Female voice in sports journalism
SPORT
By JAMIE HARO
THE Women in News and Sport (Wins) initiative has become a very important tool within the Asia-Pacific region helping women within the media fraternity to carve out a career in the male dominated world of sports media.
As one of many female sports journalists in Papua New Guinea, I had the privilege to get involved in this initiative taking up a challenge to a sport that I knew I had very little knowledge of due to its technicalities apart from rugby, football, netball, etc.
It started when I found about this programme through my colleague who encouraged me to get involved after she completed weeks of commentary and mobile journalism training for football (soccer). Always up for a challenge, I reached out to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s International Development Unit (ABCID) who are currently running this programme, and enquired twice about how I could get involved with the initiative.
A week later I received an email from Wins project manager Sally Eeles who was kind enough to fit me into the basketball commentary training which had already started with Wins sports commentary trainer Peter Longman in line with the Fiba U17 Oceania Championship that would be held later in Port Moresby.
With basic knowledge in basketball I was able to learn a lot during the commentary training among three other female media personnel De’Lisha Koime, Dorcas Tindri and Melvinah Rabi. As the weeks passed, we successfully completed the training and became Wins alumnae.
Prior to completing this training, a window of opportunity seeking Wins alumnae from PNG to assist with media operations in the Fiba U17 Oceania Championship in Port Moresby was posted by then the four of us were already qualified and therefore applied. The four of us were accepted with roles to play in the event with Dorcas, Melvinah to take up commentary including De’Lisha while balancing the same role that I was given to help with media operations when that event came.
Fast forward to the start of the championship, the four of us got the chance to chat with our team leader and Fiba’s communications senior associate to get us prepared.
Just two weeks ago, we finally met Stacey in person and she gave us a rundown ensuring we knew what we were going to do.
When the first day of tasks arrived, we were already on full swing working closely with the official photographer of the event Sibona Kala and his team to ensure the future basketball players had their photos taken during the media day before their welcome reception.
Then the first day of championships arrived where we got to see the defending champions (Australia) take an easy win over the Guam U17 men’s team while the Samoans had a strong contest against hosts PNG and came out as winners. The New Zealand team were to play against one of the four teams the next day. That is when I started conducting post-match interviews because the matches were live-streamed via Fiba’s YouTube page.
The next day came as a surprise because I did not expect that I would do commentary but Stacey put me up to the challenge after I told her that it was one of the toughest barriers I wanted to break through and succeed. During my first attempt, I was nervous and shaken because I did not know what to do, however, after completing a not-so-long 40 minutes of commentary and analysing a match, I realised it was not that tough and so looked forward to the challenge the following days to come.
The next days went by so easily that I realised I was already building confidence in my speech each time when I did the commentary with my three other counterparts as delegated by our team leader Stacey including the livestream and production crew.
When the last day came, I had the privilege to sign off one last time after doing commentary with Del’ for the gold medal playoff between the Australia and New Zealand U17 women and realised that whole week (Oct 2-7) had taught me everything.
I am glad I came across a lot of talented and hardworking people while spending that whole week at the Sir John Guise Stadium (Indoor Complex).
Prior to writing a piece of this account to share my experience, I had the privilege to interview the other three Wins alumnae/friends who also shared what their background and what they learnt during this FIBA U17 Oceania Championship.
De’Lisha Koime
De’Lisha is currently engaged with the Basketball Federation of PNG as the Content and Female Engagement Lead for the Basketball for Good initiative in the country.
She has over eight years of experience in the mainstream media including commercial radio (content producer/presenter), public relations officer/content website and monitoring and evaluation analysis learning (Meal).
“My first engagement was with Aaron Kearney in 2016 during a media workshop for all sports PR persons and sport journalists in PNG. After some months Joanna Lester ran a similar workshop but more targeted to women in news and sport. Since then it was all about networking, connecting and joining the WINS page and staying in tune and updated.
“I applied through the monkey survey to participate in the Wins commentary to better my skills and got the role to be part this recent event. It was absolutely amazing. It’s user-friendly, refreshing and real.
“This was my second game call for basketball compared to the first that I did which was in Fiji (2017) during the Fiba U18 Championship, and I was terrible at it. I am grateful I got to Peter Longman who has helped with mentoring and guidance to take ownership and control with the calls during training sessions.
“I also had other responsibilities and task to conduct as I was part of the local organising committee but that did not stop me from pursuing commentary during the championship. I hope to have more exposure in with game call especially with basketball in the future.”
Dorcas Tindri
Dorcas is a journalist and executive producer currently working for the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) stationed in East New Britain.
“I’ve been fortunate to have many opportunities with ABC/MDI and Wins in numerous programmes such as podcasts, video documentaries, digital and mobile journalism that assisted towards having content produced and disseminated through other mediums apart from radio iwhich is the traditional means with NBC’s role.”
“Having an upper hand with such while working in a provincial radio station, this knowledge was imparted to my small team to improve the way we broadcast to disseminate information to our listeners. I’ve been involved in a number of radio/TV commentaries, however, for sports it was very limited until I tried it.
“I had my big break during the 2015 Pacific Games where I did commentary for swimming and hockey after going through weeks of commentary training with ABC’s Aaron Kearney and the recent Fiba U17 Oceania Basketball championship after going through sports commentary training with Peter Longman.
“This would be my second opportunity and was more of a refresher. The training was held online so it was something new and more practical, this did the trick having me grasp more confidence in confining each task given and the feedbacks were overwhelming.
“I had applied earlier on for the Fiba mobile journalism training programme, however, given my experience already in the programme, I was asked to have a go at the Fiba commentary which I thought was wonderful for there are not a PNG women commentators in sports and of course basketball was new to me.
“I love testing new waters and see my where my strength of ability is at. Having already a go in sports commentary on some previous occasions, it was a built up for more self-confidence and improvement.
“One of the challenges absorbing so much information to call out the games. For instance, quick instances required you to quickly match numbers on jerseys to names on the line up on the paper and at the same time analyse the whole course of play, andalso, understanding the whole aspect of the game.
“Since, this was a livestream, the game call out had to suit more the online viewers in which differs in a radio commentary in which I am used to more. The main challenge was trying to understand the whole game and its technicalities before calling the shots during the Livestream.
“However I enjoyed the whole experience and would like to do more sports commentary and I know I’ve earned my place to be one of few female sports commentators in PNG.”
Melvinah Rabi
Mel is a final year theatre arts student minoring in journalism and is about to complete her studies at the University of Papua New Guinea. This year she had the privilege to work with the Kristen Radio Lutheran Media in Morobe as a volunteer when she found about the Wins programme.
“I found out about this programme through my supervisor Richard Tasin while working as a volunteer Kristen Radio in Morobe. He saw the flyer on social media and asked me to give it go so I emailed the contact on the flyer. Unfortunately, it was meant for women in the Philippines only.
“So Sally then introduced me to Peter Longman, who started providing zoom lessons and guiding us with commentating. The training was okay, but since I was used to have a face-to-face learning and practical sessions, it was difficult for me to follow instructions without hands-on experience.
“However, recording voice-overs for basketball games and receiving feedback from Peter during Wednesday zoom classes gave me some insight into basketball commentating.
“Given that this was my first time experience during the championship, I had the upper hand to experience and know what it’s like to do commentating. The Fiba U17 Oceania Championship also provided me an opportunity to do post-match interviews.
“One of my biggest challenges during the championship was struggling to identify the players during the matches while trying to match them with their names including the way we were to pronounce their names correctly.
“Additionally, not knowing all the rules and terminologies of basketball among the commonly used worked made the commentary more of a learning space to grow apart from my challenges.
“Definitely, a learning curve for from conducting my first ever live post-match interview, commentating alongside Dorcas, who had some experience in commentating, to working with Del, who has knowledge about basketball and had the opportunity co-write a story with Jamie.
“With my first experience in commentating, I now am confident in my abilities and look forward to many more opportunities to commentate and do sideline interviews and if I happen to work with a media company it won’t be a problem for me to do commentating or post-match interviews.”
Background
The Wins initiative is a training and mentoring programme that provides female journalists in the Pacific and Asia with the tools to carve out a career in the male-dominated world of sports media.
Wins works in three areas – providing skills training and industry knowledge (including an intensive workshop); improving multi-platform content creation (with a special focus on women’s sport); and networking with other women in media and sport.
The programme includes mentoring participants through sports coverage and seeks to promote women in sport from elite to community levels, and amplify women’s voices in sports coverage.
Wins is run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s International Development Unit (ABCID) and is supported by the Australian Government through the Team Up programme until 2022. This project builds on two previous phases since Wins began in 2016.
Activity duration: 2016-2022
Key issues: Sports for development; health; gender; women in sport; development; leadership, media development
Key partners: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Team Up
Locations: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Philippines and Australia