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Posted:
2020-04-18 23:59:48
As a member of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, ABC journalist Anna Henderson usually spends her days scuttling around the often-crowded corridors of Parliament House in Canberra, bunched in among colleagues at doorstops and media conferences, and filing stories from the close quarters of the busy, open-plan ABC bureau.
Now, in the weird world of coronavirus, she's covering federal politics from her home, with a young but very loyal audience watching on.
"I have discovered the best quality studio setting for me to file radio voice reports is under the doona in my three-year-old's bedroom.
"My husband is in the building industry and has also been working from home, so he has been co-opted helping me get the news to air a few times, or to keep an eye on little people so they don't photobomb a live cross.
"Our household did completely run out of toilet paper a few weeks ago and my portable set-up travelled with me from supermarket to supermarket looking for supplies.
"I was using the car radio and my laptop to monitor and file stories from carparks as I continued my search!"
Usually manned by up to 32 journalists, the ABC's Canberra bureau now has less than half that number in the office.
The rest of the team is split between their homes and the ABC's Northbourne studios to prevent infection wiping out the entire team.
Henderson has a mini studio set up in her lounge room, with a simple iPhone camera, tripod and an earpiece to provide live crosses to the ABC News channel.
She also has some of her own kit, including a portable green screen onto which a suitable Canberra backdrop can be superimposed, if required.
"I can record, monitor and edit audio at home, and file radio news stories through my laptop directly to every ABC newsroom in the country, allowing bureaus access for the next hour's news bulletin.
"While it's a little more cumbersome than the office, I can watch raw video material and write television scripts remotely and I can use Skype to dial in to ABC's News channel and provide live television crosses from our lounge room.
"With the click of a button I can send breaking news alerts from home that hit the inboxes of every ABC News colleague and inform live television, radio and digital news reporting.
"We instituted a daily video call to keep in touch and so everyone has a chance to say hi, discuss stories and show off their leisure wear.
"A huge shout out to my colleagues in the office planning the coverage and coordinating all the tentacles from afar — none of the work from home set up would function without that management to make sure we don't miss stories and avoid overlaps and double ups.
"While working from home we have also added some extra checks of each other's work, to ensure we maintain the highest standards of accuracy despite being physically distant."
Hoping the dog won't bark on air
Local radio presenters and producers in metropolitan and regional centres are also split between home and the office.
Broadcasting from his house has been a technical adventure for ABC Sydney Afternoons presenter Richard Glover.
"Broadcasting from home has gone better than we all expected, partly because Matt and Steve in ABC Radio Sydney have the patience of saints when it comes to instructing an idiot, who had become severely tangled in cables, while trying to work out what to plug in where," says Glover.
"On the other hand, as a 61-year-old asthmatic I'm quite grateful to increase my social distance from them to about 10 kilometres.
"The upside is avoiding the virus (and maybe also avoiding what's left of Sydney's commuter traffic.)
"The downside is that normally my producers pretend to laugh at my jokes.
"I do miss the support, even if it's contrived.
"The dog hasn't barked on air yet, but give him time. First time he does it, I think the audience will enjoy it. After that, he's on the thin ice."
We thought the bushfires were a nightmare, this is bigger
Charged with providing critical information to the public, the ABC is deemed an essential service and as the coronavirus threat increased in early February a team of key managers (Incident Management Team) was set up to plan how to keep the national broadcaster on air and online.
"We thought January was a nightmare and it was. The bushfire coverage was completely all encompassing but this is bigger," says Eric Napper, head of News Operations and Projects.
"I wasn't around during World War II but the comparisons to being on wartime footing ring true to me."
If covering the story wasn't a big enough challenge, like businesses and institutions across the country, the ABC has had to undertake a massive reorganisation of its workforce and workflows — pretty much overnight.
"In the early days we were very concerned about the potential impact on our staff and our services by someone contracting the virus and bringing it into the building and the level of tension and anxiety in our teams was very high," says Napper.
"But we've planned around that, we now have contingencies in place.
"Our teams are really committed to helping Australians understand what's going on and as a management team we are focussed on making sure they can get on and do their job as best they can while supporting them with family or health needs."
The risk to operations was brought home on March 24 when SBS was forced to shut down its Sydney newsroom after a staff member tested positive to COVID-19.
To reduce the chance of that happening, the ABC asked all staff who can work from home to do so, secondary newsrooms that are isolated from each other have been set up, and those who need to come into the office are spread out.
Now, at least 60 per cent of staff are working offsite and that's meant a huge technological rollout of laptops, software and pop-up studios.
"For ABC Radio we've pulled together existing computer, technical and broadcast gear and have ordered more, to enable radio program presenters and producers to work from home as needed," says Warwick Tiernan, head of Capital City Network.
"We've also needed to train these content makers in how to use the gear offsite to broadcast and have also run technical trials from their homes.
"Happily, they've all gone pretty well.
"We've also looked at splitting teams between home and the studio, have alternated program teams across multiple studios to ensure distancing and isolation, and planned networking and staffing contingencies.
"And we're doing interviews over the phone rather than in the studios."
"In the News division, essentially people who need to stand in front of microphone or a camera are the only ones who are still coming into the ABC studios," says Napper.
"So, studio TV broadcasting, like the News Channel, is still done on base, most of our radio broadcasters are still on base — and also key Digital teams.
"We are rolling out mobile kits that allow more journalists and presenters to broadcast from home, thanks to a fantastic effort from our technology team which has had to move really quickly."
"For example, News Breakfast's Paul Kennedy is presenting his sport section from home using what's known as a Live-U app on his mobile phone.
"Alan Kohler has gone a step further and is presenting his nightly finance report from a mini green screen studio in his house.
"The other thing our audience will notice is the widespread use of video conferencing technology, like Skype and Zoom, to do interviews due to social distancing rules and people being nervous about interacting with journalists and camera crews.
Filming from a distance
Camera crews can still film in the field but they're operating under strict social distancing guidelines.
"It's pretty different," says Adelaide-based News cameraman Lincoln Rothall.
"Now, keeping a 1.5-metre distance is the rule of thumb so networks are pooling and sending one camera to shoot for everyone.
"If we do an interview with someone it's outdoors, I put a microphone on a stand, walk back to the camera, set up a couple of metres away and then the 'talent' walks up to the microphone and we record the interview."
Rothall has been teamed up to work exclusively with journalist Claire Campbell.
They're staying out of the ABC office and working and filing from Claire's home.
One of the most challenging shoots was with a British couple who was in quarantine after contracting COVID-19.
"We had to interview the couple on the balcony of the place where they were staying," recalls Rothall.
"I filmed from a distance and Claire rang them on the phone to ask the questions.
"We couldn't get close enough to mic them up, so we asked them to record the interview on their iPad and after the interview they airdropped it to us and we synched up the audio when editing the story.
"Filming overlay was tricky as I was filming through a fence and trying to direct them into position.
"It was hard because we usually spend a lot of time making people feel comfortable and relaxed, but this doesn't really work when you're shouting instructions through a fence at someone who's just been diagnosed with COVID-19."
People featured in a story are helping to film it
Recruiting talent to help in the filmmaking process has been necessary across programs.
"7.30, for example, in addition to news breaking and political coverage, has been very successful in calling for content from their audiences, and audiences have been more than willing to accommodate.
"We've seen videos sent in from children sending messages to grandparents and teachers to their students.
"The team has produced a wide variety of stories utilising footage shot by people on their mobile phones, delivered to the ABC over the internet and put together by the program's editors.
"They've been able to capture the human experience of coronavirus by producing stories in different ways."
Producing longer-form programs, such as Australian Story, Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners, in which high-quality camerawork is a critical part of the storytelling, has been even more difficult and teams are variously utilising Skype calls and phone diaries or filming with their own crews operating under physical distancing guidelines.
"On the production front, coronavirus has thrown up huge challenges," says Four Corners supervising producer Morag Ramsay.
"It's meant we have had to find a way of adapting at every single stage of the production process — from how and where we work, to how we film and how we edit and deliver our stories to get to air.
"In a lot of instances, we are asking people who we interview to record themselves and send it to us, in order to get the best quality.
"The most dramatic physical change has been to move our edit suites offsite.
"We've rebuilt five of them in the houses and apartments of our incredible editing team.
"It's one thing to work from home, it's another to set up a whole edit system in whatever space you can find.
"That is certainly taking one for the team!
"It simply means we have to be more creative and inventive than ever.
"We can still investigate in the time of coronavirus and believe me we are!"
The biggest story we'll ever cover
Newsgathering, regardless of the platform, is a collaborative process so not having face-to-face contact and being able to have quick and easy conversations with colleagues is one thing splintered teams are missing.
"Normally most people don't say 'I love a meeting' but one of the highlights of my day is our all staff daily video call," says Ramsay.
"Anyone on the team who wants to join in can, and we talk about anything and everything.
"The other day we all introduced our pets to each other.
"It sounds silly, but those small moments of happiness make a big difference."
And, like the rest of the community, perhaps the biggest challenge is coping with the scale of the pandemic and its long and widespread impact.
"This is definitely the biggest story I will ever cover in my lifetime," says Rothall.
"I've just returned to Adelaide after working in the ABC's London bureau where I'd be flying in and out of Europe and the Middle East, covering terrorist attacks, natural disasters, Brexit.
"But I was just reporting on the story, I was separated from it, I could fly home and leave the story behind.
"With coronavirus we are living with it as well as reporting on it.
"It's inescapable and it's all consuming."