International broadcast win a bitter sweet moment for ABC Landline journalist

Experienced Queensland ABC television journalist Pip Courtney was meant to be in Canada on the weekend, representing Australia at a major international awards ceremony for media working in the rural sector. But she cancelled the trip after her husband and ABC cameraman John Bean was killed in a helicopter crash in the South Australian outback earlier this month, along with two other colleagues.

So hearing that she had won the IFAJ Star Prize for Broadcast Journalism was a bitter sweet moment for Courtney who dedicated the honour to her late husband. It was more than appropriate, not just because of the circumstances, but because he shot much of the footage for her award-winning piece, “Pipe Dreams”, a story about the coal seam gas industry broadcast on ABC Landline in May 2010.

Courtney won the overall prize in the awards run by the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) after taking out the television category.

In a big night for the nation’s broadcasters, Australians won three out of four categories in the awards which were announced at the final dinner of the annual IFAJ congress at Niagara Falls on Saturday night (yesterday morning, September 18 Australian time).

NSW New England North West ABC rural reporter Julia Holman, based in Canberra, won the radio category with a story about the locust plague in south-eastern Australia.

Western Australian ABC rural reporter, Flint Duxfield, now based in Bunbury after a short stint in the South Australian Riverland, won the online radio category with a web feature exploring how Australian farmers are using social media platforms to market produce, source information and communicate with customers.

The three journalists were selected to represent Australia in the competition after winning their categories in the 2011 Rabobank Australian Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting, coordinated by the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists (ACAJ) which brings together Australia’s five rural press clubs.

Courtney won the overall prize in that competition too, with sponsor Rabobank providing airfares and registration fees so she could fly to Canada.

In dedicating the win to Bean, she said the brilliant cameraman had been a delight to work with. He not only produced great pictures for the journalists he worked with but put the talent as ease so they always came away with more than planned.

“He was my biggest supporter – my greatest fan. If things had been different he’d be in our home in Australia right now tweeting, face booking texting and phoning everyone he knew to tell them about the wonderful news,” she said.

“I am thrilled and honoured to win this award. It’s an important story in Australia and I am very grateful the ABC gave me the time to research and shoot such a complex piece. The story was filmed over several months and I was lucky enough to shoot most of it with my husband.”

ACAJ president Liz Harfull, who also coordinated the international award for the IFAJ, says working independently, both members of the overseas judging panel had come to identical conclusions about the results in every category of the IFAJ Star Prize.

They were particularly impressed with Courtney’s entry, which they described as a splendid piece of television journalism, impossible to fault. “They found it was balanced and objective, precise and sharply edited, and featured great characters in a package that informed any audience, general or specialist,” she said.

Courtney researched, produced and wrote the story, which explored increasing resistance to the coal seam gas industry because of emerging environmental concerns, pressures on local infrastructure, and increasing opposition from landholders.

The IFAJ judges found that Julia Holman’s winning radio entry was an informative piece of work, making effective use of natural sounds and presenting the story from a great angle.

Holman, who grew up in the city, says recording the story in the Victorian Mallee where she worked briefly last year was the first time she had ever seen a locust. The piece focused on the ‘front-line’ efforts of Chris Douglas, the first farmer in Victoria to report beds of locusts on his property, in what had the potential to become the worst locust plaque in the region for 70 years.

The judges also praised Flint Duxfield’s winning entry for making excellent use of the online medium, and capturing the interviewees’ enthusiasm for twitter. The story explored perceptions that farmers were slow to adopt social media platforms through a clever combination of both audio and video files, text and photos, and links to other online sites and Twitter accounts.

Peter Knoblanche, General Manager, Country Banking Australia for Rabobank, congratulated all the Australian winners, adding that as the world’s leading food and agribusiness bank Rabobank was committed to rural industry, which included the growth of rural journalism.

In congratulating the winners, Ms Harfull said there had been a significant improvement in the number and quality of online entries submitted at both the Australian and international levels this year, showing that rural journalists in several countries were starting to make more use of internet-based broadcast options.

Interestingly, journalists who had once worked in a single discipline, were broadening their skills to work on-line, and presenting stories in packages that combined audio, video, text and photos as well as links to other web-based material, she said.

Australia also took out the overall international prize last year, when another ABC Landline journalist, Kerry Staight, was named the inaugural winner of the award and Sarina Locke from the ABC team Canberra won the radio prize.
Winning Australian entries in the IFAJ Star Prize for Broadcast Journalism can be viewed at www.acaj.org.au

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Editor’s please note: For more information on the awards and interviews please contact ACAJ president and IFAJ award coordinator Liz Harfull on 0409 674 941, or email lizharfull@internode.on.net