The ABC’s news director reflects on his start in journalism, launching Aunty’s 24-hour news channel and future challenges for the public broadcaster

When ABC News 24 launched on 22 July 2010 the fledgling rolling news channel already had plenty of enemies. They weren’t just rival media angry that Sky News Australia, partly owned by Rupert Murdoch, had a challenger. Internally, a lot of old-school journalists thought a 24-hour news channel was a waste of Aunty’s precious resources.

The man at the centre of this political and cultural storm was Gaven Morris, head of continuous news, whose 10 years working at CNN and al-Jazeera had given him experience enough to be chosen by the managing director, Mark Scott, to set up the ABC’s news channel.



Gaven Morris, journalist who set up News 24, named ABC news director Read more

Morris says: “News 24 was gruelling. We said we would be on air for the federal election of 2010. And then of course the Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd stuff happened, the election date came forward by three or four months and so then we had to launch in July.



“So it was six or seven months from announcement to launch in an environment where we had to be on air in a federal election – which is a pretty testing time to launch anything. It was in an environment where we were using new technology, new staff, new editorial workflows and off we went probably in a culture where both internally and externally there were a lot of questions about why were we doing it.



“We launched and to look back now we weren’t the flashiest news channel in the world. It took us a good six months really to find our rhythm, find our feet to provide the service we thought we aspired to be. It was a tough time for all the team through those first six months of News 24.”



Five years on and Morris, now 43, has succeeded Kate Torney as the ABC’s director of news. The director of news at the ABC is responsible for the nation’s biggest news gathering workforce: 1,400 staff across eight capital city newsrooms, 11 international bureaus and more than 50 regional and suburban locations.



It took us a good six months really to find our rhythm, find our feet to provide the service we thought we aspired to be Morris on the launch of ABC News 24

“People sometimes look at ABC News and say ‘you’ve got a lot of people, a lot of money invested’. We’re grateful for every dollar invested and we must always strive to provide full value for it. Our newsroom profile includes a digital newsroom like Fairfax, a radio newsroom like a commercial radio operation, a television newsroom like Channel 9 or Channel 7.



“We have it all together and then there’s daily radio current affairs, daily television current affairs, weekly in-depth and investigative programs. We do a lot with the investment we’ve been given. For me, the guiding principle is getting value for money to audiences.



“I came from a family who didn’t really consume the ABC when I was growing up, it wasn’t very relevant to my family and I’ve always taken that with me and thought, if all taxpayers are paying for this organisation and are investing in it we need to find as many ways as we can to be providing them a useful service back.”



After the arduous task of putting a new channel to air several months early, Morris says he is excited about taking on an even tougher task.



As director of news heading into 2016 he is not just responsible for all the ABC’s news and current affairs output across television, radio and digital, but he must steer Aunty’s most powerful division through a period of unprecedented media upheaval.



“I really looked at the opportunity to ask, what happens in the next five or 10 years with audiences and where is our place in that? Not only will news audiences get increasing control over where and how and when they consume news and information but increasingly they will be saying, is there a two-way street in this? Can we play a role? Is there a participatory model of journalism we can contribute to? Is there a personalised news experience that may be more relevant to us?”



The cultural change that Morris and Torney had to force on the ABC’s news division five years ago is still a live issue. Sparse resources are poured into an expanding digital platform – because that is where the audiences are – journalists worry there won’t be enough left to fund investigative journalism.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) studios in Ultimo, Sydney. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

In 2014–15, ABC News Digital moved into third position in the Australian news category of the Nielsen online ratings – behind news.com.au and smh.com.au – rising from seventh two years ago.



While the audience for the ABC’s traditional 7pm TV news bulletin continues to drop, in 2014-15 ABC news and current affairs websites attracted an average of 3.8 million visitors each week, up 37% on the previous year



Morris took over the organisation the same year it lost 100 journalist positions and thousands of years of experience. Several key programs had been axed, moved or taken a budget cut, and all staff were expected to do more with less.



“It hurts but we’re not immune to what essentially would be a revenue change for any other media organisation,” Morris says. “Lots of media organisations are facing similar issues. It makes you look at what you do. What we did try and do this time around was stop a few things rather than slice things thinner and thinner.”

By stop a few things he means axing the state-based editions of 7.30, which was a very public, painful process.



“I think we struck a pretty good balance I think people will look at the service we provide next year and say actually you did a great job with what you got, which was a significant budget cut.”



Morris’ background in 24-hour news and his enthusiasm for new platforms and new ways of telling stories makes some of the more traditional journalists at the ABC uncomfortable. As head of News 24 he was a target for those who said News 24 was draining resources from programs like 7.30, Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent. (Mark Scott has always said it was funded not by cutting news, but through internal efficiencies such as studio automation).



But Morris is used to being an outsider of sorts. Far from being part of the so-called inner-city cultural elite ABC journalists are accused of inhabiting, Morris is from a working class family in Canberra and it keeps him grounded.

“I came from a family that wasn’t that engaged in journalism and I was the first person in my family to go to university,” he says. “Journalism was just something when I was young that I got a bit of a passion for.

“I used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother who read the Daily Telegraph a lot and that was pretty much the only news paper we saw in the family. Through her, and discussing what was in the paper, I got a real passion for news.



My parents weren’t really typical ABC consumers and I didn’t grow up watching or listening to a lot of ABC News

“My parents weren’t really typical ABC consumers and I didn’t grow up watching or listening to a lot of ABC News.



“The first full-time job I had was as a newspaper journalist on the Canberra Times and that’s what I thought I’d always do. I didn’t have much affinity with broadcasting or with the ABC. It was a twist of fate really. I remember one weekend looking through the paper and there was an ad for a new youth current affairs show the ABC was starting and more than anything I thought that might be fun and I applied. In the end I got a job on that program – Attitude – and that took me down a separate path.”



After Attitude, Morris followed his instincts again and took a chance on a new career in the dotcom boom overseas.



“I just thought wow we not really seeing any of this in Australia so I thought I’m going to move to London, I’m going to try and find myself a dotcom job and so I ended up at least getting a job with a broadcaster at CNN who was starting up a big European website.



“Then of course the dotcom bust happened and everything started to close down but because I had a little bit of broadcast experience they moved me across into the broadcast newsroom.



“I then started the 10-year career that I had at CNN and then al-Jazeera. Again, one of those little things that happens in your career that takes you down a different path.”



Seven years after arriving back at the ABC in Ultimo from his adventures in London and the Middle East, Morris fought off tough competition internally and externally to land the biggest job in Australian journalism.



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His first task in the new year is to move Q&A from television into the news division and perhaps argue for more resources so the program can travel outside of Sydney, as recommended by the independent review.



“The move into news does gives us a chance to, as you should do on every program, have a conversation about how to invigorate it,” Morris says.



So how will he handle the constant pressure and criticism from the ABC’s critics?



“Every member of the public has a stake in the ABC and so every single member of the public will have a different point of view,” Morris says.



“But when you look at the overall situation we still have trust equation of the public – 80% of Australians trust the service, find value in the service that we provide. That doesn’t mean that there are people who don’t look at what we do from their perspective and say ‘that doesn’t reflect my perspective’ or ‘I don’t agree with the point of view they’re taking’.



“I just think when your shareholders are 100% of every individual Australian you will always get points of view that don’t necessarily agree with how we see things or how we think our journalism represents the stories. I think that’s OK.”

