April Chan is the Vertical Video Lead at ABC News, heading up a team that specialises in making news accessible to younger audiences on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. With more than 10 years of media experience across news and specialist teams, April has spent most of her career trying to understand how news works best in the ever-evolving world of social media.
Q1. What’s been your best career move?
Just moving around, getting a feel for different parts of the media, has been great. I’ve spent time in digital news, TV, in a specialist team away from the daily grind, and now in social media. If I feel like I'm not challenged anymore, I get a bit bored and start looking for another position. It’s really informed my current role – knowing how different teams work, the jargon they use, how their stories are structured. It helps me develop better professional relationships as well. I'm now in my 11th year at the ABC. I landed an ABC internship in the third year of my Bachelor of Journalism degree and started working as a casual on the digital news desk in my last semester. We were quite a small team, so I was given a lot of responsibility early on.
Q2. What would you do differently, given your time over?
I’d push the imposter syndrome aside and just go for it. I’d apply for different roles a bit earlier. As a young journo, I was just focused on staying at the news desk and getting more experience. I was a bit scared to leave. I didn't think I had enough experience to apply for some roles, which I'm sure was fair in some cases, but just putting my name out there would have been good. Still, I’m pretty happy with where I am.
Q3. Do you have a professional hero?
I don't have one hero per se. I’ve been lucky, especially in my earlier years on the news desk, to have been surrounded by so many strong female colleagues who were gung-ho about advocating for themselves. We were a close-knit team; we did a lot of shift work and working those weird hours bonds people. I'm more reclusive and not very confident but seeing them push for themselves, and getting what they pushed for, has motivated me to go for jobs. When I started, it was quite male dominated, but there are more females in leadership roles now, and I'm lucky to have a female boss. You just feel more comfortable. There’s an understanding of your experience in the media – and it’s different, depending on whether you're male or female. As a CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) person, there's an extra layer of difference.
Q4. What will the media look like in 10 years’ time?
It's an interesting question because my role didn't even exist two years ago. It’s a new way forward for the ABC. We often joke in my team, because we make vertical videos for TikTok and Instagram and elsewhere, that “If circle videos are the new thing in five years’ time, then that's what we'll make – we’ll just go with the flow”. It’s hard to predict, because who would have known vertical videos would be such a big thing when even five years ago it was all horizontal, all for YouTube? I hope the media will just keep reinventing itself and seek the audience where they are. I also hope there’ll be more gender diversity, people of colour, people with disability. When I started, I was the only Asian person on my entire floor. Culturally, it was hard. I felt like I had to work more to blend in. In 10 years, I hope the media will be more reflective of the people we’re meant to be informing and reporting on. I hope I see more people like me in the office and on my screens.
Q5. What changes have you noticed in social media?
My team launched ABC on TikTok at the end of 2022 and that was probably a few years late. After a year-and-a-half, we're at 450,000 followers and hoping to reach 600,000 by the end of this year. We've got a million on Instagram. Part of our mission has been training teams to make vertical video – because they need to figure out how to survive in 10 or 20 years’ time, when the people who do watch their shows on broadcast aren’t around anymore. When I started in social media eight or nine years ago, we were so focused on Facebook and Twitter; bringing people back to owned platforms. But we’re increasingly treating social media as its own platform, going to people where they are, rather than trying to bring them back to our website. When I started, social was such an afterthought. Now people are looping us in during the commissioning stage. It just ends up being a better product because you're not trying to fit a TV program into social, you're actually filming on your phone – because that's what everyone films on for social. Also, the presenting style is so different. We focus on getting rid of that reporter voice that everyone uses on TV and radio because on social, it's a turn-off. When I go on leave for a few months and come back, so much has changed, I'm struggling to keep up. You can never feel like you’ve fully grasped it because there's always more to learn. It's constantly changing.
Interview by Susan Horsburgh