When On the Record Doesn't Really Mean On the Record: an attempt to navigate ethical clearance for journalism and non-fiction research

Journalism and writing academics from around the country are evaluating the best method to tackle problematic encounters with Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs). Discussion is focussing on the management of the ethics approval process within universities pertinent to their roles as researchers and as supervisors to their Higher Degree Research students. The National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research was revamped in 2007 to be more inclusive of specific research practices within these fields, but it seems the flow on effect to many university HRECs has not evolved with it. Instead, a conservative stasis pertaining to the previous medical/scientific paradigm remains the default position. Pre-empting upcoming ethics applications flowing from the creation of a newly formed journalism graduate school, this paper will detail a submission that was made by the author to a university's HREC in a bid to expedite the process for non-traditional and creative researchers within the new school. It will also propose a more appropriate and applicable model of the informed consent letter that addresses tensions around the withdrawal of 'data'. The HREC response and subsequent outcome will also be examined. This paper seeks to add to the debate around this issue by detailing how the revised National Statement has indeed given creative practice-led academics the ability to improve the ethical clearance process - on close reading, the mechanisms are there within the Statement. http://aawp.org.au/publications-aaw

What if Tom Wolfe was Australian?

Ever since Tom Wolfe wrote a thirteen page essay entitled The birth of the new journalism, eyewitness report by Tom Wolfe in the Seventies, debate has raged over what this New Journalism or literary journalism or creative non-fiction is. Yet geographically, the debate has been confined to the United States and the UK. Australia has remained notably silent on the issue

The ethical journalist: oxymoron or aspiration?

Year after year, Australian newspaper journalism cannot seem to make it out of the bottom four of the thirty most distrusted professions, pipped only by car salesmen, advertisers and estate agents. Taking an historical perspective of âpublic interestâ and âthe publicâs right to knowâ, this paper will attempt to evaluate the distinction and gravity of both tenets, focussing on why they can have the effect of diluting ethical codes, if misused. The quasi-professional nature of journalism practice lends itself to ethical codes rather than legislative regulation. Accordingly these codes are largely accountable to no one â except perhaps the individual practitioner â and many codes of ethics and practice in the Western developed nations contain an âout-clauseâ in the name of public interest. This paper seeks to investigate these âout-clausesâ, and discuss the oft-quoted allegation that these clauses place journalists above the law. In light of this, I will conclude that in a tertiary setting, and ideally in a professional setting, what must be emphasised side by side with an ethical practice is an individual moral practice, all too often separated philosophically within the professional and industrial spheres

Behind the Text: Candid Conversations with Australian Creative Nonfiction Writers

Behind the Text is a celebration of the often forgotten genre of creative nonfiction. Paired with Joseph’s rich descriptions of person and place, this collection of candid interviews brings together some of the best Australian authors, covering everything from traumatic wartime journalism and burning national issues to Middle Eastern spices. In this definitive work, eleven influential authors explore their writing process, ethical dilemmas and connection to the capacious genre. As the first collection of its kind, this work brings Australian creative nonfiction into the literary spotlight

The Essay as Polemical Performance: ‘salted genitalia’ and the ‘gender card’

On October 9, 2012, the then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard rose to her feet in Canberra’s Parliament House, and in response to a motion tabled by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, delivered her blistering Misogyny Speech. Although Gillard’s speech was met with cynicism by the Australian Press Gallery, some accusing her of playing the ‘gender card’, it reverberated around the world and when the international coverage poured back into the country, ordinary Australians stood up and listened. One of them was author, essayist, classical concert pianist and mother, Anna Goldsworthy. Shortly after the delivery of The Misogyny Speech, Quarterly Essay editor Chris Feik approached Goldsworthy to write the 50th essay for the Black Inc. publication, his idea to view it through a cultural lens. It took several months to research and compose, resulting in Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny. The issue was launched at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on July 1, 2013, five days after Julia Gillard was deposed from her Prime Ministership. This paper takes a look back at the 50th issue of the Quarterly Essay, to discuss with its author her essay-writing process and the aftermath of publication. Goldsworthy is erudite as she looks at the construction of the essay, its contents and her love of essay writing. Although she confesses to not having a definition for the form, she believes it does not matter; that its fluidity is a basic constituent element. Her love of language and music inform both the breadth of her essay, as well as its narrative – there is lyricism to her sentences and a musicality to her structure. This paper also contextualises Unfinished Business as an example of the crucial long form essay contribution that Black Inc.’s Quarterly Essay performs in the Australian literary/ political/ cultural/ intellectual environment. There were critics of Goldsworthy’s essay, and these are assessed as a component of how ‘the essay’ can function in a liberal First-World society, as demonstrated by the Quarterly Essay periodical

Contextualising Creative Practice within Human Research Ethics Processes

Australian creative practice researchers are not alone in their quest for an appropriate framework for human ethics research committee consent. Globally, there seem to be similar tensions. Although Australia's National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research was revamped in 2007 to be more inclusive of specific creative practice research, including long-form journalism and other creative non-fiction writing, many tertiary Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) have not evolved with it. Instead, a conservative stasis pertaining to the previous medical/scientific paradigm remains the default position. This paper details a submission to an Australian university's HREC calling for a human ethics application process that more appropriately contextualises creative practice human research. Additionally, it proposes an informed consent letter that addresses tensions around the withdrawal of data based on the journalistic practice of on the record/off the record. The revised Australian National Statement has given creative practice-led academics the ability to improve the ethical clearance processthe mechanisms are there within the National Statement. By highlighting the counter-productive restraints and constraints some conservative HRECs still place on the functioning of journalistic and other creative non-fiction writing research within universities, this paper calls for a uniform and national collaboration to investigate review other than by HREC as a matter of urgency for all Australian journalism and creative practice researchers, based on the more intuitive and streamlined content model already utilised at a UK university

Found poetry as literary cartography: Mapping Australia with prose poems

Found poetry is lyrical collage, with rules. Borrowing from other writers – from different writings, artefacts, sources – it must always attribute and reference accurately. This paper is derived from the beginnings of a research project into Australian legacy newspaper stories and found poetry as prose poetry, explaining the rationale behind the bigger project. Ethnographic in texture at its edges, the research project sets out to create poetic renditions of regional news of the day, circumnavigating the continent. My aim is to produce a cadenced and lyrical nonfiction transcript of Australian life, inspired by and appropriated from regional legacy media, while it still exists.The beginning of the research was a recce journey to the centre of Australia in 2016. Currently, the outcomes of the recce are six poems, five of which are nonfiction prose poems. Contextualising found poetry within the prose poetry genre – a long debated and hybrid space – the theoretical elements of this paper underpin its creative offerings

The writing cure?: ethical considerations in managing creative practice lifewriting projects

The autobiographical turn in literary studies has increasingly placed value on selfrepresentation as a strategic means of reclaiming voice, identity and agency. By and large, the narrating 'I' is circulated and read as a storied performance/product which empowers the writer. Typically such texts are often ones that rehearse, record and expiate individual trauma, and also produce a set of readings that textually frame the work as 'therapeutic'. There is a growing selection of texts which narrativise personal trauma now being set for literary examination in tertiary syllabi. Concurrent to the formal reading of trauma texts in the context of literary studies is the narrative impulse to repackage traumatic experience as autobiographical process/literary output within creative practice higher degrees. This paper seeks to interrogate some of the ethical concerns that arise from students drawing on personal trauma in creative writing contexts for the production of literature that is to be formally supervised and examined. How is the potential risk of re-traumatisation of the student, and vicarious traumatisation of the supervisor/lecturer, managed? If higher degrees are providing an emergent space for catharsis, 'unofficially' offering writing as a therapeutic mode in creative practice, what are the implications of the supervisor/lecturer moving from a role of artistic and scholarly critic, to one of bearing witness? And in this newly formed therapeutic alliance, does an academic need more skills than they have developed in simply delivering a writing or literary curriculum? And what professional frames of support, if any, are in place to sustain both the student and the academic throughout the process? Without well-established professional support and guidelines, is commodifying trauma in order to gain a degree, and or a literary output, ethical professional practice

To Begin to Know: Resolving ethical tensions in David Leser’s patriographical work

Resolving the binary oppositions of loyalty/betrayal and privacy/shared ownership frequently problematizes the practice of those writers producing patriographical/matriographical texts. David Leser is an award-winning journalist, one of Australia's most prolific profile and feature writers. He has worked as a Middle East and Washington DC correspondent, and as feature writer for the Murdoch, Packer and Fairfax organizations. David Leser's professional writing career spans decades so he is familiar with the forms and audiences shaping and driving the publication industry. Reflecting on the therapeutic nature of writing memoir, Leser decides in the end that the reading of books/the act of reading books can be just as therapeutic. There are few moments where a memoirist can escape the interconnectivity between their own story and the story of another - the assertion of their own voice while simultaneously considering the possible violation of someone else's privacy. And of course, an ethical memoirist gives due consideration to harm minimization

Beyond this point here be dragons: consideration and caution for supervising HDR writing trauma projects

Abstract As memoir and autobiographical/ autoethnographic texts flourish in the market place, so this emergence is reflected in the tertiary sector. Mostly sited within journalism, English and creative writing schools, accordingly a proportion of these texts incorporate trauma narrative as students turn to creative practice degrees as a means to write through disruptive autobiographical events. Accordingly, supervisors of HDR candidates undertaking long form trauma narrative find themselves more and more immersed in the trauma, bearing witness to their students’ potential unease. We argue that this type of supervision may potentially necessitate a differentiated management approach, with the establishment of additional protocols, informed by the potential dangers of re-traumatisation of the candidate; and vicarious traumatisation of the supervisor. The aim of this paper is to report on some of the preliminary findings of a qualitative research project [1] where a range of Australian academics supervising Higher Degree Research (HDR) candidates writing about traumatic experiences were interviewed regarding supervisory protocols and practices. Here we focus on selected insights from supervisors who responded to one of the interview questions: ‘what do you consider the potential risks for a student and a supervisor involved in HDR projects framed by trauma narrative?’ We anticipate this paper will provide helpful perspectives from experienced academics for early career supervisors about to embark on trauma shaped projects