Mawunyo Gbogbo has worked in media for more than 20 years – as a music and pop culture reporter for Double J and ABC News, features reporter for ABC Radio Sydney, reporter for ABC Audio’s AM, PM and The World Today, segment producer for Nine’s Today show, and as an associate producer for Insight at SBS TV, where she won a UN Media Peace Award. Currently a pop culture journalist for ABC News, Mawunyo is the author of the memoir Hip Hop & Hymns.
Q1. What has been your best career move?
My best career move was actually quitting a job. In 2009 I was miserable working as a news operations assistant at the ABC, but it was during the global financial crisis, and the job was stable and full-time. It was also mind-numbingly dull, I was underappreciated, and it didn’t pay very well, either. I felt really stuck. One day I went into a travel agency and asked how much it would cost to go to America. The fare was ridiculously cheap, so I booked it and quit my job to travel around America for three months. I panicked because I didn’t have a job to come back to, but it turned out to be the best career move ever. I had a brilliant time, and then came back to Australia and walked into what was my dream job at the time – associate producer on Insight at SBS. That's when my career trajectory started going in a positive direction. I took a massive risk and it paid off. Had I stayed in a job I hated, I wouldn't be where I am now.
Q2. What do you wish you’d known when you started out in the media industry?
Just how hard it would be to get ahead as a black woman. I thought being black would be an advantage because there weren’t many reporters of African descent working at major news organisations, but I’d soon discover that that was by design. When I had just graduated from uni, I told my Lebanese cousin, who married into our family, that I'd love to be a reporter for 60 Minutes. She just looked at me and said, “Do you think Australia is ready for a black reporter on 60 Minutes?” I was like, “Why wouldn’t they be?” But she was right, because it’s been such a tough road. Roadblocks at every turn. Back in the day, I certainly looked the part – I was a hottie! I would have been great on television, but it came down to Australia not being ready. Fifteen years ago, I applied for a producer-presenter job doing updates for flights and shopping centres. I had the producer part down pat, but my boss said, “Why are you even bothering?” The guy doing the hiring actually asked one of my blonde friends why she wasn't applying for the job. She was like, “I'm not ready, but Mawunyo really wants one of those positions.” He was like, “Yeah, right.” And this is at the ABC! When I was a producer on the Overnights program on ABC Radio, people would call in and the racist views had me in tears some nights. They thought I was white because I have an Australian accent and I used my nickname, Marnie. Every time we did a story about black people, the wolves would come out and say the most horrendous things. Most of them I didn’t put to air, but I had to listen to their rubbish. It crushed me.
Q3. What’s the best advice you've been given?
I knew I wanted to be a journalist from the first grade, but I actually failed my HSC. One of my uncles came over, got out a piece of paper and said, “This is your destination, where you want to be” – he drew a little circle – “and you're here”, and he drew another circle a bit further away. He said, “You can either get there like this” – and he drew a straight line – “or you can get there like this”, and he drew a line that curved. “Either way, you'll end up at the same place.” So, I enrolled in a degree that wasn't journalism – media and cultural studies – at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, where I wanted to go. I got an extra five marks because I grew up in a country town [Muswellbrook] – which meant I just passed – and I was accepted. After a year, I applied to do journalism and they knocked me back, so I applied another year later. By then, I had my byline in newspapers, I had my voice on cassette tape, and a VHS tape with stand-ups that I’d done at television stations on work experience. I had a folder of references from my lecturers, and I’d organised a couple of hip hop and R&B nights – huge events on campus. There was just no way they could say no.
Q4. Do you have a professional hero?
My professional hero is investigative journalist, educator and civil rights leader, the late, great Ida B. Wells. She was born into slavery in the United States, and eventually became the editor and co-owner of Memphis Free Speech in 1892. She was a hard-nosed journalist, but with heart, which is what I try to be. She exposed the brutality of lynching and gave the black men’s families their dignity back, because the men were being accused of crimes they hadn't committed. To me, she’s the pinnacle of what a journalist should be.
Q5. What’s your proudest achievement?
My book, Hip Hop & Hymns, is 100 percent my proudest achievement. It’s a memoir, but it's also a coming-of-age story about the criminal justice system, mental health and the media. There were a lot of things I needed to get off my chest. I wrote it because I wanted to change the world, and if enough people read it, it could have the potential to do that. One reader said she’d been through a similar mental-health breakdown and felt like my book gave her a voice. It’s also been optioned for television, stage or film by Typecast Entertainment, which is led by Tony Briggs and Damienne Pradier. Tony created and wrote The Sapphires – that’s the calibre we’re talking – so it’s very exciting. I'm sure there are a lot of gorgeous Australian actors who could play me; I just don't know who they are because they don't get the airtime. There’s room for all of us and that’s what diversity is about. It's not about, “Down with the blondes!” – it’s about having space for all of us.
Interview by Susan Horsburgh