that flashing light? That’s your baby’s heartbeat”. She brought up a graphic representation of the heartbeat and told us it was a very healthy 180 beats per minute. I wanted to cry with relief but apprehension about the ongoing risk of miscarriage, and having previously miscarried after seeing such a heartbeat despite a 95% chance the baby would progress to term, self-preservation instincts kicked in and I suppressed the excitement…I needed to be emotionally cautious. This proved a wise move. The radiologist who analysed the scans reported that the heart-rate was actually 118, not 180 and this was marginally below what’s considered ‘normal’. Nevertheless, he declared the pregnancy viable at six weeks.

I was then prescribed daily injections of a drug called Clexane (a blood thinner and immune system suppressor) to address the underlying problems identified in the IVF work-up, while I waited nervously to see a specialist at the conclusion of the holiday hiatus.

Face Down on the Bathroom Floor

But a few days after I began this treatment, feeling very ill, I hovered over a glass bowl on the edge of my bath. Moments later I was passed out, face down on the tiled bathroom floor…lying naked in a pile of shattered glass. As my panicked partner tried to rouse me, I felt myself fitting as I came to – tongue clenched between teeth and my leg kicking involuntarily. This was a very scary experience but all I could think was “Is the baby OK?” As my partner patched up the cuts that covered the left side of my body, I feared the worst.

I was instructed by the IVF nurse to go straight to Emergency at Canberra Hospital if I fainted or fitted again and to see my GP ASAP. Thankfully, my bathroom performance had no encore but I had to wait three more days before my GP’s surgery reopened. When I finally saw her, she did some routine tests and deduced that the episode was probably a virus or the product of a blood pressure spike. The baby would not have been affected.

I gradually began telling my closest relatives and friends about the pregnancy during this period, having decided I would need the support if anything did go wrong and wanting to celebrate the news quietly with them – it was important to validate the life of our baby in the hearts and minds of the people I love most. Also, as I wrote to a trusted friend at the time “Geez, I'm a journalist and I have a human being growing inside me - hard to embargo that kind of yarn!” There was an appropriate mixture of joy and apprehension from those I shared the news with and it was comforting to know they were variously thinking of us, praying for us and begging the universe to intervene on our behalf.

Specialist Intervention

In mid-January, I finally got in to see my IVF specialist who confirmed previous test results and explained that I’d be on the daily injections until I was 14-20 weeks pregnant. Injected into my stomach, these needles were not the highlight of my day but I was grateful for any kind of medical intervention that might lead to a sustainable pregnancy. However, she gaped when I told her that I was pregnant at the time of the exploratory surgery. “No, you couldn’t have been!” she said, pushing her chair back from the desk. “You do the maths", I thought. “That’s the stuff of my worst nightmares”, she said “...operating on someone who is pregnant and possibly accidentally aborting the baby”.

Poor woman looked like she may fall off her chair. So, I said “Not to worry, ‘she’ has so far survived a surgeon’s invasion and a scary fitting episode after being conceived amidst extreme stress, with the assistance of that excellent relaxant called champagne. It’s OK”. And, as I wrote to a friend at the time, “...there's something encouragingly cheeky and determined (s/he clearly gets that from moi :) about a baby who pre-empts IVF...and survives a surgeon’s knife that bodes well for this pregnancy. So, I am taking a leaf out of Obama's book and having the audacity to hope.”

By the end of the month I’d seen my obstetrician who, while very excited for me after helping me through my last miscarriage, was keen to monitor the pregnancy very closely due to its high-risk nature. So, I saw her weekly from thereon in and eagerly but nervously looked forward to greeting my baby on the ultrasound screen at each visit. Although a consequence of a problematic pregnancy, this was a rare privilege. Seeing her heart beat and watching the incredible pace of her growth week-to-week cemented the bonding I’d subtly resisted out of fear. I fell in love with my baby during this period, conscious that if she was lost to me, devastation would be eclipsed.

I was referred to the specialist Foetal Medicine Unit (FMU) at Canberra hospital for assessment and a diagnostic scan at 12 weeks and we decided to go ‘public’ with the news after that appointment, based on the conventional wisdom that miscarriage risk declines significantly after that point. Gradually, I began to relax into the pregnancy and hope started to supplant fear.

Perfect Baby

So, in mid-February, in the grip of conflated excitement and anxiety, we visited the FMU for the long-awaited 12 week scan. The friendly but professional medico appreciated our anxiety and immediately reassured us that our baby was alive and kicking – quite literally! It was extraordinary to watch her body being mapped on 4D ultrasound. She no longer resembled a peanut or a jelly-bean – she now looked like a miniature human-being, albeit an oddly proportioned one. Arms, legs, fingers and toes, distinctive facial features and already in possession of some fairly impressive dance moves. The ultrasound operator acknowledged all of these observations as excellent signs, consistent with normal development, and confirmed this with a crucial measurement – the depth of the Nuchal Fold, a pocket of fluid located at the back of a foetus’ neck which indicates the likelihood of Down’s Syndrome. My age put me at significant risk of having a Down's baby but the radiographer declared: “that measurement is perfect”. The baby’s major organs also appeared to be developing “perfectly”, she said. I couldn’t wipe the wide smile off my face and I allowed my heart to leap unfettered for the first time during the pregnancy.

We left the ultrasound room to await our appointment with the FMU specialist, feeling confident and relieved. But bad news was lurking just around the corner    [read more]

Foreign correspondents are being deported, police and military operatives have been stationed in newsrooms to enforce government censorship and the ABC’s Radio Australia transmitters were forcibly shutdown today as coup leaders sought to silence their opponents via ‘emergency regulations’ enforced under the cloak of Easter.

Coup leader: Frank Bainimarama (Image:AFP)

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has likened the media repression in Fiji to the situation in Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma. “…the draconian and reprehensible manner in which the military leadership is seeking to control information about highly significant events and issues in Fiji is comparable to the actions of other dictatorial regimes and closed societies” IFJ President Aiden White said.

Veteran ABC Pacific Correspondent Sean Dorney was expelled from Fiji on Easter Monday, along with a New Zealand TV news team, for coverage of the media clampdown. He was asked to leave voluntarily but refused, telling Fijian Immigration officials he had a valid passport and he had a reporting job to do. “I'm not surprised they don't want foreign journalists here telling the rest of the world what
you are not allowed to tell your own people," Dorney told the ABC as he awaited deportation. After spending 5 hours in custody while officials
reviewed his footage, Dorney arrived home on Tuesday, telling the ABC "The censorship at the moment is just absolutely extraordinary,
never in Fiji before has it been this tough, even after [Sitiveni] Rabuka's coup.

Sean Dorney (Image: ABC)

A defiant Fiji TV reporter, Edwin Nand, was jailed for 36 hours for reporting Dorney's detention and he’s been banned from returning to work.
Meantime, Fiji Law Society president, Dorsami Naidu, was jailed for 24 hours and threatened with sedition charges after telling the media
that foreign reporters were being gagged "They're the only outlet we have at the moment, these guys have changed the rules of the game”
he said

The media crackdown was dictated by the leader of the 2006 military Coup, Interim Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. The coup was declared illegal by the Fiji Court of Appeal last week, resulting in President Ratu Josefa Iloilo anointing himself head of state, abolishing the 1997 constitution, sacking the nation’s judges and re-instating Bainimarama on Friday.

In the aftermath, local reporters were ordered to submit copy to the government for ‘clearance’ prior to publication and military censors were stationed in newsrooms to enforce the crackdown. Several Fijian media outlets protested the censorship, leaving dead air and blank pages where news bulletins and headlines about the crackdown should have appeared. The Sunday Times left a whole page blank apart from this message: “The stories on this page could not be published due to government restrictions.”

However, the IFJ reports that most organisations are no longer carrying political news and a “climate of silence” has gripped some newsrooms. The Fiji Times (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd) is reported to have joined other outlets in agreeing not to run any further political stories. Self censorship is a disturbing bi-product of direct intervention, desired by dictators in a climate of fear. But it takes very brave journalists and publishers to put livelihoods and lives on the line - despite the total unacceptability of such deliberate and unjustifiable attacks on media freedom.



Today, Bainimarama told Radio New Zealand that journalists themselves were to blame for the crackdown and free speech was a problem: “We want to come up with these reforms and the last thing we want to do is have opposition to these reforms throughout. So that was the reason we've come up with emergency regulations." When asked if NZ reporters were free to travel to Fiji and report what they saw, he said “There’s no need. Ask me the questions and I’ll tell you.” According to Bainimarama, Fiji doesn’t need free and open public discussion about current issues and the world doesn’t need to witness them.

His next nail in the coffin of Fijian media freedom was the shutdown of Radio Australia’s Fijian transmitters. This act, carried out by local ABC technicians under the ‘supervision’ of officials from the Office of Information and soldiers, eliminated one of the country’s last remaining sources of unfettered news and information.



The IFJ has issued a statement in solidarity with the Australian Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the Pacific Media Centre and other organisations, demanding the Bainimarama regime “immediately end all restrictions on Fiji’s news media and allow local and foreign journalists to do their jobs in the public interest.”

Today I added my signature to a letter condemning the media purge, penned by Queensland journalism professor Alan Knight, on behalf of a collective of Australian journalists and journalism academics. This was our central message:

“Soldiers and police have no place in any newsroom. We oppose the Fiji dictatorship's attempts to control our colleagues by threats, intimidation and censorship. We call on our governments to seek to protect all Fiji journalists striving to perform their duties in these difficult circumstances. As journalists and educators we affirm Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Bainimarama's clampdown under the new regulations theoretically has a 30-day lifespan. But Fijian media history, recent highlights from which include bannings, deportations, shutdowns, and the fire-bombing of an editor's home, doesn't provide much cause for hope that this latest assault on Fijian journalism will be short lived.

This is an issue which demands the attention and activism of journalists, free speech activists and academics worldwide. It deserves to make the headlines. Headlines which Fijian journalists have the right to write.    [read more]

The micro-blogging platform Twitter was the breakthrough social media tool for journalists in 2008. It became a pipeline for breaking news for both professional reporters and citizen journalists, with the massacre in Mumbai, the Hudson River plane crash and Obama's inauguration highlighting its effectiveness as a source of live, user-generated online content.

Journalists increasingly used it to cross-promote their own stories, comment on others, and connect with contacts outside their usual silos. Ultimately, mainstream media outlets from the New York Times to the BBC adopted it as a news feed service for story dissemination, and even journalism academics began joining the Twitter conversation. The potential of the platform as a vehicle for journalism education also became apparent when I began implementing it as an event-coverage training tool for my journalism students during the ACT election.

So, while Barack Obama tweeted his way through an historic U.S. election, my University of Canberra (UC) radio journalism students used Twitter as a political reporting device for live online election coverage. This resulted in both improved speed and clarity in writing, as well as a breakthrough engagement with democratic processes and political journalism by a generation of student reporters frequently cast as disengaged and averse to political news.

Joining the Twittersphere

For those of you who've managed to escape the recent media attention devoted to Twitter, a working definition: It's an interactive facility based on the open publication of messages 140 characters long. Instead of finding "friends," you accumulate "followers." Twitter identifies itself as "a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" It could also be described as a public sphere form of instant messaging, a global open chat room or, as I tweeted when I first joined the network in February 2008, "Isn't Twitter just Facebook status updates on steroids?" The language of Twitter describes users as "twits" or "tweeters" and the updates as "tweets" -- appropriately evocative of chirping birds. (The US-based PBS website devoted to the digital media revolution, MediaShift, also has published a guide to Twitter.)

Yes, I was sceptical about Twitter at first. Some of my ex-students convinced me to try it out and I later felt compelled to tweet with greater regularity when people began following my updates, but I frankly didn't see the point. Then I watched a fellow journalism academic tweet an



international communications conference in Stockholm last July, and it finally clicked. Twitter is a great way to note-take in instantly publishable form, making it perfect for live-blogging events. It's also reminiscent of radio news reporting which requires journalists to file headlines, or what are often known as "news briefs," from the field for instant broadcast.

Twitter is, I think, the closest a text-based form of journalism comes to a "live cross" -- a long-standing feature of broadcast journalism where a reporter files content, unfiltered, live to air. And that's how I started to use the platform -- as a way to publish news briefs from events I was observing or participating in, to share links to stories that infuriated or delighted me, to share entertaining life moments and Haiku poetry, to communicate about journalism issues with like minds (and those with alternative perspectives) around the globe, to connect with new people from within my industry and, increasingly, as a first base for news headline consumption from my favoured sources. Ultimately, Twitter displaced my RSS feeds and demanded my daily attention. Beware folks, it's highly addictive!

Tweeting the ACT election

UC's journalism students study only a few kilometres from the seat of federal government and the elite media hub that is the Canberra Press Gallery. At the University of Canberra, we have a reputation for producing job-ready journalism graduates with a capacity for original story-generation and critical thinking abilities but, like many journalism educators, we've found engaging Gen Y students in political reporting activities to be a challenge.

However, my background as a former member of the Canberra Press Gallery helps me persevere with the struggle and seek innovative and appealing ways to engage my students in political journalism. In the past, I've taken them to the Tally Room on national election nights to produce radio news reports for a community radio network as the vote counting unfolded. And, when the regional Canberra elections were announced last year, I was keen to do something similar. But time-constraints, logistical difficulties and security concerns made setting up an election-night post in the Canberra Tally Room for our online student publication NOWUC impossible.



Nevertheless, I managed to secure permission from the ACT government for 12 of my students to join the media throng in the Tally Room's live broadcast centre under my supervision. We were allowed to bring recording equipment into the arena to cover the event, but we were told we would not have access to desk space or Internet connectivity. So, instead, I turned to Twitter and mobile phones.

Getting the Students Twitter-Ready

I devoted one radio production class to training the students on the finer points of Twitter and getting them registered to use the platform. I first established a Twitter account connected to NOWUC (I'm the administrator of this Twitter page) to host the collective tweets on election night. I then got each of the participating students to create their own individual accounts, connecting them to their mobiles. The next step involved getting them to follow me, NOWUC and one another. I, in turn, connected my own accounts to theirs by following them.

Next, I devised traditional radio reporting assignments and allocated them to the students for election night coverage, with a view to producing and uploading longer form audio reports to NOWUC in the days following the election. Attempts to embed the Twitter feed to the NOWUC site failed, but we did install a link to the @NOWUC Twitter page which gave the main website the appearance of having a dynamic role in the election coverage process.

Interestingly, none of the students involved had used Twitter before and only a few were even familiar with its existence. Most, however, were Facebook addicts, and the idea of using a social media platform for journalistic purposes excited them. In fact, I saw news value just in the novelty of this reporting task, so I assigned some students to cover this Canberra election student tweet-a-thon as a story in itself. Challenge #1 -- getting the students interested in political reporting -- had been achieved, with the help of Twitter.

Election Night

Challenge #2 was election night itself, October 18, 2008. The plan went like this: Each student was assigned a Tweet Beat in the tally room. Some were attached to government desks, and some were dispatched to the Opposition parties' representatives. Others mingled with the voting public who'd gathered to watch the action, and the remainder stalked the main media outlets in the broadcast hub or went in search of "colour."

They were told to tag each of their tweets with #ACTelection08, using a hashtag so they could be aggregated by Twitter's search function. Each of the students was then paired in a traditional radio reporting duo to undertake their broadcast production assignments and they alternated between roles as tweeters and broadcast journalists.

Pic: Some of the UC Election Tweeters

I had toyed with the possibility of getting the students to value-add their tweets with photos or even video generated by their phones (using Twitter applications like Twitpic) but decided to keep our first Twitter reporting exercise as simple as possible - in the interests of both the speed of publication and the quality of learning.

Challenges and Obstacles

The actual process of tweeting proved logistically tricky. Given the direct link to a University of Canberra sponsored publication, I needed to filter the tweets before aggregating them on the NOWUC Twitter page in the interests of legal and ethical propriety. This was also an important part of the educational process -- teaching the students about the perils of live reporting. But this meant that I had to re-tweet (abbreviated as "RT") each and every student post manually via my iPhone, on which I'd installed the Twitterific tool -- one of several which works as an interface between Twitter and iPhones, avoiding the need to SMS posts. I edited the students' tweets only very minimally so as to downplay the "gatekeeper" role and, thankfully, I only had to intercept one potentially defamatory tweet. By the end of the night, I'd re-tweeted about 70 student news-briefs from the Tally Room via my phone and I had the Repetitive Strain Injury symptoms to prove it!

But there were other challenges as well. The students were using their personal phones to tweet, but the Twitter-based mobile phone interface available at the time required users to SMS posts to a UK number. That meant every Tweet counted as an international call and cost the student reporter approximately $1.00 dollar. Many of my students are cash poor and some had only limited credit on their phones, so they needed to tweet frugally.

Twitter's limit of 140 characters per post also posed significant journalistic challenges -- restricting students' capacity to use quotes and provide attributions and analysis, for example. Indeed, Twitter, like many social media applications, provides just as many opportunities for discussion on issues in journalistic ethics and practice as it does challenges to traditional news processes. I'll explore these issues, along with questions surrounding Twitter's use as an online "contact book" and pseudo wire service by the news media and citizen journos, in detail in my next post on MediaShift.

Great Lessons Learned

The content of the NOWUC Twitter feed reveals the diversity of student experience, talents and the lessons learned. Some tweets were pithy and witty, full of colorful political observations, while others were heavily fact based, like a a seat-by-seat count of election results. Some were clunky, while others were good examples of clarity and brevity in writing. Some students tweeted prolifically, others were slower and less productive.

For some, the highlight was meeting prominent politicians and broadcasters, while for others it was breaking a news tidbit ahead of the mainstream media. Many learned something new about the peculiar ACT electoral process and picked up fresh reporting skills. But, most importantly, they all thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience, describing it variously as "awesome," "a blast" and an "adrenalin rush." Although, admittedly, the biggest thrill of the night for most was probably gaining access to the National Press Club, the traditional watering hole of politicians, journalists and political apparatchiks -- where they continued to tweet the aftermath of the election, including Chief Minister John Stanhope's tentative victory speech.



Some of the lessons learned from this exercise included how to overcome the logistical obstacles outlined above. For example, I've since discovered a Twitter tool called Grouptweet which allows groups of connected users to post on a single Twitter page using a shared Twitter identity. This tool allows for public or private usage, meaning it can be locked down for training exercises or discussions about sensitive themes, or opened up to all comers for publication purposes, like the NOWUC Twitter election coverage.

Applying this tool in the election coverage scenario would have saved me from having to re-tweet all of my students' posts to group them @NOWUC, but it wouldn't have resolved the need to clear posts for legal and ethical reasons. As counter-intuitive to social media principles as it sounds, a Twitter tool that allowed for a hold to be put on such group tweets until cleared by a "super user" or group editor would be useful and more appropriate for professional journalistic application.

Twitter on the Air

Two of the student tweeters, Joe Sullivan and Michelle Fielding, produced a radio current affairs package about the role of Twitter in reporting and their experience covering the Canberra Tally Room.

"Our mission was to tweet...as the politics played out around us we were sent into a tweeting frenzy...We were embarking on a new journalistic dawn, competing against the traditional media outlets to break the news first," they reported.

This great piece of student audio production highlights the value of the Twitter election coverage experiment as a journalism training exercise. From this lecturer's perspective, the main benefits were in watching the students work as a reporting team, seeing their excitement as their tweets went "live," their amusement with the novelty of reporting using mobiles and social media tools and their willingness to "mix it" with prominent mainstream journalists, along with their rising interest in political reporting as the night unfolded.

"This isn't so boring after all!" they realised. Using these contemporary reporting tools helped bridge the gap between "digital natives" and traditional political reporting. And, it's a lesson worth repeating.

A version of this story first appeared at MediaShift    [read more]

Some journalism academics are possibly more scared of new technology and more resistant to change than the worst industry "dinosaurs”. But Web 2.0 has made getting online so simple that there are no more excuses for being disconnected. While some reporters see journalism education as a potential refuge from the rapid pace of change in the 21st century digital newsroom, j-schools should in fact be among the first places to adapt to technologically driven change if they're to train the journalists of tomorrow and remain relevant today.

I have been working to integrate blogs and other social media into my teaching, but traditional academia's inherent resistance to educational experimentation as well as fears around defamation litigation, autonomous student publication, and public relations fallout can make embracing the journalism of the digital age even more difficult in the classroom than in the newsroom.

Blogging about the digital transformation in J-Schools

I've just posted my first piece for the PBS-hosted website MediaShift on the application of social media tools in journalism education. I'm the new Australian "embed" for the publication which "tracks how new media -- from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism -- are changing society and culture" and I'll be posting regularly on my experiences of teaching and reporting in the digital media revolution. My main focus will be on my efforts as a journalism lecturer at the University of Canberra to adapt traditional radio and television reporting classes to suit the 21st century media environment which is, as most people reading this would likely acknowledge, increasingly online and increasingly interactive.



My professional journalistic background is as a news and current affairs journalist with a career concentrated at the ABC across radio and television, at the local and national levels. I've spent time as a news reporter and presenter, been a regional news editor, worked as a TV documentary reporter and as a national political correspondent. And, while the ABC now has an award winning online presence and a history of bi-media reporting, when I left for academia in 2003, traditional reporting outlets (i.e. radio and TV news programs) were still indisputably king, the online division operated remotely and separately from news and current affairs, and the digital revolution wasn't driving output as it is now.

So, like many journalism educators, I've found myself trying to navigate the revolution from the outside. The bulk of my "new media" knowledge has been learned through osmosis. I began my journalistic career as a radio reporter, so I'm used to being self-reliant and technology-dependent. I trained in the early 90s on digital audio and video editing programs and I'm more tech-savvy than your average journalism academic (and your average journalist, for that matter!) but I remain a self-described technophobe. I have to be pushed to adopt new technology and my IT skills are...well, let's just say thank goodness for the helpdesk!

Blogging Tweeting and Facebooking my way beyond 'new media' trepidation

I teach traditional, production-based TV and radio journalism courses at the undergraduate level but as a practitioner and teacher I thrive on interaction with my audience, students and fellow professionals. So, as technology has developed to allow for much simpler production of multimedia journalism (e.g. Soundslides) and delivered ready-made publication platforms like Blogger, my trepidation has dissipated and my interest in experimentation has increased.

I first dipped a toe into new media by starting this blog in mid-2007 after overcoming my own wariness. I see social media as the key to bridging the gap between the digital natives in our classrooms and those of us with more knowledge than skill in the digital media arena. Web 2.0 is a natural playground for "technically challenged" journalists and journalism educators seeking to cross the bridge into the digital media era and meet their young audience members and students in their own habitat. In addition to blogging (less often than I'd like) about politics, social justice issues, journalism, teaching, the highlights and lowlights of my life, I "Tweet", I "Facebook" and I fiddle with myriad other social media tools as a means of connecting globally with friends, students, professionals and strangers of like-mind -- along with those who challenge my views in an invigorating way.



My students got me hooked on Facebook in 2007, which I now use to interact with graduates and connect them to the professional journalists in my circle via my page. I also use the facetious Facebook "Appreciation Society" set up in my name by these same students as a place to link alumni and interact with current students. Twelve months ago, I attempted to establish a dedicated Facebook alumni page as well as a page for my third year bi-media course, but I ran up against institutional concerns about privacy. Late last year, the ACT Supreme Court, which sits just up the road from our campus, became the first jurisdiction to issue a summons via Facebook, so now I'm hoping the wildly popular social media site will be considered "safe" and establishment enough to use in my classroom.

Engaging students through social media

My blogging practice took a back seat to traditional academic research last year but it remained a useful tool for engaging students. Many students actively interacted with my blog by posting comments and responding to links on Facebook. Several told me they were inspired by my blog to start their own. But my blogging habits weren't viewed favourably by all in Australian journalism education circles, where the "blogging isn't journalism" mantra can still be heard and the news genre is still the main focus of teaching. One journalism lecturer told me "journalism academics shouldn't blog -- it sets a bad example for students." But this year, I intend to embed blogging in my curricula -- firstly as a platform for students' critical reflection of their own journalism practice -- as a companion for their other publication platform NOWUC. This website, which was quite innovative in Australian University terms when it was established as a multiple-media publication for student journalism in 2003, is about to undergo an overdue overhaul. I'll also be encouraging the students to each develop their own independent blogs as a way to help them to find their own voices and experiment more broadly with journalistic genres.

I've already begun using Twitter in my teaching, successfully experimenting with it as a live-blogging platform for my graduating radio students as they covered the ACT election in October, 2008. They were dispatched with mobile phones around the "tally room" on election night, mingling with national media, voters and candidates and had a "total blast," as one student put it, Tweeting on the vote count, the atmosphere, and getting live reaction from actors in the drama. (I'll assess this experiment in my next MediaShift post.) As part of my experimentation, I've tentatively set up a skeleton Youtube channel and an online radio station at Blogtalkradio for our broadcast students to begin cross-promoting their stories via social media. I also plan to investigate the use of other tools like Utterli in my teaching this year.



J-Schools no refuge from digital revolution

But while I'm excited about these developments as a teacher and a journalist, change needs to be effected via baby steps within my institution - as it is within many J-schools. It comes as no shock that former colleagues still entrenched in traditional newsrooms are seeking refuge in academia in an effort to avoid the freight train of change that is digital media. "How do I become a professor?" I'm often asked by journalists. Their reasoning is that universities are safe places for journalists, where time stands still on technology. They imagine journalism schools to be lofty places where they can continue their careers as public intellectuals while avoiding the pace of change, debating ideas in the abstract without worrying about the intrusion of the 'real world' - characterised by frenetic online developments in newsrooms and the replacement of traditional journalism jobs with tech-savvy multimedia producers. But the reasoning of these would-be escapees to academia is flawed. As much as I'd love more time to research, contemplate issues and contest ideas as an academic, the realities of 21st century higher education in Australia mean that a massive teaching and administration overload squeezes out room for research and significantly inhibits opportunities for professional practice, leaving even less time to keep up with industry change.

But students pursuing journalism degrees demand to be taught the professional skills that will get them hired. And while they may enrol in traditional journalism courses which are still often segregated into "print" and "broadcast," the industry demands that they emerge with a set of generic skills suitable for a digital newsroom -- such as an ability to incorporate audio and visual elements into multimedia productions -- in addition to specialist skills in one or two traditional areas and an understanding of the changing nature of the industry.

This reality means it's incumbent upon all journalism academics to now engage intellectually with these changes and develop skills in digital media practice -- it's no longer exclusively multimedia/digital journalism/new media academics who must undertake this work. In other academic fields, it's cutting-edge research that drives industry change, not the other way around. In a perfect world, journalism educators would not lag behind industry, but rather would be setting the pace for educational change in response to digital transformations. This would require keeping up with the dramatic changes affecting industry and enhancing traditional journalism courses through the integration of new media platforms which are both easy to use and increasingly driving the news consumption habits of our students.

As a time-poor journalism academic trying to undertake a PhD, pursue traditional academic research, teach labour-intensive production-based broadcast journalism units, stay connected with the profession, keep up a modicum of professional practice and act as career counsellor/job-placement agent for my students, social media platforms are both the easiest way for me to keep pace with industry change and the best tools for digitally enhancing the teaching of traditional journalism classes.

A version of this post originally appeared on MediaShift    [read more]

I put my recipe for culturally competent reporting to the test last night, at a Ramadan feast staged at the Canberra Islamic Centre.



There was competition for seats in the jam-packed community hall where hundreds of people gathered to break their fast at sunset. Traditionally, Muslims fast during daylight hours in the Islamic calendar month of Ramadan as an act of submission, solidarity, and to reflect on the suffering of others. The daily breaking of the fast is a time of replenishment, community and celebration. And yesterday was a particularly significant Ramadan date – many Muslims mark it as the day on which the Quran was revealed to the prophet Mohamed. So, a special feast was organised by the Canberra Islamic Centre and I was invited to attend by a young Muslim woman – a former student, Fatima Ahmed – to experience the event first hand.



My first impression was a revelation: it was essentially like a multicultural version of a Catholic Church-sponsored World Youth Day event I attended with friends in a Bungendore school hall earlier this year! It was a friendly and open crowd where people, speaking in their mother tongues and dressed in traditional finery, blasted away the stereotypical representation of Muslims as mono-cultural and ubiquitously veiled. They came from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Subcontinent. Young and old; men and women; family groups; friends and strangers; they talked animatedly as they jostled for space and waited for the call to prayer that would signal the end of the day’s fasting. Children sat patiently in front of their rosewater-infused lassis and individual plates of foods traditionally eaten to break the fast – predominantly dates and portions of fresh fruit.

Then came silence, with the signal of the call to prayer. A man with a beautiful, resonant, voice that filled the hall and sent shivers up my spine, began singing - arms raised heavenward: “Allah u akbah…” The prayer, recited in Arabic, is called the Adhan and it’s words are translated into English like this:

God is the greatest
I bear witness that there is no deity except God.
I bear witness that Mohamed is the messenger of God.
Make haste towards prayer
Make haste towards welfare
God is the greatest
There is no deity but Allah.

The words Allah u akbah (God is the greatest) have been associated in Western media discourse with the September 11th attacks, due to the adoption of the mantra by the terrorists as a call to battle. But last night, hearing those words sung was a soul-soothing, calming experience. The chant evoked peace, not hostility. When the prayer ended, the chattering resumed and people began eating the food on their plates. When this ‘first course’ was polished off, they made their way to the first prayers of the evening.




This is a progressive Muslim community on Canberra’s southern outskirts, but the prayers were sex segregated. The men prayed together in the main hall, while the women and children moved to a private prayer room. And I have to confess, it’s hard for me, a Feminist who, in a ‘previous life’, campaigned for women’s ordination and equality within the Anglican church, to accommodate such gender based separation – it makes me uncomfortable…personally and politically. But many of the women I spoke to last night appreciate the female solidarity and spiritual space provided by segregated prayer.






My reaction to sex-segregated food lines for the feast that followed was similar. But I had more trouble appreciating the benefits of this approach for women…their line was longer, swollen by the children in their ranks, and I couldn't help but ask the friends I was sitting with: “What would happen if I joined the male queue?” Although they encouraged me to feel free to do so, it was clear to me this would be perceived as provocative and potentially insensitive behaviour.

My young friend’s mother generously lined up and brought me a plate of delicious Iranian stews which I ate with my friends at a table where the conversation moved from the stuff of life, to politics and an academic discussion of Muslims and their relationship with the mainstream Australian media. The discussion was intelligent, thought-provoking and entertaining. Children ran back and forward from the table excitedly, and strangers came to meet and greet me. There was much laughter and I was warmly welcomed, being shown great courtesy and respect by everyone I met. I report this, not because I expected it to be otherwise, but because of the fears haboured by some, that such gatherings would be bastions of Islamic extremism.

After dinner, I joined the women in the prayer room for their next devotional session. After nearly inducing a heart attack in my friend, fellow writer and academic, Shakira Hussein, by absent-mindedly heading towards the door to the prayer room with my shoes on (I reassured her that, of course, I intended to remove my shoes in deference to tradition. But I suspect she still believes she narrowly averted a major faux pas committed by a journalist promoting culturally sensitive reporting :). I slipped off my heels and sat against the wall of the prayer room with camera in my lap. I was invited to photograph the women as they prepared to pray. While many of them don’t wear headscarves in everyday life, most of them choose to cover their heads for prayer. They lined up quietly, variously standing and kneeling in prayer on cue, with signals emanating from the men’s prayer gathering outside. At the back of the book-lined prayer room, children played quietly and posed for my camera.


There’s something beautiful about this style of prayer and devotion. It’s in the supplicant faces; the synergy of words and movement; the quiet unity.

Frequently, stories about terrorism are inter-cut with, or accompanied by, images of prostrate men engaged in Muslim prayer. And this constant association of religious practise and violence has undermined the peaceful nature of this basic devotional activity – the hallmark of daily lived religion for millions of Muslims around the world. I was glad to experience the sense of peaceful spirituality which accompanied these women as they prayed.

They met one more time for prayer before the social gathering in the main hall was replaced by a shopping bonanza, as market stalls were set up in the courtyard outside. There were brightly coloured and beaded kaftans and Salwar Kameez from Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Middle East; beautiful, soft pashminas; handmade leather shoes colourfully decorated with pom poms and embroidery.

And, in one corner were women queued for henna tattoos to be painted on their arms and hands. I’ve always admired the henna coloured swirls on other women's bodies, and I’d never be brave enough to get one done in permanent ink, so I joined the line and chatted with other women as I had my arm laced with paint. The tattoo I chose begins with a dove on my left forearm and heads down to the middle knuckle, flourishing with floral emblems, feathers and curls.
On my ultra-white skin, the orange ink is stark and beautiful in the light of day. I could get addicted to this beauty regime!

In my experience, and according to my research, the best way to subvert media stereotypes, and encourage culturally sensitive reporting, is to expose journalists personally to alternative perspectives, practices and experiences. At a human level, it’s much easier to empathise with people and circumstances through lived experience. Empathy breeds sensitivity, and insensitive reporting is a problem frequently highlighted by journalism scholars in connection with the coverage of complex social issues.

My aim, last night, was to briefly embed myself in Muslim ‘culture’ and experience the religious practice of this community. I thoroughly enjoyed the exposure and learned things about myself in the process. I was more unsettled by the sex segregation than I expected to be…it was confronting for this Feminist. But no where near as confronting as being told by the minister of my former church that I should stop asking impertinent questions during sermon Q & As. He also told my husband "It's time you learned to control your wife!".

There was open-mindedness, and tolerance expressed towards me by people with open hearts, last night. And my overwhelming feeling was of being embraced, rather than repelled. I felt joyful, rather than fearful on the long drive home.    [read more]

I’m celebrating my first bloggerversary – it’s exactly one year today since I uploaded my first post to J-scribe. So, it’s time to take stock and look to the future of this little Web 2.0 journalistic enterprise.

It began with a bang – well, more of an explosion of anger in text, really, in response to 11 years of Howard Government socio-cultural ‘retroform’ - and politics has proved an enduring theme here. Racism, xenophobia, issues of social justice (see also 'Begging for a Future'), national identity and culture, journalism(see also 'The ABC of Comedy' and 'Jihad Sheilas or Media Victims?'), sexism (see also 'The Shrew who Won't Be Tamed'), academia and social media have also regularly propelled my fingers to keyboard.

But J-scribe's also emerged as a repository for my musings on life, love (see also 'I do, I do'), loss (see also 'Over the Rainbow') and laughter (see also 'Spa-in Partners'). It’s part diary, part political column, part observational reporting and part academic reflection. And it’s 100% me…a sort of ‘me media’ platform that reflects the complex life, thoughts, ideas, passions, experiences, travels, adventures, domestic doings and observations of one woman.

J-Scribe was conceived with a prod from a fellow journalism academic; birthed in collaboration with my talented web-designing partner; cheered on by my network of friends, colleagues and former students on Facebook and it entered mainstream journalism through a story on web 2.0 political advertising during the Federal Election campaign.

This week I’ve spent a few hours looking back at some of my posts – tracking my life and the issues that pressed my buttons over the past year – and I’m proud of this flawed (but surprisingly entertaining - even if I do say so myself!) archive of my life. It’s personal, reflective, human, passionate, informed and, frankly, quite funny at times :) It demonstrates, through flurries and wanes in posting, the ebbs and flows of time and the lack of time I’ve had to devote to this project in recent months. It’s my attempt to engage – with issues, debates and ideas; with friends, colleagues, students and random visitors to my site who talk back and sometimes back-chat; with my desire for creative expression and with new models of journalism.

I was afraid of starting a blog for a number of reasons 1) I'm essentially a technophobe who needs to be pushed past her fears 2) I'd been influenced by the "blogging isn't journalism" brigade and my inner journo worried about issues of credibility and professionalism 3) Outside of the traditional publication and delivery mode of news, I figured I wouldn't find an audience and what's the point of talking to yourself?

But, in starting a blog I 1) discovered blogging and social media tools are a great vehicle for conquering a creative soul's technological trepidations, 2) quickly realised that journalists and academics can and should blog and that blogging can be a legitimate form of journalistic output 3) have not only found an audience (albeit a small one) but one that talks back! And that engagement (brief periods of vilification aside) has proved enriching - personally and journalistically.

My most recent Web 2.0 foray is into the world of Twitter - a micro-blogging platform that shares the frenetic pace, reactive tone and shrill pitch of birdsong. I resisted the temptation to Tweet (yep, it's a whole other lingo you need to get down with, folks!) until my (hollow) protests made me look like a twit (get it? :) and I feared my reluctance would lead me to be judged a twat (yep, hilarious with the puns aren't I?) So, for those of you with short attention spans, I'm now disseminating status-updates on steroids (limited to 140 characters) via Twitter whenever I feel the urge to share, and sharing there in other people's observations on news, life politics and society. Believe it or not, Barrack Obama started following my Tweets (don't get too excited, I suspect anyone with a Twitter profile that references both politics and journalism was a prime target!) and he's among the 50-odd fellow Twitterers I'm now following. These include micro-news posts from the New York Times, the ABC, PBS and the observations of a host of journalists, cartoonists, social media addicts and academics.

Blogging, Web 2.0, social media, Twitter, Facebook, citizen journalism…all these terms have one common theme – engagement and connectivity with citizenry. Traditionalists, fear-mongers and curmudgeons declare these modern communication tools and modes of journalistic practice hostile to quality, independent journalism - a threat that must be contained. But, rather than being viewed as the death knell for professional journalism, they need to be appreciated as an opportunity for journalists to connect with one another, with sources and with their audiences, in a way which has has the potential to broaden their reach, increase their status with audiences and empower communities. They are also essential tools for journalism educators seeking to connect with their students in a relevant, stimulating way.

I'd like to engage more deeply with these debates here and share some insights I've recently gleaned via experts in the field, but my life calls - so I need to sign off for now.

Before I go, though, here's my 'new bloggers-year' resolution: aim to enrich my posts with more audio-visual content and upgrade from plain old blogger to podcaster/vodcaster/vlogger. And your job is to keep feeding back. You can start by offering your assessment of a year in the life of J-scribe and bidding for the sort of content you desire.

Tweet ya later!    [read more]

Your clock's still ticking but time stands still here.

The dressing table tells your story - favourite cards; faded photographs; symbols of your faith; dried flowers from wedding bouquets; sentimental gifts and memories of yesterdays.

Outside, the birds still flock to the garden you loved. They wake me early.

On a lemon tree branch, a dove sits singing your song. A bittersweet goodbye.

The phone just rang. My sister was sobbing “She’s gone”. My grandmother had just died. Granny made chicken soup to comfort us and ward off the cold...I was making chicken soup when I took the call.

Mabel Elizabeth Sewell was an amazing woman who fought valiantly to live in the face of myriad illnesses that destroyed her body but left her mind and wit intact to the end. But it was time for the suffering to stop in her 90th year.

I'm crying tears of grief but also tears of relief. The grief is for my loss and the pain I watched her endure this week while sitting at her bedside. The relief is in her liberation from bodily struggle and the peace her spirit will now find.

She was like a second mother to me and my shelter in fierce storms. As a little girl, I climbed through the hole in the fence that separated our houses when I was unhappy or in need of a treat. As a teenager, her home was a refuge for my mother, sister and I when we sought escape from my violent stepfather. Whenever we landed on Granny's doorstep in search of safety, she would invite us in, envelop us in protective arms and share her strength - she had ample for all of us.

Grandma was comfort food and cosy flannelette sheets, favourite old books you never tire of reading, birds on the windowsill and a garden full of roses. Her home always smelled of baked dinners and pumpkin scones and I don’t ever remember feeling cold there.

She lived for her family and cared for her chronically ill husband with devotion and loyalty unsurpassed in my experience. Grandad died 22 years ago and she missed him terribly but she loved life too much to rush to join him.

Her home wasn’t her entire life: she had a rich social and work life…volunteering tirelessly for the Royal Blind Society and working as a Wollongong hospital aid known as a ‘mauve lady’ – her favourite colour. Her hospital job involved making patients and their carers as comfortable as possible…running errands, lending an ear and making cups of tea. Those years of devotion to others were repaid ten-fold in recent years by my mother who selflessly tended to her every need, but dependency caused by physical limitations didn't come easily to Grandma.

Grandma grew up in a tiny dairy farming town called Berry on the NSW South Coast and only left these shores once, on a trek to Papua New Guinea with Grandad to share his wartime experiences on the Kokoda Trail, but she was worldly-wise.

Pragmatic, diligent and thrifty, she was also the first environmentalist I knew – she was still recycling Alfoil and reusing tea bags up until a few months before her death. Her sharp wit and delight in laughter sustained her and kept the rest of us amused…and amazed. Even on her deathbed she was making quips during moments of clarity.

She had the spirit of a wartime heroine – plucky, opinionated, stubborn and courageous she was determined not to be beaten. She was so feisty she even staved off death which the doctors predicted would come much sooner than it did. She fought fiercely against so many illnesses – her biggest enemies being the vascular disease that long ago robbed her of her mobility and the cancer which she battled for 14 years.

She sucked joy out of life with every breath and tried courageously to mask the pain. But it was time for her to go…to join Grandad who she still missed so much two decades after he made his own journey to heaven.

And there she’ll wait for the rest of us…pain-free; making cups of tea; doing crossword puzzles and going for brisk walks with Grandad through gardens…picking roses without fear of thorns.

Musical Dedication: Longtime Traveller by The Wailin' Jennys Grandma    [read more]

I'm at the South African National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. But I nearly didn’t make it. A fortnight before I left, in the wake of the outbreak of Xenophobic violence that claimed more than 60 lives, the Australian government issued a “do not travel alert” for all South African townships which my employer threatened to read as a total ban on travel to South Africa. They were, of course, concerned about my safety (as was my mother – don’t get me started!) which is measured via insurance risk.

Like most of the rest of the West, Australia sees South Africa through a distorted lens of crime, violence and political disappointment...in the dark, rather than up in lights. But I was determined to see a different country. This town, its people and this festival have offered me that perspective.

I’m in Grahamstown to work on the Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies Cue journalism project which incorporates a daily newspaper, radio and TV output along with online publications and a pictures agency. It’s a remarkable series of productions – existing on blood, sweat and, from what I’ve observed, the requisite tension and gallows humour that go with deadline pressure and creative energy. Radio students are filing stories on social and political issues revolving around the festival, and emanating from performances, to a national audience on the SABC and collaborating with photography students to create multimedia output for online; TV students are vod-casting creative coverage of festival life; there’s a convergent blog being overseen by visiting academics from the Netherlands while contributing editors from established publications join Rhodes staff in burning the candle at both ends on the Cue newspaper produced every day of the 10 day festival. That’s my view of "Fest"(as it's known to it's attendants who are called "Festinos") from inside the Cue media production hub – prodigious effort; creative drive and loads of overtime. No wonder you lot won the Rugby World Cup!

My view from outside the walls of production is even more inspiring. I’ve seen performances that have stunned me, moved me, enthralled me, underwhelmed me and left cold…literally. The Dance Factory’s astounding production of Romeo and Juliet utterly enthralled me. It was the first event I attended at Fest and it set the bar very high. My heart pounded in tune with thumping feet, and plasticine bodies turned my head askew as this tragic love affair was played out on an understated stage. The star and choreographer, Dado Masilo, stunned me. She took the stage with a rare boldness – shaved, proud, head and bare feet that stomped out the rhythm of her soul.
Then there was Umrhube – Indigenous Music. What a spectacle! Traditional costumes, songs, dance and instruments merged in this raw, powerhouse performance which literally blew out a speaker! The joy and sense of celebration characterising this performance underscored the hope and resilience of South Africans as I’ve observed them.

At the other end of the spectrum is my most bizarre Fest experience - which falls into the “it’s so bad, it’s laugh out loud funny” category. Grahamstown “identity” Basil Mills’ creation, Impundulu, staged outdoors in freezing conditions by Dogs’ Dam, was a hoot! It had everything…from fire-eating to belly dancing (performed by the Lower Albany Turkish Delights who bravely combined sequined bra tops with thermals) and a children’s dance troupe. Don’t ask me what the story line was, but the objective seemed to be to incorporate every quirky act and character known to Grahamstown into a multicultural, mythical tale with absolutely no attempt to segue way seamlessly from one theme to another. It was…truly unforgettable.

But the major highlight of my visit was breaching the Australian government’s township travel ban. With the National Arts Festival as the backdrop, I made my way to the township ‘Kings Flats’ this week for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the interests of reflecting a different picture of township life to my country. I was taken to Kings Flats by Rhodes University student Asanda Ntame. Asanda, who is studying journalism in the hope of better representing his community’s interests, lives in Kings Flats with his extended family.

Despite the warnings and the statistical evidence of rampant crime and violence, my experience of visiting Kings Flats was ultimately inspiring. The poverty was visible – on the streets and in the simple character of the home I visited – but, as a foreigner, I was warmly greeted and welcomed. Children played on the streets, animals roamed freely, women washed together in their yards with stereos playing loudly. These were scenes far removed from the images of horrendous xenophobic violence Westerners have recently come to recognise as visual shorthand for township life in South Africa.

As Asanda Ntame told me “we are people just like Australians. We go about our daily lives here. People greet each other on the street. They love you, they want to get to know you. People need to remember that while other people may be different they are still people”. He described the Australian government’s travel ban applying to all South African townships as “ridiculous, based on a complete stereotype”. Every other South African I’ve raised this with concurs and that view is being reflected to the ABC audience in Australia.

During my visit to Kings Flats I was, however, struck by the absence of evidence of the festival that was enlivening Grahamstown in the valley below. I asked the shopkeepers I interviewed what their experience of Fest was. One of them, Mohamed Ali, a Pakistani refugee who fled the Free State after his shop was burnt to the ground four times in acts of xenophobic violence, said “I don’t even know Fest is on except when I go to town to buy supplies for my shop”. So life goes on as normal in the townships that wrap the hills of this city I’ve grown to love and respect in the few short weeks I’ve been here.

Despite its crazy weather, Grahamstown, with its quiet pre-fest streets and dilapidated colonial architecture, the many friendly people I’ve met, and the way the festival has absorbed and entertained me – from the main stage to the Village Green which showcases arts and crafts - have gotten under my skin. I heard Africa infects people like that…evidently, I’m not immune. People in Australia were worried I wouldn’t make it home alive. I will make it home alive…more alive than ever.

Note: A version of this article first appeared in Cue newspaper on July 5th, 2008    [read more]