5 Questions with Paula Kruger

Paula Kruger is CEO of Media Diversity Australia and a media leader with more than 30 years’ experience across journalism, radio and executive roles. A former ABC broadcaster and 2SER Managing Director, she has championed diverse storytelling and career pathways into the industry. Drawing on her Australian, Indigenous Fijian and Indian Fijian heritage, Paula has a deep commitment to inclusion and cultural representation in Australia’s media.

Q1. What has been your best career move?

The best move is to keep moving. Every time you take a chance on something new, even if you’re a bit rubbish at it, there’s value in it. I’ve learnt from the people around me, picked up new skills, learnt a lot about myself. I like experimenting and taking risks; I think it comes from my sporting background. That pushing-yourself-to-failure or working-on-the-weak-spot principle – that’s how you get stronger when you’re an athlete. So career-wise, even if you’re doing a job you love, you’re also thinking, ‘But what’s the weak spot that needs more work? What’s the opportunity that’s going to strengthen it?’ It’s an industry where the ground is moving beneath your feet constantly. There are roles that didn’t exist a few years ago. Every time you make a change, it pushes you into new areas. Mind you, there was a period when I did stay in a job for a while, and that’s when I had young kids. I just needed to survive the day! I needed something that I knew, that was three days a week. That’s the beauty of working for an organisation like the ABC, because you get to move around and still have security within a big organisation. When I first started in media, some people would say, “Be careful of job hopping. It doesn’t look good on your resume.” That’s rubbish. I’ve never had that issue. We can dispel that myth.

Q2. Do you have a professional hero?

For so many years, it was hard to see people doing something similar, and there were very few women of colour who I could look up to. But I find as I get older, my professional heroes are the young people I’m supposed to be mentoring. People like The Guardian podcaster Nour Haydar and Alicia Vrajlal are taking brave but smart risks in the new media environment. Alicia is the founder of Draw Your Box and she works at Missing Perspectives – she’s a future leader and someone I’m learning so much from. Also, before I joined Media Diversity, I was managing director of 2SER, so I got to meet so many amazing people in the community media space. Most of them are volunteers, and yet they’re the ones identifying underserved audiences and coming up with fresh content and new ideas to serve them. It’s those more junior journalists, and those volunteers in community media, who are really renewing my passion for storytelling right now.

Q3. What’s the best advice you’ve been given?

I used to do roller derby – my name was Shreddy Kruger. Everyone just knew me as Shreddy. The first thing they teach you is how to fall. Second, how to fall sexy. And third, to get up fast and go. These are things that are important when you’re on a roller derby track with wheels on your feet, and there are people going around really fast who might bash into you, but learning how to fall, falling sexy, and getting up fast and going are so applicable to life. I live by those three rules.

Q4. Have things improved for women of colour in Australian media?

Over the past 10 years it’s improved because there are more of us but, most importantly, it’s been good that difference has come to be seen as an asset. When I started with the ABC in the late ’90s as a cadet, being a person of colour was seen as a positive, but you were almost just like everyone else, you just looked different. In the past 10 years, we’ve really tried to make people see that it’s not just a tick box. It’s not just the visual, even though that is important to an audience; it’s the perspectives that you bring. The harder bit is changing the newsroom cultures, so they’re actually listening to other perspectives and taking them onboard. Someone like Meghna Bali is of South Asian heritage and grew up in Western Sydney, and she is now the South Asian reporter for the ABC. It’s recognising that her heritage actually brings something to the table. It’s important for our reporting on disability as well. We need more of those people coming into the industry, because otherwise we’re missing stories. Emma Myers [who has cerebral palsy] is a good example of that. She was a finalist in the Walkley’s Mid-Year Awards for a story she did on emergency readiness and people with disabilities getting left behind. That story wouldn’t have happened unless you had someone with a different perspective, saying, “This is a story.” We can’t just have different people coming in and “blanding” into the rest of the newsroom population. We’ve got to be using their knowledge and their experience – and seeing it as a superpower.

Q5. What do you think the media sector will look like in 10 years’ time?

It’s total guesswork because it feels like the pace of change increases every year. I think we’ll see a further rise in the number of independent media people, and maybe the ones that have similar audiences might start clustering together. My main hope is that the audience realises the importance of truth in storytelling, and the independent players that rise to the top will rise because the audience recognises it in them. I believe we will still have our big media organisations; they just won’t be as big as they are now. Anything beyond that, who knows? Satire is one way of speaking to polarised audiences, so the media player that I think is going to go from strength to strength is The Betoota Advocate. It’s all Betoota, baby!

You can hear more from Paula in the DEI, Quotas and Backlash session at the Women in Media National Conference on Friday, 15 August at ICC Sydney. She’ll join some of Australia’s most influential voices for a timely and dynamic conversation about the cultural shifts and political pressures shaping DEI in Australia.

Interview by Susan Horsburgh