First Nations Media News :: November 2020

Our members across the country celebrated NAIDOC Week from 8-15 November by broadcasting a broad range of activities for their communities. We've highlighted just a few of them in the member section below. Meanwhile, some of our team headed down to Port Augusta, SA to support Umeewarra Media broadcast special events each day, including smoking ceremonies, a NAIDOC Ball, yarns around the fire, a NAIDOC March, activities with local schools and gatherings for everybody in the community throughout the week. First Nations Media Australia was proud to help out with live broadcasts and streaming the events throughout the week. Check out Umee Stories: We All Have Yarns and some of the other content shared across the week on indigiTUBE.

The News Sharing Project for our sector is getting up and running now. We have welcomed Nancia Guivarra as Project Coordinator and David Liddle as Regional Editorial Coordinator to the team. These will be familiar faces to many people in our sector as they are both experienced journalists who between them have worked in a number of newsrooms across our sector.

The aim of the project is to facilitate the sharing of news stories between member organisations and to build capacity for Community Reporters in regional and remote areas, expanding on their existing work.

The Regional Reporters would have to be multimedia-skilled, as we plan to produce stories in audio, video, print/online and photography formats. Training will be provided to help up-skill broadcasters and community reporters to undertake this work, with the support of the media organisation.

At this stage, we're calling for expressions of interest from people either wanting to participate in an advisory committee to oversee the project and/or people interested in being Community Reporters. Drop David (pictured right) a line at david@firstnationsmedia.org.au or call 08 8952 6465 for more information.

First Nations Media Australia has benefitted from not one, not two, but FIVE secondees joining us part-time this month as part of the Jawun program. The following champions have been working alongside us over the past few weeks to help improve our systems and processes so that we can spend more time supporting our members. We've grateful to have borrowed Anne Jackson from the NSW Government to use her policy expertise from sports to review our policies and procedures. Nikki McGrath from Local Land Services in the NSW Government has turned her communications expertise to producing some social media content for us, highlighting the work of some of our members. Darren Mitchell has joined us from IAG to review our CRM systems. Mia Tedjo from Westpac is helping with business planning. And Philip Duff and Brian Carter have both drawn on their systems knowledge from Microsoft to help improve our integration and help transform our processes for better member engagement. These extra helping hands have created a flurry of activity in our office and greatly contribute to the continuous improvement we strive for to offer our members the best peak we can be. We're really happy to have this dynamic team working with us and learning about our industry along the way.

We have two upcoming webinars for FNMA members to join:

Wednesday 25 November - Google News Training
12pm CST

Google Teaching Fellow, Miguel D'Souza will lead a training session on tips and tricks for using Google tools to strengthen your reporting. This session will be a refresher and update for people who undertook Google News Training in the lead-up to CONVERGE Alice Springs last year and an introduction for people learning about Google tools for the first time. The two-hour session will be broken up into 4 x 30 minute segments about advanced search tool, verification of images, data and how to find it and using mapping for online storytelling. This session will be useful for broadcasters, reporters and support staff to take your online research skills to the next level.

Wednesday 2 December - Archive Platform Trial Outcomes & Next Steps
11am CST

Hear about the successful trial of the Mukurtu archive platform with three pilot organisations- PAKAM, PAW Media and Umeewarra Media. We will outline how the platform was selected and what we learnt from the project. You will also get to hear about some of our other archiving projects including the new online Toolkit and the digitisation facility to be set up in Alice Springs. FNMA’s Archive Projects Manager Daniel Featherstone will convene the session. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers with Daniel and reps from the three pilot organisations.

Register for each webinar by clicking the buttons below:

First Nations Media Australia is preparing a submission on behalf of members to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications inquiry into Media Diversity in Australia. The inquiry will consider the state of media diversity, independence and reliability in Australia and the impact this has on public interest journalism and democracy. Members are invited to share views you would like included in the submission with Claire via claire@firstnationsmedia.org.au and/or to make your own submission to the inquiry.
Recent policy submissions are available on our website here.

So many new additions being shared on indigiTUBE to check out this month. We live streamed the Treaty concert from Tandanya on Kaurna Country for NAIDOC Week, as well as the 20th Charles Perkins Memorial Oration. Edits of those live streams with be up on the site soon, so keep an eye out.

Meanwhile, we've got channels featuring Women in Black 2020 stories, We All Have Yarns showcasing stories from Umeewarra Media, our Black Lives Matter feature is still going strong with new content being added all the time, plus there's Desert Mob feature showcasing artists stories from the Central Desert.

PAKAM has shared out some live recordings from the Saltwater Music Festival in Broome, Yarnin Country share the story of the Two Headed Snake on Radio Adelaide, plus the Anindilyakwa Radio Program has added a bunch of great podcasts called Groote Podcast to our podcast feature page.

Plenty of new content to listen to and watch. Get amongst it!

IndigenousX has just launched a brand new website. Besides looking good, it features new stories and voices and outlines some of the services IndigenousX offers to organisations, community and research groups. Take a look here.
The site has also welcome Rhianna Patrick (pictured right with Luke Pearson) to head up audio and podcast development, with support from the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas. Rhianna brings a wealth of experience in print, radio and television journalism to the IndigenousX team.

First Nations Media Australia was proud to see so many of our members shortlisted for CBAA Awards in 2020. We were so pleased to see Wayne Bynder from Wangki Radio recognised with the Station Leadership Award. 3KND won both the Excellence in Indigenous Engagement and the Excellence in Technical Innovation awards. Ngaarda Media won the Best Online Content and the Excellence in Outside Broadcasting awards. And Koori Radio picked up the Excellent in Music Presenting award. The awards were presented online this year. Take a look at the videos here.

The Joint Council on Closing the Gap held its first meeting since the National Agreement on Closing the Gap came into effect last week. The Joint Council agreed to develop an online, public tracker to help keep an eye on progress against the commitments in the Agreement. A strategic plan for funding the development of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled sector was also agreed. This plan will guide implementation of Priority Reform 2 in the Agreement, strengthening the community-controlled sector with initial priorities for funding to be invested in the early childhood care and development community-controlled sector and housing. Read more.