Interview #123 — Bhakthi Puvanenthiran
by Sonia Nair
Bhakthi Puvanenthiran is the editor of ABC Life.
Previously the Managing Editor of Crikey, a journalist and editor at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, she has also co-hosted the podcast Hard Bargain, worked at various literary festivals and is a regular media commentator. Bhakthi is a member of the Walkley Awards Judging Board.
Bhakthi speaks to Sonia Nair about rocking the boat, the precarity of the media in a digital age, and the ever-crushing news cycle.
You’ve always had a clearly defined career path – starting out at the ABC in local radio and then going on to work at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and most recently, Crikey and ABC Life. How did you get to where you are now, and was it difficult to make the decision to work in an industry when there was no one in it who looked like you?
Trust me, it has never felt clearly defined to me and it still doesn’t. I came of age to an industry completely decimated by digital disruption so every job I have in the media I assume is going to be my last. I think the main way I got through this all is by building relationships that are about raising up the work of others as well as my own.
The decision to be in an industry that doesn’t reflect me is an interesting one. I feel like it’s not something I really thought about, especially when I was sixteen and seventeen and figuring out which university degrees I wanted to apply for. I just knew what I enjoyed most (writing and speaking) and applied for Media and Communications/Law at Melbourne Uni. When I got to uni, it was the media kids who I most wanted to be around, who were talking about the things that mattered to me with the humour and intelligence that I craved.
What was it like regularly switching roles and navigating the industry as an Asian-Australian?
Switching roles all the time is hard because it takes minimum three months to feel vaguely competent at a job. But I've been just wildly lucky with the experiences I've been able to have even if they have mostly been contract roles. Hopefully I'll be sticking around at the ABC for a while this time, just to mix things up!
In terms of navigating the industry, I just have found so much warmth and solidarity from other people of colour in the media. I mean; not always, we’re still people with idiosyncrasies but it makes a huge difference when something goes wrong and there’s an element of race in that incident and you have someone to say “I see you and that sucks”. I have also been lucky in having lots of great advocates who aren’t people of colour who have been opening to hearing about my experiences and being empathetic.
Which medium have you enjoyed the most and which has been the most instructive to your current practice as an editor?
Talkback radio! You can diss it all you want, but it’s such a basic democratic medium—the feedback is immediate, and the element of service is real. Especially on the ABC.
When you left Crikey, you said you were proud if you’d “lit a spark in anyone or found a home for a piece that wouldn’t have found one otherwise”. Editors are considered gatekeepers of sorts – what are the guiding principles that dictate the work that you seek out and publish as an editor, and how do you juggle your responsibilities to the writer and the reader?
It’s tricky to distil my mostly daft human instincts into a set of guiding principles. I do think of readers before I think of writers—because my goal in digital journalism is about being accessible, especially to audiences the mainstream hasn’t served well. But I think the way to get there is really about finding writers and lifting them up and empowering them to reach those audiences, rather than getting in their way.
I think it’s important to write simply. I think it’s important to give as much context as possible and not assume where people are coming from or patronise. I think it’s important not to be afraid of emotion. I want people to feel like they either learned something or to feel seen after reading something I’ve published.
What are some of the pieces you’re most proud of having commissioned in your time as an editor?
I think some of the best work we did when I was at Crikey was the reporting by Rebekah Holt on onshore detention. Many of us think of asylum seeker detention has happening on islands far away but we have many people in limbo just 20-odd kms from the Melbourne CBD. I was also proud of commissioning a piece by Kishor Napier Raman on the impotence of hate crime laws in Australia following the vandalism of a Hindu temple. At ABC Life I've been so proud of what we've been able to make in the last few months. The ones that come to mind include 'how to know if you're being ripped off at work' by Patrick Wright, 'should we cancel virginity?' by Kellie Scott and '10 things I'm slowly learning from recovering from depression' by Jennifer Wong. It's such a great site with an energetic, thoughtful team.
In terms of navigating the industry, I just have found so much warmth and solidarity from other people of colour in the media.
You’re prolific on social media, which you use both to publicise your views on any number of things and to keep your finger on the pulse. How do you navigate the need to find meaning in amongst the endless, often crushing news cycle?
The news cycle is crushing—it’s true! I am crushed by it constantly. I need to get myself one of those safes with a timer that people put candy in and lock my phone up in there. I think it really is about who you follow though and what energy they are putting out there. So often I’ve been on social media and I’ve learned something incredible (Blak twitter has more info than most university degrees) or I see a picture of a puppy stealing a burger bun and I’m back in again.
In your recent speech for the Melbourne chapter launch of Media Diversity Australia, you’ve talked about the trap of “self-censoring” that many people of colour fall into. What are some of the pernicious ways you have adopted the internalised biases around you, and how do you stay vigilant?
When I was new to the media and I was in precarious work, I wasn’t thinking about rocking the boat or trying to do things in a different way. I was trying to do things the way they had always been done. It was challenging enough being a digital journalist when that was considered a bit of a trifle (not long ago), or being a young woman who cared about things like reality TV—it was tricky to then bring even more challenging aspects of myself to how I wrote and commissioned. Basically anything to do with my culture, race or migration story was not something I really saw as a strength as a journalist until recently. I wish that wasn’t true but it is.
Now I stay vigilant because I know there are people looking to me for cues the way I used to look to my editors for cues. In trying to create a safer, more creative environment for others, I’m liberating myself.
It’s a time of scarcity and tumultuousness in the Australian media industry, something you were confronted with in the year you graduated, when The Age let droves of journalists go. What do you see as the future of journalism, and where do you see your place in amongst this evolution?
The future is Tiktok! Pivot immediately! Seriously, though, I think the future of media depends on trust and I think what people are showing is that they want individuals they can trust to give them information with a personal spin; I’m thinking here of people like Hasan Minaj. I think the personal touch is going to be more important than ever.
…my goal in digital journalism is about being accessible, especially to audiences the mainstream hasn’t served well.
You’ve been in the Australian media industry for a while now—what are the changes you’ve seen when it comes to the representation of editors and journalists of colour in newsrooms, and the way the media engages with people of colour, for better or worse? Things are definitely getting better. You look at places like this very magazine or IndigenousX and people are definitely getting more opportunities to tell their own stories. This year we partnered with Media Diversity Australia to take on a summer scholarship placement. That was not a thing that existed when I was at uni! So I really do feel overall that the fight is paying off. Of course, in mainstream newsrooms there is plenty of work to do in terms of recruitment, commissioning and genuine engagement with communities that have really come to distrust or ignore the wider news media in Australia.
What’s the deepest problem in the media industry that’s been highlighted by your personal and professional experience, and how can we work towards resolving it?
Yikes this is a hard one. There's plenty that the media in Australia is doing well, I want to say that first, and a lot of people who are fighting to gain the trust of under served audiences. Because I do think trust is the biggest issue we face—but the reasons for the breakdown in trust are different for different demographics and audience segments. This includes young people, people on lower incomes, people from culturally diverse backgrounds and so on. So much of this can be fixed by putting those audience first in commissioning processes, and it sounds so basic, but it does work. You look at how Instagram influencers develop loyal followings and it’s just by not hiding behind a title or an office or a masthead and often literally replying to many, many comments. Newsrooms could learn from that.
What would your ideal newsroom look like?
Nobody has ever asked me this, so thank you! It would be lot more family-friendly that mainstream newsrooms are now, lots more people jobsharing of senior roles and people having better work life balance. It would be less focused on the star reporters and the symbiotic nature of all reporting, and there would be lots of opportunities for collaboration. The racial, social and identity make-up of the newsroom would reflect the population of the city or region it’s in, along with a strong Indigenous reporting contingent and pathways for Indigenous reporters to move into editing roles.
You’ve facilitated multiple panels, delivered keynote presentations, appeared on TV segments like The Drum and Q&A. Do you have any tips for people who are less confident in speaking to a large audience?
Get as much information as you can about the event from people who have done it before and, if possible, get your questions in advance if you’re a panellist.
Write down what you want to say in advance. I usually get down three dot points about what I want to get across irrespective of what the questions are (this is also what politicians do FYI).
Focus on what you want to achieve and what you care about, not what you think looks impressive.
The news cycle is crushing—it’s true! I am crushed by it constantly.
One of the many things I admire about you lies in the highly public role you play in advocating for artists of colour and yourself – one specific example I can think of is the emotional labour you did to oversee and moderate a BIPOC Australian writers Facebook group that we’re both in. What are the best and worst things about being a public figure in this way?
I’ll do the worst thing first. The worst thing is feeling like you have to do the work and reply to every DM because there are no laurels to rest on and so much work to do. I feel a lot of guilt when I don’t do that stuff and I wish I didn’t! There’s also just a lot of pain experienced by people in our industries and being witness to it and being helpless is a lot of what I end of doing. The best part is seeing other talented people figuring out what they want to do and seemingly glide into opportunities that you know they have fought and scrambled for.
When I think of your name, I think of this beautiful quote by Warsan Shire:
Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.
I think about a pinned tweet you had a few years ago where you had an explainer guide on how to pronounce your surname. Which parts of yourself have you had to fight for, and which parts (if any) have you left at the door in the face of persistent white hegemony?
I feel confused about this all the time! I think the parts that I really have to fight for are the parts that value the collective over the individual. Success in media, especially, is so focused on the individual by-line or the individual dogma that led to a story, but I come from a culture that is more collectivist and less egotistical, and that can be hard to reconcile. Another problem I’ve realised is that I never really bothered to learn to speak Tamil well and now I’m getting older and it’s getting harder, but I hope to have kids and speak to them in Tamil. So that’s a work in progress.
Do you have any advice for emerging journalists or editors?
Read a lot. Put your hand up for stuff you don’t think you’re ready for yet. Be opportunistic. Surround yourself with people who think your work is worth something and who you can parse the world with. Come through for those people when they need you.
Who are you inspired by?
Indigenous journalists like Amy McQuire and Madeline Hayman-Reber. My friends who are really smart and kind. My dog Tulip who is always inspiring me to rest.
What are you reading?
Tishani Doshi’s Small Days and Small Nights. Please look her up. I saw her at Bendigo Writers Festival in 2019 and it was a little bit life changing.
How do you practise self-care?
Talking to my friends, especially on the phone. Hugging my partner. Cooking several curries and a flatbread (never just one). Watching TV shows I’ve seen before a bunch of times. Writing not for publication.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
Not wearing shoes in the house. Respecting your elders. Being bilingual. Knowing you’re living on stolen land but feeling lucky to be here anyway.
I think the parts that I really have to fight for are the parts that value the collective over the individual…
Find out more
Interview by Sonia Nair
Photographs by Leah Jing McIntosh