Fourth Estate

What happens when sex work pays better than journalism?

After being made redundant from his job in the media, investigative journalist Bension Siebert began working as a sex worker — and discovered he could earn in five hours what he made in his best-paid week as a journalist.

But rather than leaving journalism behind, Siebert is now using sex work to fund his own investigative reporting.

This week on Fourth Estate, Tina Quinn speaks with Siebert about journalism’s increasingly precarious economics, the investigations mainstream media organisations decide are too risky to publish, and why he believes the gap between what Australian newsrooms know and what they’re prepared to report is growing.

Click here to read Bension Siebert's essay: How sex work saved my investigative journalism career.

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Walking away from Between the Lines in 1997 meant leaving behind what Caroline Baum considered the high point of her career. But her story was far from over.

In the third and final part of our special Fourth Estate profile, we pick up with Caroline back at the ABC, where a hoped-for return to the national broadcaster as Executive Producer of Radio National’s Arts Today instead became another difficult chapter in her career.

But what followed was also a period of reinvention.

Caroline reflects on becoming the founding editor of Good Reading magazine, her return to television, her time as Editorial Director at Booktopia, and the twists and turns of building a successful freelance career across print, radio and television.

Then came perhaps her most personal piece of work: Only: A Singular Memoir.

For the first time, Caroline put into print the truth of her complicated childhood and her turbulent relationships with both her parents, confronting memories she had carried with her for decades.

And now, with Life Sentences, Caroline has returned to what she has always done best: conversation. The podcast sees her speaking with biographers about the lives they spend years trying to understand—and, in a fitting full-circle moment, it is now coming to the ABC Listen app.

Caroline Baum joins Tina Quinn for the third and final part of a wide-ranging conversation about journalism, ambition, disappointment, reinvention, family—and what it takes to build a life and career on your own terms.

Catch up on parts one and two in the Fourth Estate podcast feed.

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In part one of our special profile series, Caroline Baum took us from her unconventional London childhood to the offices of British Vogue, the BBC and eventually Australia—before jumping ahead to reveal publicly for the first time why she walked away from her dream job at the ABC's Between the Lines.

Now, we turn the clock back.

By the late 1980s, Baum was beginning to make her mark on Australia's cultural landscape. What followed was a career spanning newspapers, magazines and television: from becoming Features Editor at Vogue Australia to becoming a television presenter alongside the late James Valentine on TVTV.

Then came Between the Lines.

As host of the ABC's landmark books program, Baum established herself as one of Australia's finest arts and literary interviewers, sitting down with some of the most celebrated—and occasionally controversial—writers of the era.

In part two, Caroline joins Tina Quinn to reflect on her encounters with Oliver Sacks, Frank McCourt, Shirley Hazzard and Helen Demidenko, whose literary success became engulfed in controversy over her fabricated Ukrainian identity.

Some interviews ended when the cameras stopped. Margaret Atwood's ended with dinner at Caroline's house.

This is part two of our special three-part conversation with Caroline Baum.

For more on Caroline, pick up a copy of her memoir, Only: A Singular Memoir.

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When Caroline Baum walked through the doors of British Vogue as a young editorial assistant in the mid-1970s, London was at the centre of the fashion, literary and cultural worlds. It was there she encountered some of the era's biggest names—from photographer Helmut Newton to Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon—while discovering both the craft of storytelling that would define her career and the feminism she says underpinned it.

From there, Baum found herself working behind the scenes on the television programs of Michael Parkinson and Melvyn Bragg, two of Britain's most celebrated interviewers—and two famously mercurial personalities—witnessing firsthand the pressures, egos and power dynamics of British television.

Her career would eventually bring her to Australia, where she became one of the country's finest arts and literary interviewers. Across television, radio and print, Baum sat down with some of the world's greatest writers and thinkers, earning a reputation for conversations that were thoughtful, searching and deeply human.

As part of our ongoing profile series, Caroline Baum joins Tina Quinn to reflect on those formative years, the lessons that shaped her approach to interviewing, and the experiences that laid the foundations for a remarkable career in journalism.

She also shares, for the first time publicly, the deeply personal story behind her departure from the ABC's Between the Lines in 1997.

This is part one of a special multi-part conversation.

To learn more about Caroline's remarkable life, pick up a copy of her memoir, ⁠Only⁠.

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at fourthestate@2ser.com or follow us at @fourthestateau.
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Hannah Ferguson (Cheek Media), Scott Mitchell (Lamestream Media) and Daanyal Saeed (Crikey) join Tina Quinn to unpack another big week in Australian media.

This week, the panel examines the future of journalism in the age of artificial intelligence following the Andrew Olle Media Lecture, where Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni argued AI companies should pay for the journalism that powers their products. But with Nine announcing another round of newsroom redundancies on the same day—despite recently signing an AI licensing deal with Microsoft—we ask the question many journalists are now asking: if AI is creating new revenue for publishers, why are newsrooms still getting smaller?

The panel also debates Mamamia's appointment of founder Mia Freedman's 28-year-old son, Luca Lavigne, as chief executive, and what it says about nepotism, merit and leadership in an industry still criticised for being overwhelmingly white, middle class and dominated by familiar networks.

Plus, Sarah Ferguson's now infamous interview with Barnaby Joyce, the spectacle that followed, Pauline Hanson's latest comments on domestic violence, and Karl Stefanovic's next possible podcast guest
—shock surprise or completely expected?

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fourthestate@2ser.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or tweet us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@fourthestateau.
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