Maddison Connaughton: Editor of The Saturday Paper

Maddison Connaughton is the editor of The Saturday Paper, a leading independent weekly newspaper dedicated to narrative journalism. Throughout her career she’s broken major stories, including traveling to the Syrian refugee camps to interview teenagers and young people impacted by the civil war. I’m keen to hear about how The Saturday Paper has survived (and thrived) in this time of mass-closures in the media industry, and on how, in times of so much bad news, a journalist can step away from the news cycle. 

Interview Maria O’Dwyer Photographs Mia Mala McDonald

Maria O’Dwyer: You’ve had an extraordinary career and were appointed editor of The Saturday Paper at 25. Did you always know you wanted to be a journalist?

Maddison Connaughton: I think I did, on some level at least, from when I was a teenager. I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker, and that led me towards journalism as a tool, as a skillset you need to be able to do that. If I look at the way I approach stories now, that entry point still influences me. I think a lot about structure, about scene setting, about which interviewee would be best-placed to give a unique insight, how a piece can show rather than tell – all things that come from that tradition of documentary storytelling.

You were a finalist in the Walkley Awards – Young Journalist of the Year award for your reporting on young Syrian’s living in refugee camps.  Could you tell me about this journey?

It was a really extraordinary opportunity. I was working for Vice and was focused on reporting on how young people were impacted by the big stories that shape our time – climate change, LGBTQIA+ rights, policing and criminal law reform. Syria seemed to me to be one of those generational stories that will reverberate for a long time. Much of the media’s focus, though, was on the young men fighting on the front lines. Journalist Azadeh Moaveni has said a similar sense led her to write Guest House for Young Widows, which is one of the most incredible books I’ve read about the Syrian conflict – one of the best journalistic works I’ve read in a long time, actually. In my reporting, I wanted to speak with young people who’d spent the entirety of their teenage years in the refugee camps in Lebanon, just across the border from Syria. Some were only a few hours away from their hometowns but hadn’t been able to go back for seven years by the time I was interviewing them. The war had stranded them in a sort of limbo for all their teenage years. It was a huge privilege for those young people to let me into their lives, to let me document their stories. I just wanted to do them justice.

Do you miss on-the-ground reporting?

Of course, every day.

Women in the media are often a target for trolls, with threats of violence often accepted as the norm – just par for the course. Have you ever had this experience? How did you deal with it?

I’m a big fan of muting on Twitter. Although the trolling was far more intense when I was doing on-camera reporting, and it will flare again up whenever I do TV or radio. People seem to feel this strange sense of ownership over you if you’re in a woman in public facing role in the media, which can manifest in really malignant ways. I have friends who work as TV or radio journalists and they face a daily barrage online – but it’s definitely more pronounced, more violent, for women journalists of colour. It’s just on a totally different level.

Newscorp has recently closed community papers around Australia, leaving communities without local news and job losses likely in the hundreds; the 10 Daily news site and Buzzfeed Australia have also closed their operations. What does this mean for the media in Australia?

I believe the concentration of media is a bad thing. Namely, because it undermines the key service journalism provides to society, which is holding power to account. It’s somewhat counterintuitive, I guess, because you would think bigger, more concentrated media companies would have the weight to force accountability through their reporting – but in my experience the best journalism happens when you’ve got reporters working across a broad range of beats, in towns and cities big and small. When the media gets more concentrated, the target becomes smaller – and more focused on the Sydney and Melbourne – and, ultimately, vital stories are missed.

How has The Saturday Paper managed to thrive in this era of mass media closures?

We’re a fairly lean operation, we do a lot with a small team. Every week I’m in awe of what our reporters and editorial team are able to pull off, particularly in keeping the paper’s quality up to our high standards when no one has seen one another in several months because of social distancing. That extends to the subscriptions team, the marketing team – their work ethic just stuns me. We’ve been so buoyed by our readers during this crisis. I can’t overstate how important our subscribers are to the paper – their support of us allows us to plan ahead, and to invest in the quality journalism that defines The Saturday Paper.

We’re starting to see a little bit of light in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia but are, conversely witnessing America falling into chaos. As a media professional who is presumably tapped into the media cycle, how do you stay abreast in times like these whilst maintaining some kind of equilibrium?

Burnout is something I’m more conscious of now than I have been in the past. I think managing a team forces you to confront the fact that you just can’t work all the time – you can’t keep up with every news story – because how you comport yourself informs how your team will work. Everyone has worked in an office where they feel like they can’t leave because the boss is there until 9pm every night. That’s not sustainable. I’m getting better at finding a balance for myself; it’s a work in progress. The tricky thing about journalism is that central to the job is documenting history as it’s happening, so when you feel like you’re in a historic moment, you don’t want to miss anything.

2020 has certainly been one for the history books. As we move towards the halfway point, what’s next on the cards for you?

I’m looking forward to returning to the office and seeing everyone. I’m ready for life to open up again (and to never do another Zoom meeting again). I’m really excited to judge this year’s Horne Prize, The Saturday Paper’s annual essay prize, which we run in partnership with Aesop. Last year, Rachael Lebeter, a teacher from regional New South Wales, won with a powerful essay about wildlife extinction and climate change. The piece was published in our final edition of the year and proved so prescient leading into the summer of bushfires. Given the year we’ve had thus far, I’m so curious to see what people choose to write on.