Five Questions with Lisa Main
Lisa Main is the founder of Main Bureau, advising executive leaders across Risk, Corporate Affairs and Communications on information risk in the age of AI. She produced the Defending Democracy podcast with former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and co-authored a 2024 UTS report on journalism and generative AI. As a journalist, she played a founding role at ABC Fact Check and produced award-winning international investigations from newsrooms in Sydney, Washington D.C. and the Middle East.
Q1. What’s been the smartest move you’ve made in your career?
Joining the ABC as a cadet journalist. Let’s be clear, it wasn’t like I was flooded with options at the time. But I worked so hard to get there. It was a dream. And looking back, it was such a dynamic, bold, creative, and fun workplace. You could feel the energy inside the walls; even the back of the toilet doors had pronunciation guides for whatever major story was running at the time. Attention to detail was paramount. I remember it vividly. I was constantly operating outside of my comfort zone but with the support of executive producers and teams who knew how to bring through the next generation and understood why that was part of their role. I also experienced the same at SBS.
Q2. What moment or achievement are you most proud of?
This is a bit left field. It’s not glorious, but it’s dead honest. I am dyslexic. I failed much of my schooling because I was undiagnosed. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why all my friends were so smart, and I couldn’t pass a spelling test, even when I cheated. Aiming for a career in journalism sounds like a mad idea. I guess it was, but I was so curious about the world and its invisible injustices.
With that context, my greatest achievement is probably scoring high distinctions at Sydney University in my Master’s whilst working full-time as a Producer at Insight SBS. The workload was insane; doing it with dyslexia and no spell checks or help was not easy, but I was very determined. I would read everything with two rulers so my eyes had to lock and not bounce the words around. It took me twice as long. But it set me up perfectly for my time in the United States working at Al Jazeera English and Reuters, where I had to report live with no spell check from the United Nations and on the election of Barack Obama.
Q3. What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Life never runs on time. It’s proven to be very true for me. Young women have so many pressures to manage when they are starting out. Build financial stability and independence, establish a foundation for your working life, manage family care commitments, manage fertility and all of its challenges, work around your partner’s career opportunities. It’s a lot. In my experience, it's impossible to get all of these elements to land in any coherent way. Someone gave me that advice early in my career, and it helped me manage a lot of the confusion and anxiety when the career trajectory was, and continues to be, bumpy. That’s just life.
Q4. What skills do you think media and communications professionals will need most as AI reshapes the media landscape?
A lot. Just so much. With AI in the mix, the list keeps growing. Any media or communications professional who isn’t up to date with the profound changes in the broader information environment is already behind. It’s important to have a systems view of the information environment. Who has power within the information environment? Who or what mediates national conversations, humans or algorithms? Beyond having a well-informed view of how the media environment is changing, my top three would be:
Cultivate your editorial judgement; understand what separates and elevates human judgement from AI judgements
Develop your craft, be it editing, filming, scripting or critical thinking skills, because originality will be the premium in the era of AI
Experiment with AI tools but with a clear intention: what improves my workflows and output, and what doesn’t. Simple. Keep what works, get rid of what doesn’t.
Q5. How do you think AI will shape the media industry over the next 10 years?
Gosh. In so many ways. It’s impossible to predict 10 years out, but what I’m watching out for is;
Copyright between creators, journalism and AI labs - will Australia’s approach provide that critical layer of protection for Australian creatives and the producers of quality original journalism? AI will never write the first draft of history, so we need business models that ensure humans keep doing this.
How will Large Language Models (LLMs) temper debate differently to social media? If social media profited from disinformation and rage-bait, could LLMs become a more neutralising force?
What happens to trust in business and society when seeing is no longer believing? World-leading digital forensics experts say we’ve just about crossed the uncanny valley. If video was once the arbiter of truth, what happens when no one can vouch for the veracity of an audio recording, an image or a video? I remember gleefully proclaiming to my Executive Producer, “we got it on tape” – generative AI has extinguished that certainty.
