In the week of International Women’s Day and the Women’s Asian Cup, this second profile is Amanda Shalala, who is driven by her passion for sport and champions diversity in sports reporting. She is now Deputy Editor of ABC Sport.

The series, Wisdom of Women in Media explores the career and personal journeys of women in the audio media industry. The aim of the series is to reflect on the wisdom they have gained, to mentor and to share their hopes for the industry.

1. Describe your current professional life and your stage of life. 

I’m the Deputy Editor of ABC Sport so that means looking after our news output, as distinct from our broadcast content which primarily comes through radio. I’m really looking at our original storytelling across video, audio and also helping with digital, plus social media. Planning for big events such as the Olympics, Paralympics and World Cup is another of my responsibilities.

My real passion is our 50:50 Equality Project which is focused on increasing the coverage of women’s sport and also bringing diversity to our sports coverage, by featuring more indigenous Australians, people from culturally diverse communities and people with disability. The outward facing storytelling side of the 50:50 equality project is also about diversifying our workforce and ensuring the people who are telling the stories reflect who we feature and who we are as a nation.

I really do love my job. I get to be engrossed in sport and all the fun things that come with live sport. There’s the action, the emotion plus there’s the diverse representation which creates deeper layered storytelling, it’s then about much more than sport. It’s about trying to create a better society and this is a small way that I can contribute. 

Even though I’m in a senior position now and have been in the industry for 20 years I sometimes feel like a rookie and, if you think about it, it’s the imposter syndrome that lingers. I then think, if someone’s going to take up this role I’m happy for it to be me and I try to propel things forward. 

At my stage of life, mid career level, I’m just at a point where I want to take it to the next level. I’ve been able to do some great stuff on a personal level but now it’s not just enough for me to do my own stories or do my own thing. It’s got to be about bringing others along for the journey and empowering others at the different stages of their career. 

My family life is always busy and hectic, trying to juggle everything, but I think a lot of people deal with that. I enjoy staying busy as I’m the kind of person that gets too bored doing nothing. I’m too restless so I have to be on the go all the time. 

2. How did you come to be in this industry?

I really loved sport. I loved watching it or being involved with it. I was never going to be a great athlete although I entertained becoming a Hockey Roo briefly. I really love talking and I still play to this day, but I play sport just for fun. I wanted to be Adam Gilchrist because most of my sporting role models were no surprise, men, since that’s all I saw out there in the media. I thought I want to be like Gilly or I wanted to play in the NRL for the Dragons. 

I realised that was not going to happen so I wondered how else could I be involved in sport. Public speaking and communication were some of my strengths, so I thought there must be a job where I can just talk about sport all day, watch it and get paid. I was that kid who was going to the Sheffield Shield with a few hundred other people where you pay your gold coin donation so you can sit in the member stand, which is such an iconic thing to do in Sydney. I could never do that for a test match because I’m not a member. I’m not on the 100 year waitlist so I was always very obsessed in that sense. 

All that eventually led me to the path of sports journalism and sports broadcasting. Since I was  obsessed with rugby league growing up, I thought I’m going to be a sports journalist but I’ll just be a rugby league reporter commentator. I still love rugby league, but I now do a greater range of things, more than I thought I would be capable of doing when I was 14. It hasn’t necessarily been a straight path but it has still been varied for which I’m grateful. 

3. What are your core beliefs? How are your values evident in the work you do or the life you lead?

I’m driven by an equity mindset. I believe in fairness, that everybody should have opportunities to thrive and that we should value everybody. Inclusion is a huge part of what I believe in. We need to include all people from all different walks of life because that only lifts us all. 

I do feel very frustrated when I see systems or mechanisms that are exclusionary. I’m very appreciative that I’ve been able to address that through my role, as I mentioned, the 50-50 Equality Project. Through the diverse stories we tell and through the people that work here, I’m not going to change the world as there are many more brilliant minds that are doing that, but in the sports media industry I just want to try and make this change. 

Hopefully that can have a ripple effect because we know the power of sport. Sport is about so much more than just what happens on the field. It is about connecting to other people and seeing the seemingly impossible materialise and come to life. It’s about bringing people from all different walks of life together as a collective so they can rejoice or commiserate together like a form of communal worship. It’s the catharsis that you can get from watching an event or participating in a sport.

Sport can also open up conversations to much bigger topics, like racism, human rights or violence against women. Sport can be the vehicle to help talk about things which are important more broadly to our society. Sport is entertaining and can be fun, silly, weird and wacky, but it can also change lives. 

Sport also has a dark side including the gambling element, corruption and drug use. I don’t want to paint it as a perfect place, but I think it’s all important in helping us have conversations. Sport acts as a microcosm for society and we can use it as a vehicle for positive change. 

4. How did your education, formal and informal enrich your life career/ life journey?

I had an incredibly positive school experience. I truly loved it and I often think what if I went somewhere else? Would it have been the same? It was the type of school that told you that you can do anything and was about women’s empowerment. Alumni from the school have been doing incredible things, breaking the glass ceiling in traditionally male dominated areas, so this wasn’t an abstract concept. 

I know not everyone gets this opportunity and I’m very thankful. 

I had that positive experience with my careers counsellor when we discussed sports journalism. “That’s what I want to do,” I said. She said, “This is what you need to do.” Then she laid out the plan, “this is the best university in the country, these are the people you need to talk to.” That really got me going on the journey. 

I followed that advice and I went to an excellent university, Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, for which I’m very grateful. They’ve produced a lot of people who now work in the media industry and it has an excellent reputation. It was one of the very few places that was offering sports journalism which is what I wanted to specialise in plus there were fantastic mentors and teachers there.  

Coming into the industry, my first job was as the inaugural women’s sports broadcasting intern for ABC TV Sport. Basically they decided that there weren’t enough women in sports broadcasting so they created a year long traineeship. It was perfect timing for me as I had just finished university and I was looking for a job.

I came across people who are the absolute titans of the industry like Karen Tighe, Debbie Spillane and Tracy Holmes, incredible powerful women who have blazed the trail for women in sports journalism and in sports broadcasting. They were so great taking me under their wing, giving their time, their advice and always helping me along the way. 

As a result, the mindset I have now is that whenever people reach out I try to give them time and advice.

I’ve never thought that it’s too hard to become a sports journalist in sports broadcasting. This is something that men do and particularly not women of colour, but I had this very strong sense of determination and self belief which was reinforced by those around me. 

5. Was your career experience positive the whole way through or were their other significant change points?

There’s definitely been bumps along the way. I’ve  got to be very honest about that. I think my early career was fantastic. There was a point more in the middle of my career where things probably weren’t going as well for me in terms of what I wanted to be doing with my career. I really was trying to find my way.

I wanted to be focusing more on women and diversity in sport and I wasn’t making the in-roads. It felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall which was very frustrating. 

Sometimes people didn’t understand why this was important, and that doing more women’s sport or diverse sport stories was not a charity case. My rationale was that this was smart business and logical. It was frustrating for me when not everyone came along for the ride or maybe that the systems weren’t in place to enable me, so there was a time I left the ABC briefly. 

I freelanced for a few years. I was trying to figure out what my next move would be and whether I needed to try doing something different. I was looking for a full time job, I went back to my now boss James Coventry, ABC sport editor and had an open conversation with him. 

I said, “I see ABC News is bringing in a 50-50 equality project, what are you doing in sport?” I told him that I could lead that project within the sport team and, to his credit, he said, “Let’s do it.” He got me on board and the last few years in my career have been the best because I’ve really been able to follow my passion. I’ve got this sense of purpose and achievement as we’re getting to where we need to be. That’s really thanks to the leadership that I’ve had from my boss and also my colleagues. 

6. What makes you happy? What makes you get up in the morning? 

On a very philosophical big picture level it’s having that sense of purpose and trying to achieve something every day. I like to have a sense of achievement whether it’s small or something bigger. 

I think a more simple answer, on an every day level, is being able to do the things that give me energy. Things like watching live sport as there’s something really magical about going to a live sporting event as a fan and not a journalist.  As a journalist you never get to fully enjoy it because you’re thinking as a professional about your deadlines.

When you can attend and fully release, it is something special. When the Socceroos had their 20 year anniversary of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup recently and I was just reliving that in my mind. I was thinking about watching the penalty replay and all those feelings surged back through my body because I was there at that game and I just felt like I was there again. I can’t really capture that feeling in any other environment. 

It would be remiss of me not to say that spending time with my family also brings me joy and gives me energy. 

I can’t be watching sport 24/7 and sometimes I do feel like I need to switch off, so I will just watch comedies. If I’m watching something really serious I can get too emotionally involved so I look to iconic American comedies like, The Office, The American Office, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Arrested Development. I also love ABC comedies like Utopia and Fisk.

7. Share your words of wisdom for others in the industry or those wishing to work in the industry?

For me it was about finding people who lifted me up and helped me along the way. I forgot to mention this earlier but there were definitely detractors. I would say more so once I got into the industry. 

It’s more subtle where people ask, “Do you actually like sport?” Or they quiz you and that doesn’t happen to male sports journalist. They really question your place and this is not so much within the organisation but in the wild when you’re out covering sport, you get that a bit.

I stay focused on those who are the positive forces and who lift me up. 

My advice is to focus on the positive forces and just extend the helping hand when you’re in a position to do so. Those are the simplest things, but they can be so powerful. 

8. Describe your vision of the audio media industry in the near future. 

I would love a workforce and the stories that we tell to reflect who we are as Australians. The people who live here, which means representing women, gender diverse people, also representing indigenous Australians, people from culturally diverse communities, people with disability, a range of socio economic backgrounds. Also having that geographic diversity by including more stories and more people from regional and rural communities. 

We’re not there yet in the media industry, but I think we can get there. We are in such a privileged position, in that we do reach a lot of people, so I think we have to use that privilege in the right way. 

9. What role would you like to play in shaping the audio media industry in the future? 

I would love to get more of the mainstream or the bigger media organisations on board with greater diversity in their coverage. There are so many excellent independent creators on the rise that are doing excellent work like Abbie from Her Way, The Female Athlete Project, just to name a few. They are showing what can be on their shows and the audience is there. 

I’d like to think we’re doing the same, so I think it’s up to everyone to get on board now, otherwise you’re missing out. It’s your loss if you don’t get on board with having this greater representation of people from all cross-sections of life, both through the people who work for you and through the stories that you’re putting out there.

Series compiled by Serena Ahern for radioinfo.

If you have a suggestion for someone to be considered for this series, please send a note to [email protected]

Previous articles in the Wisdom of Women in Media series: