It was just something I always wanted to be, and I think I interviewed my first Otago Nugget when I was at primary school for the school newspaper. I liked writing and I was interested in sport and, yeah, I had this thing that I was going to be a journalist and a sports reporter.
The whole sort of female side of it never really occurred to me until journalism school. The lecturer sort of went around the room, and said what sort of areas of journalism does everyone want to get into, and I said sports. He kind of looked over the top of his glasses at me and said, "You do realise there aren’t really any female sports reporters", and I went, "Oh, no I didn’t realise that". He said that I might need a back-up plan or be prepared to do several years as a general reporter before I’d even sort of get a look-in.
I never kind of really thought, well, I’ll show you wrong or I’ll do it for the girls, kind of thing. I just was interested in sports and writing, so that’s what I though I would do.
Did you end up having to do any general stuff to get your foot in the door for sport?
I guess I did. I started at the Oamaru Mail and when I graduated they took me on as a proof reader, or something like that, to begin with. Then I did a bit of general reporting and then I pretty much started sports reporting there because the sports editor there left. Then I think I’d sort of contacted the ODT then and said, "Look, that’s where I want to end up" and then about a year I suppose after that they rang and said, "Do you want to come in and talk to us about working here?". I did think of my lecturer at that point and thought, oh well, you were wrong.
When you started at the ODT, what sports were you responsible for?
I was doing basketball, netball, cricket, and sort of swimming, and I think pretty much any of the minor sports that weren’t rugby or athletics, which was what the other two sports reporters did.
What was reporting on sport like in the 1990s?
It was just kind of my job. I was excited to do it, and to be honest never really kind of felt any responsibility about being a female doing it. It was probably a bit interesting when I covered club cricket and I had to go around the games — there was a bit of sort of banter sometimes there. But I think I just thought as long as I did a good job that being a female wouldn’t really matter. I’d like to think that if I did it again these days that I might have a bit more of a female lens for looking for female stories, but it didn’t really occur to me back then, to be fair.
Even sometimes now, when I go out to things, I feel like some men do not take me that seriously. Did you feel like when you went to sport that you were taken seriously as just a sports reporter?
I mean, for the most part I feel like I did. I feel like back in the day, sport writing, or sport coverage, was like you’d cover the match and that was kind of the bare basics. There are a lot more opinion pieces and stuff in sport now, which maybe if I’d tried to go down that road it might have been a bit more resistance to that kind of point of view coming from a woman. But no, there were definitely times where it was ... a bit awkward.
For the most part, I think once people sort of get to know you and realised that you’re doing a job or you’re fair and reasonable in your coverage, that was kind of enough.
Do you think female sport was covered the way that it is today? Did you get to cover a lot of female sport?
Oh heck no. No. If you’d said to me that the Black Ferns were going to sell out Eden Park, I would have laughed you off the page. I don’t even remember there being women’s rugby back then.
I think the Women’s World Cup and all that recently, that’s just done massive things for their game and probably women’s sport in general. I don’t know what the stats are but they’ve probably made some inroads into taking some of netball’s coverage.
You said you didn’t really look at it with a female lens, because really you shouldn’t have to, but are you pleased to see that there is more coverage going on for women’s sport and getting it out there a bit more, and there’s a lot more female sports reporters coming through?
It’s got to be good for female sports and journalism, for sure. I know there’s a big thing about how do we get more female sports covered but I don’t fully understand what the endgame is for that. Is it to get more women playing sport, is it to get more sponsors, is it to sell more tickets or is it just to get more stories in the media? I don’t know.
Not long at all. Basically, I was trying to still play sport, I was trying to still play club netball, and write on club netball, which was not ideal.
I worked with two older men, so it was probably more my age that meant I didn’t last as long as I could’ve or should’ve. I just remember one of my netball coaches said to me, "Well, you can’t come and train at the same time everyone else does because 95% of them are students so can’t expect to play". In those days, my bosses would have said, "It’s equally unfair to think we’d let you off to go to training".
That’s the way it was back then whereas nowadays I think there’d definitely be more flexibility if I was an up and coming athlete. They might say, "Sure, go to training and then file your story" but it wasn’t kind of like that back then.
What did you do after leaving the ODT?
I went back to uni because I thought that would give me more freedom to play netball. Then I just decided it was awful not having any money as a student. I lasted about two years as a student and then I went back to newspapers but not sports reporting.
When you went back to newspapers, were you still writing as a journalist?
There was a job going at The Star as a features editor so I did that and then I did a little bit of journalism on the side, but mostly I went back there in advertising.
When did you step away from journalism?
When I was at The Star... I got pregnant and had a family. And journalism, I’m sure it’s the same now, certainly wasn’t back then something you could do part-time. I stepped back and had a family. I’ve kind of thought about going back to it but I think you’ve got to be really, really into it.
What do you do now?
I breed sheep and then I work in the hospital to pay for my sheep habits. I do newborn hearing screenings for newborn babies to make sure they can hear. It’s a really cool job and just something I retrained to do.
Is there anything you look back on your journalism career that you’re really proud of or any moments that really stand out to you?
I was the first female to cover rugby, which pretty much only happened because I think that was the test weekend. [My colleagues] would have been doing all the test stuff and someone had to cover club rugby and they were like, "Who are we going to get to do that?" and I was like, "Well, I could". They kind of looked at each other and went, "Suppose".
That was kind of cool. I kind of wish that I’d given it a bit longer but I went and talked to the editor at the time and he said, "Nah, you’re really young, go away and be young and come back and be a crusty old journalist in later life", which I just never really have done.
Is there anything you would like to see for the future of women’s sport or journalism?
I think we’re on the road to change by now. There are way more female journalists, way more female sports personalities, if you like. Like Ruby Tui — could you buy a better ambassador for your game and women’s sport? I think the more those kind of women come out of the woodwork, and people kind of see them and get to know their story and stuff, the better.
It’s just something that the journey’s begun and I guess it’s just being a little bit patient because it’s not going to change overnight. I think the fact that everyone’s talking about it and there’s studies being done on it and women with a bit of clout getting behind it sort of trying to right some wrongs ... I think, yeah, it’ll just kind of happen.
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JOAN HARNETT - Tomorrow
