Siren#146: World Cup reflections with Samantha Lewis, Fast Five with Amanda Shalala, ABC Sports Academy + save the date!
A Women in Sport Collective
It’s our last newsletter of 2024!
How has another year flown by - especially one that sees Siren wrapping up five years of operations! Holy guacamole! We really can’t believe we’ve been around for five years, and we know the only reason we have been able to is because of you, our subscribers, supporters and community. Thank you.
We will be planning some fun five year celebrations in 2025 so stay tuned for more events, content and resources as we keep working to challenge the status quo of sports media!
But all that challenging is tough work, so we need a break every now and then. We will be taking some time across December and January to recharge for a big 2025. We will be back in your inboxes in late January.
We are signing off with a powerful piece on the future of sports media from the very awesome Samantha Lewis and giving you the next instalment of our Fast Five series with the amazing Amanda Shalala from ABC Sport.
Thank you everyone again for all your support, kind words and engagement in 2024. We love what we do at Siren and that we are part of such an incredible community makes the hard work much more meaningful, empowering and fun!
We hope you all have a wonderful summer, festive and safe holiday season and we’ll see you in 2025!
Upcoming Melbourne events—save these dates!
We have some really exciting events coming up in 2025! We have a couple in Melbourne to start the year off and then we are hoping to visit some more Australian cities, so stay tuned for more announcements!
In the lead up to the historic Women’s Ashes Test at the MCG, we are hosting two great events on Tuesday 28 January 2025 with our great friends at the MCC Library.
Event one: Women in cricket history panel
Date: Tuesday 28 January 2025
Time: 10am to 12pm
Location: MCC Library at the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Cost: FREE!
This panel will feature historians and journalists discussing the role of historical storytelling in sports writing, how to tell historical stories and will highlight the resources the MCC Library offers to find women’s sports stories in the archives.
Stay tuned for the panellist announcement soon!
Event two: Women's sport history storytelling workshop
Date: Tuesday 28 January 2025
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Location: MCC Library at the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Cost: FREE!
This will be a hands-on workshop perfect for women and non-binary sports writers, emerging and established, who are keen to develop some more historical research skills to aid in their storytelling. We will have historical storytelling experts in the room leading a workshop on how to find stories, conduct research and bring the story together.
This workshop has limited places and we will take expressions of interest now if you’re keen to be involved. Email your EOI to contact@sirensport.com.au with “sport history workshop” in the subject line and we will ensure you’re the first to know when the bookings open.
ABC Sport x Siren Sport networking night—Melbourne
Thanks to the success of our virtual networking nights the last few years, we are going to be doing some in person! But don’t worry, we will still do online events to connect to as many people as possible.
Our first in-person networking night will be in Melbourne on the evening of Thursday 13 February 2025.
Save the date! Booking information will be sent out soon.
Who cares? Reflections on a post-Women’s World Cup sport media landscape
By Samantha Lewis
Samantha Lewis reflects on where we are in the sports media landscape after a groundbreaking Women's World Cup and what the future can hold.
Fast Five with Amanda Shalala
In Fast Five we catch up with women and non-binary people in sports media and ask them about their work, their career highlights and their advice for emerging sports media content creators.
Amanda Shalala is the Deputy Editor of ABC Sport, she oversees the 5050 Equality Project, which is dedicated to increasing the coverage of women in sport, as well as people from diverse and under-represented backgrounds.
Amanda was the ABC's broadcast reporter for the Paris 2024 Olympics, she was ABC News' 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup Lead, and she's covered five Paralympics, the London 2012 Olympics, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, and the 2022 Women's Basketball World Cup, amongst many other major events. She’s passionate about elevating diverse voices in sport both on and off the field.
Siren Sport x ABC Sport Academy
The ABC Sport Academy includes behind the scenes videos of ABC Sport journalists on the job, as well as informative vodcasts providing valuable industry insights on topics like interviewing, researching and writing a story, and sports reporting and presenting.
This year, we’ve worked with the ABC to add some more content to these resources to further support women and non-binary folk working in, or aiming to work in sports media.
The most common questions and requests we get at Siren from both emerging, and established writers focus on four key areas:
Pitching a story
What makes a good story?
How to go about researching a story
The writing process
So we made some vodcasts and created some tips and tricks to help you navigate them all!
These vodcasts include discussions and reflections from Siren co-founders Kasey Symons, Kirby Fenwick and Kate O’Halloran on these topics based on their different experiences in sports media and storytelling. We hope they help you on your sports media journeys too!
And be sure to check out all the other great resources through the ABC Sport Academy like social media, interviewing, producing a feature and more!
Siren Sport x ABC Sport networking event—thanks for coming!
Thanks to everyone who came along to our online networking night recently. We had a great evening of meeting new people, sharing our experiences and ideas and we’re excited to hopefully see some opportunities develop from this event and result in ABC Sport publications!
Thanks to the amazing ABC Sport experts who gave their time to hang out with us and share their wisdom! Thank you Amanda Shalala, Kate O'Halloran, Johanna McDiarmid, Marnie Vinall and Brittany Carter. We love your work and are so grateful for all you do for women’s sport and the women in sports media community!
ICYMI here are some success stories from last year’s event!
Participants from last year’s networking event went on to pitch us stories and get published on ABC Sport.
We published two stories from Jo White – the first about Lauren Robinson's unexpected journey to becoming a wheelchair basketball coach and the second about the awesome Pacifika Ballerz team in Sydney’s west.
Danielle Croci wrote about how new data showed a lack of gender balance in Victorian sports news coverage.
Courtney Fewquandie and Kirsty Marshall covered the Queer Sporting Alliance delivering Australia's first and largest queer basketball tournament.
We can’t wait to see what comes of this year’s event and if you’re keen to be part of future events keep an eye on your Siren newsletters as we always announce events and dates first to our wonderful subscribers.
The latest from our ABC Sport partnership
Jo White shares how 23-year-old Emily Attard started Specialist Hoops, an all-abilities basketball program that’s provided pathways and purpose to players with a disability. Photos are by Sofia Alessandra.
Siren is now on Patreon!
When you become a Patreon you support us to:
commission and pay writers and content creators
run our Emerging Sports Writer Programs
create opportunities for women and non-binary folk in sports media.
The support of the Siren community has helped support those commissions and opportunities and we can’t thank you enough.
You can become a Patron of Siren today and help us continue to challenge the status quo of sports media.
