Comments on: What’s going on at ABC news?

By: Elahn

Elahn — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:28:22 +0000

I’ve been working for the ABC but not in news. I chose not to continue working for such disrespectful management. I have however continued to work on programs such as Gardening Australia where not only the management, but the producers and other staff are incredibly respectful, appreciative and great to work alongside.
Editing within news, in my opinion, is becoming less a job for skilled craft editors. It is now a by-product of overshot, over written stories in need of making interesting. If you consider yourself an “editor” then make every attempt at working on projects where your skills and experience are appreciated and respected. Learn the craft, ask questions, find a mentor, hone your skills, and above all know your worth.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:45:16 +0000

Hi Elahn

Curious to know if you still do any work at the ABC or did they react badly to this post? Work for casuals seems to be drying up in Sydney as they pump all their money into News24, which of course is edited (badly) by young, poorly paid journalists. As an earlier poster said here, they have “removed the pretence to quality” and consequently the quality of their news output is going down the pan

cheers Lucy

By: ex abc casual

ex abc casual — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:42:59 +0000

Hi elahn
I have worked with you before and whole heartily agree your points. As a casual you really are asked to do silly things. I was being paid 40 dollars an hour at 2am in the morning there. I am a very experienced Final Cut Editor and there were moves afoot for me to get extra work and train up some of the old timers, management knocked it back. One stage looked like I was going to have a semi permanent shift that management seemed to be very exited about putting me in , never happened. While I will miss my fellow workers I wont miss the uncertainty the screwing around, the technical mistakes based around ignite. Working on weekends sitting doing nothing…being told id have a new contract post christmas now February and still no abc work.

Im now moving onto bigger things.. I have to say elahn your a seriously good operator and I respect what you have said here good luck.

By: Rigger

Rigger — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:50:11 +0000

I have been asked several times to ‘train’ others in various aspects of editing. At first I obliged, taking it as an acknowledgement of my level of skill and experience. Then eventually it backfired on me. While I was an ABC employee a subordinate I had helped to train was given a job on a prestige, high budget production despite being much less experienced. (When I challenged the appointment it became apparent that my subordinate got the job because she was female and I am not. But that’s another issue!). It happened to me again while I was freelancing and working on a very well known long running TV series. I was assigned an assistant from the company’s staff and asked to “show her the ropes”, this I did and she became a very good assistant. After year without a break I took a holiday but when I returned I found that my assistant had been given my job (on half the rate I was getting of course!).

So in my case it’s “Twice bitten, Thrice shy.”! I am therefore very cautious about imparting any of my depth of knowledge to others, although sometimes it is unavoidable when acting as part of a team of editors and deadlines are looming. At one point I was so covert in protecting my knowledge that I’d go in after hours to fix things up. I have since stopped doing this as I didn’t get paid any extra and didn’t get any credit for it.

I have found that good editors (and not just editors) have similar traits. They are very dedicated, conscientious and proud of their work, and this leaves us open to exploitation. After years of editing at a high level, I am only now learning to say “No” to requests to work outside my terms of reference.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:16:14 +0000

If it’s any consolation, desktop editing has been tried overseas in many locations and has had very limited impact. In most places, editors/cameramen still cut the packages, while journos do the simple stuff. Generally it has been found that a journalist does not have the time, nor the skill, to put together a package competently. Being an editor, you’d know that most of the work goes into tweaking/adjusting the audio, and that it’s fairly time consuming. Amazingly, ABC management weren’t told this by the Grass Valley salespeople and so they are learning the hard way. In the meantime, we are seeing increasingly crappy product go to air.

Good for you for standing up to your journo “colleague” and for defending the craft. If only more editors at the ABC would do the same.

By: anon

anon — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:48:21 +0000

How can they treat an entire class of skills this way? Easy, remove the pretence to quality. The only yardstick for the ABC now is the Editorial Policy handbook. It refers to the content not the medium.
Therefore an interview should be acurate but not litigious, it says nothing about it being ‘in-focus’ or ‘easy to understand’ or ‘jarring to watch’.
As long as it could go on-air then on-line, who cares what it looks like? Not Auntie apparently.

On behalf of the poor viewer, who remains to scrutinise the technical quality of the product? All that knowledge and skill has been replaced by technological advancement (thats code for culling costs).

Soon the pressure of pre-production script creation AND post-production will, 1. keep stories from getting to air, or, 2. make those that do get to air quite hard to watch.
Will people still watch? Yes.
Will they care that the stories look like Uncle John’s home movies? Probably not. No one seems to mind the big black holes and silly supers going to air now. Perhaps Auntie is softening us up for the real change, change down. When we will see more of the, “jack-of-all-trade but master-of-NONE” stories.

It’s not that the Journalists don’t care about the product they will be asked to create. It’s just that, by definition, they don’t have the depth of experience to know what’s wrong.

How many people can recognise smoke coming from a car as bad? How many of us know what to do to fix it?

They make, I fix. That’s how quality is done.

By: Nicki Bentley Marshall

Nicki Bentley Marshall — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:11:05 +0000

Nicki Bentley-Marshall at 16:36 on 09 July
Obviously, I don’t work in the same industry as you, but that said I can relate to your plight.
I watched my husband run a company for many years, pull it out of debt, solve all their major marketing problems, deal with all the staff issues and train all their staff only to have those he trained put into higher positions with more pay. The reason they gave was that no one could do the job he was doing as well as himself. Everyday they expected more from him without the financial benefits. Eventually he left and, much to their surprise, the company stopped functioning effectively and they had to employ 6 ( yes 6) new staff members to do his job. They called him and begged for his return with a slight pay rise. He laughed at their proposal and told them they had to be kidding. He would never have left had he been given the respect he so rightly deserved.
I’m by no means telling you to leave, but stick by your guns, if you let people take advantage they will without doubt do so.
Nic xxx