Q&A: Leigh Sales
In a piece that first appeared in Encore, journalist, author and host of 7.30, Leigh Sales talks about an alternate career as a florist and poaching journos from The Australia.
Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
It’s impossible to name any one. But as in all things, the people who control the purse strings are usually the most powerful so for starters, I’d nominate John Singleton, Kerry Stokes, the Murdochs and Stephen Conroy.
What medium could you not live without?
Probably Twitter. It collates all the different sources of information – newspapers, magazines, blogs, TV and radio – and puts them in one place for me to sift through. It saves me a huge amount of time and delivers me a lot of information I wouldn’t otherwise find.
Your one guilty media pleasure?
I do love Who magazine, especially the themed issues (like most beautiful people, Oscars fashion etc).
The next big industry trend is…
If I knew that, maybe I’d be on that list of people in question one. It’s an industry in flux and I fear things are going to get worse before they get better.
If you weren’t doing this for a living what would you be doing?
I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was a child so that’s a tough question to answer. Sometimes I think it would be great to be a florist and be surrounded by beautiful things all day. I would love to write books full time but it doesn’t pay (unless you’re very fortunate). From time to time, I also think about the possibility of a corporate career after journalism. I feel curious to know if I could successfully turn my hand to something else.
Your best piece of career advice…
Do what you like and what you’re good at. I don’t think a massive salary makes up for a mind-numbing job or having to work on boring things or with boring people. Having said that, offer me a million-dollar salary and maybe I’ll find those things quite easy to handle.
If you could poach one person, who would it be?
Cameron Stewart at The Australian would be a great hire for us. He breaks so many stories across so many different subject areas. He’d translate well to TV.
Would you recommend working in this industry to your kids?
Even though I’ve loved my career, in all honesty, no. I hope my son wants to do something that is more secure than journalism and also pays better. But I won’t say that to him. I’ll give him the same career advice I mentioned earlier.
What is your favourite Aussie ad?
I don’t watch any live commercial TV so I fast forward through all the ads but I think anyone who grew up in Queensland in the 1980s has “Love You Brisbane” seared into their memory. It was the Channel Seven promo with all of their stars doing that ‘Seven’ thing with their hand (holding up five fingers, then two). Why doesn’t Seven do that anymore? It was pretty iconic.
This story first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.
What a nice person….
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All class.
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Question 1, re who is the most powerful in media … powerful to do what? Change people’s minds? That is influence. Change people’s behaviour? That is legislation. Change people’s beliefs? That is preaching … what do we mean by the question?
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Just a class act…
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