Fake it til you make it…as a radio newsreader
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Emily Hoskins from ARN tells us how to do her job.
What does a radio newsreader actually do?
A radio newsreader has to be switched on from the moment they sit at their desk. At the Australian Radio Network each journalist writes, researches, edits and reads their own news bulletins under tight deadlines – every 30 minutes during the breakfast shift and every hour after 9am. Via the Classic Hits network, we offer the most comprehensive FM news in the country. We make every bulletin different by constantly looking for fresh stories and re-working existing stories with new angles. This is done by utilising contacts, conducting phone interviews and scouring sources like newspapers, AAP, Twitter etc. If there is a late-breaking story, there can be just minutes to frantically write it before the news theme starts. If the bulletin itself sounds effortless on air, we’ve done our job right.
What skills do you need to be good at the job?
Emily skipped over the fact that radio newsrooms have always seemed to pinch an enormous amount of their stories from newspapers, invariably without acknowledgement.