Trailblazing Radio National presenter Julie Copeland has died.
Julie began her career with 3AW, later joining the ABC first as a freelance contributor to the pioneering and influential women’s program, The Coming Out Show, then hosting the literary program, First Edition. Over the course of her career in the Australian media, Copeland would became an institution in arts support and coverage as part of the national broadcaster’s Arts National, Arts Talk, Sunday Morning Arts with Julie Copeland and the weekly politics and culture program, The Europeans.
Current presenter of The Art Show and Arts in 30, Daniel Browning shared these memories of Julie:
“When I first joined Radio National in 1997, hers was one of the names among her generation of senior broadcasters that had that otherworldly ring — as if it belonged to a force of nature, not a mere human.
I’m embarrassed to say that I only ‘knew’ Julie Copeland as a listener. But it’s as a listener that I heard what the audience heard. In her sparkling but unaffected voice and lively, wide-ranging interviews, we heard her passion for her subject (whatever it was), the way she established rapport without fawning insincerity, the true inquisitiveness, and apparent lack of snobbery. What is even more surprising is that Julie’s expert knowledge of the liberal arts was acquired the hard way: she was a voracious reader.
It is an unacknowledged art to draw a person out in a radio interview — and Julie Copeland was a master practitioner of the craft. She also had unfettered access to senior figures in the arts, many of whom would have passed if anybody else were holding the mic.
I owe Julie a debt of gratitude and acknowledge her for the profound legacy she leaves as an arts journalist and communicator. This short account of her professional life was a team effort, and I’m grateful to the many current and former colleagues who shared their recollections.
What I know is that Julie Copeland was intrepid, the quality in a journalist that drives them to do just about anything to get the story, to ascertain the facts without inflicting harm. (To be fearless is to put too fine a point on it). But she was more than intrepid and her commitment to story was deep and unwavering.
Story is the core of what we do, not just the telling, but the caretaking. It’s a well-wrapped parcel that only you can deliver. She applied that pastoral care to every one of her interviews. And as an interviewer, Julie was prolific — she spoke to just about every Australian artist you care to name. Perhaps her greatest legacy is the public record she leaves in the extraordinary range and depth of the many hundreds of interviews she recorded in the field and live on air across her long career at the ABC. Our archive is one of the greatest assets we have as a cultural and record-making institution — and Julie Copeland is all over it.
I’ve observed that there are two kinds of journalist. It’s our job to know people. Some of us are misanthropes who search, in our journalism, to confirm the worst in human nature. The other half are unprejudiced, prepared to be surprised and actually like what they find.
Julie Copeland genuinely liked what she found in others, and — as a listener — she communicated that simple but beautiful reckoning to me and the rest of her audience.
Vale Julie Copeland.”