Very Fine Day #54: Gina Rushton
"The idea that someone will track down your contact details to send you something really hateful is always going to be a little unsettling."
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“We build baggage - we can call it knowledge but it’s baggage - and I had that around reproductive rights. There was just so much stuff that didn't make it into my reporting because it would have been irrelevant or biassed.”
It’s a friend on VFD today.
GINA RUSHTON is a writer and reporter and editor based in Australia who I worked with at BuzzFeed News. She’s known across the country for her excellent coverage of the abortion debate from 2016 onwards, as well as a whole bunch of stuff that people like to think of as “women’s issues” but that actually impact, uh… everyone.
A note at the top here, then, that this interview does discuss – though not in detail –abortion and sexual violence. And if that’s something you don’t want to read, I get it. Look after yourself and do what you gotta do.
I was always in awe of the way Gina was able to talk to people – often for the first time– about some of the most traumatic experiences in their lives. And do that daily. And do that with the idea being that covering these issues, telling these stories, and bringing attention to inequality and laws that were harmful would cause meaningful change in the real world. And it did.
Writing about trauma is tough – your own or someone else’s. And doing that every day is a strength and, I think, a public service that in many ways places Gina in a position within the media where very few others play.
What I’m getting at is Gina is very good at what she goes and we’re all better for it.
She also has a book out very soon. It’s about the decision to have kids in a world that seems to be ending (promise you it’s not super depressing… I think?) But that’s a big question I think a lot of younger people are reckoning with now, perhaps in a way other generations did not. But who knows.
Enjoy the read, hope you’re doing OK? Send me an email, I’d love to hear from you. I’m less standoffish than I seem, I promise.
See you down the road.
VFD: Well, thanks for doing this, appreciate it.
Gina Rushton: You’re welcome! It’s nice to chat, I feel like I have questions for you!
VFD: It feels very odd to talk to you on the phone, in like, quite a formal way.
Gina Rushton: I know.
VFD: How are you? Actually, what questions do you have for me, quickly?
Gina Rushton: Okay, okay, my questions are: How are you? How is your dog? And also did you know Car Seat Headrest had a feud with Bob Saget from “Full House”?
VFD: Who had a feud with him?
Gina Rushton: Car Seat Headrest!
VFD: Oh
Gina Rushton: I just learnt about this the other day and I was like, That's really funny, I’m going to tell Brad
VFD: That's a shame, I guess.
Gina Rushton: Well, they wrote some song about him throwing the frontman into a river, so.
VFD: OK, I’m in.
Work is good, work is very, very busy, obviously. I just sent the boys - last week - to Lismore, up north, to cover the floods. And we've just been kind of smashing out as much as we can. It seems pretty - unsurprisingly - intense and traumatic and awful up there. So a lot of stories to tell. How about you?
Gina Rushton: True, and good to have people on the ground. What was the question?
VFD: Like, how about you? You're wrapping up soon at your current job?
Gina Rushton: No, I just started - I'm in week three of a new job. I'm Deputy Editor of nine.com.au.
VFD: Oh, so you have started. I didn't know you’d started.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, I started. It feels like I've been here a while but it’s only week three I think.
VFD: And you're in Pyrmont, you're not in North Sydney.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, I don't know why. Everyone's moved to North Sydney, we’re like the last stragglers still in this office, so eventually we’ll be there, I think.
VFD: Okay. It's a pretty cool building, it's very tall.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, it’s like a mega-complex.
VFD: You feel like a real Succession kind of player when you're standing on the 40th floor looking over the city.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, I can just imagine Kendall in North Sydney…
VFD: Yeah, hahaha. Getting a taxi to go to the pub. The whole thing.
Well, I just wanted to talk about a few things. The reason I wanted to talk to you is - obviously - because you have the book coming out, which is exciting. But I also think you have had - and this is where it gets awkward in conversation because we are friends - but you have also had quite an interesting and unique career up until this point.
I don't think there are many people that have written about what you've written about exclusively and had the fortitude to make it a beat and to be a strong player that way.
I guess my first question is around that and around - How did you find what you wanted to write about?
Gina Rushton: Yeah, so it's weird. I mean, you were there as well.
But our audience sort of found us at BuzzFeed. I started as a breaking news reporter and then I did a few stories about abortion access and realised that it was this big issue that hadn't really been covered at all in Australia and we just found this big readership for it. And I guess… it's so strange to think back then. I just would have had no idea that it would sustain an entire beat for four years.
VFD: I remember you also - I could be getting the terminology wrong - But was it that people would call you a “gender reporter” or a “woman's rights” reporter or something?
Gina Rushton: They always said “women's issues”, which… I mean, it's kind of annoying because it's strange to think about something that affects more than women like that. I just think that's maybe a hangover from magazine days and when it was a little more divided along gender lines.
VFD: That’s very well phrased and political of you. You played the game there well.
Gina Rushton: I’m just trying to be diplomatic!
VFD: I don't think you need to be - I think it was pretty fucked up. I don't think that was exclusive to media either.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, I remember once being in a cab and the driver asked me about what I reported on and I didn't really know how to explain it so I just kind of said Gender stuff and he asked if I reported on makeup.
I was like, No…
And I don't want to degrade people who do report on makeup, that's great and I read that content, but that's not what I'm talking about.
VFD: Oh, my God. How much did you encounter that kind of stuff? Just the whole time?
Gina Rushton: A little bit here and there. But to be honest, I think it just paled in comparison to the correspondence with people who were really anti-abortion.
VFD: How did you deal with that?
Gina Rushton: I found it really hard, actually. I think from a journalistic ego perspective, the implication that I've been biassed or impartial I found offensive on a professional level. Because I'd always gone to great lengths to engage with people on both sides of the debate and church leaders and stuff. So I think on an ego level I found it offensive, but also, as you know, because we had this huge American readership as well…
VFD: Yeah, that would have been nice.
Gina Rushton: I just feel like it's a different flavour of email. And I remember early on getting sent stuff - because I got sent a lot of foetus pictures - and one of the first ones I got sent was just so evidently not a human foetus. It was definitely like… it had whiskers.
The idea that someone will track down your contact details to send you something really hateful is always going to be a little unsettling. I don't think you can get used to it.
VFD: It is somewhat traumatic, right? It’s an extreme form of - it's not even internet trolling - because it's existed for, obviously, almost forever, but just abuse and harassment. And then on the other side of your job, you are talking to people and talking about things that can be quite trauma-centred.
I what I was always impressed with and always made me think: wow was how you balanced both of those things and it never really showed. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Is this where I find out that I'm a terrible friend -
Gina Rushton: No, not at all! It definitely really affected me and to be honest, I think if we had worked in a different newsroom where we were a little more bound by word count or angle, I actually think it would have made it a lot harder.
Because I would have been doing these interviews which, in most of them, the person was visibly upset. I think that I would have been doing them and not being able to offer to do their story justice and offer them the breadth of coverage that we did. So I think that I was lucky in that I could really do the interview justice most times where you can't really do that in most outlets. So that was at least helpful to know. That they were able to tell this story in quite an expansive way.
It's weird. I found the the abortion stories interesting because often it was the first time they'd told anyone. And using pseudonyms helps a lot because it changes the dynamic. I actually found the stories about sexual violence harder to report on because it just felt like pushing shit up a hill really. I wasn't really sure what was gonna come with this story, if anything.
VFD: Yeah, I understand. It’s hard to do. How did you dive in and start doing those interviews and having those conversations? Where do you start and how do you prepare yourself, especially at the beginning, when you're like: This is going to be heavy, and also it has a lot of unanswered questions to it that I might not be able to resolve with whatever I do with this information.
Gina Rushton: I think a lot of interviews that involve sensitive sources - this is such a boring term - but that expectation management is important. You need to be really clear with them on the limits of what you know. I mean, firstly, that it’s going to live on the internet forever with or without a pseudonym, and they need to be really aware of that. And also you need to be really clear on why they're doing it because it's not usually ever going to involve some kind of material outcome. And I think as a reporter, you also need to be aware that someone might be in one of those stories that not many people read and that needs to be okay.
VFD: Yeah, how did you deal with that? Because obviously BuzzFeed was quite open - well more than quite - you knew what everything was getting. We knew how many people were reading everything.
Gina Rushton: I always saw it like - I'm sure you did too - but if a story didn't do well I thought it was absolutely a failure on my part because I do believe that if you do a story in the right way it will find readers.
VFD: Yeah, that's healthy though. That's a real healthy take.
Gina Rushton: Yeah. And then I think the other thing about reporting on - not so much abortion but with sexual violence - I think that you always have to be mindful that the thing that has been taken away from this person is choice and autonomy, and allowing them to have even a little bit of that in the story, that's really important. Whether it's even just choosing the pseudonym, or being aware of what the headline might be, or the context of the story or the experts that might be interviewed alongside them or whatever. I think the more information you can give this sort of thing, I know that that's not a rule you should ever apply in other areas of journalism - you don't need to run a politician's quotes by them - but it's relevant here.
VFD: And at a certain point I think there's the part of it where you became known - and even more than known. And the reaction to that and the response to that is you suddenly had a lot more people messaging and emailing you asking for help or some sort of - promotion isn't the right word - but someone to listen to them, I guess, and tell their story.
Gina Rushton: Yeah. Maybe a highly interesting logistical thing is that, genuinely, I was for a long time getting messages literally asking where you could get an abortion in certain of places or where you could get an IUD in certain places or recommendations for gynaecologists for endometriosis. Like, it's just such a testament to how little information there is about really essential services. But then getting an email from someone who's sharing something really intimate… and knowing that not every story…
VFD: You can't tell everyone's story.
Gina Rushton: Exactly. And it's not even about newsworthiness, it's just that the case studies that I chose were often really relevant to the legislative reform that was going on. Like, it would be like This woman's story wouldn't have happened if the law had been changed.
VFD: Right, yeah. How would you deal with the people that, well, you couldn't tell their story? Or, you didn't have the space to? You’re just one person.
Gina Rushton: I don't think I left anyone unanswered. I was pretty vigilant about replying to people. And just being honest about the capacity that I had at the time. And also just to say: this is a really heavy story. And particularly with sexual assault stuff, it deserves a lot of resources that I didn’t have at the time.
VFD: Sure, yeah. Did you ever find that - and I used to feel, I guess, bad for you because I would read between the lines or assume things and be like: People are expecting something of Gina every day, and I got to come into work and do the opposite of that. And we’d do our news stand up in the morning, and I'd be like, Well, there’s this crazy thing on the internet that’s pretty funny.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, and you were getting those numbers! Maybe if my stories got incredible traffic then…
I mean, my highest traffic story was when I literally had to undergo minor surgery to get the numbers.
VFD: Yeah. That's a good story! It still comes up.
Gina Rushton: I never felt pressure. Also I just feel like we were just so lucky. Like, you know, the reporters I work with now are pumping out multiple stories a day. And I know there were days where we would have come close to that, but that was never the expectation every day. I think we were quite lucky.
VFD: Yeah, definitely. I think it ties into - and I've talked about it before - but the reason I can never hate BuzzFeed in the way that I think a lot of people in the US do is that I have this guilt slash aggressive form of protectionism over what it was.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, well, it was this beautiful, short case study in what you can achieve if you give young reporters a little bit of autonomy.
VFD: Yeah, and we don't need to repeat that! Like, that's fine. Whatever. We did the experiment! It worked! Well, whatever. Let's move on!
Okay, let's talk about your book then. I'll be honest with you, and I don't think I actually could have, but I have not read the book.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, it’s fine.
VFD: I think there was an opportunity to get a preview read and then I asked and then I just… We can talk about that later. But I saw that when you were describing it, it was like I’m trying to answer a question about what we love and fear about ourselves, is that right? Am I misquoting you?
Gina Rushton: Yeah. It’s a funny book because there's a central question that kind of propels it along, which is: Do I want to kid yes/no? But I think there's also a bigger question, which is almost about ambient dread about the future, which I think we all have in different ways.
VFD: Nah…
Gina Rushton: So there's stuff in there about climate change and capitalism and the nature of work. But it's funny because I started trying to make it a book in which I had some distance from myself and tried to make it about these rational, intellectual, big ideas but ultimately, it's an extremely emotional question. And it does become quite personal because it forces you to the idea of creating something that has a future beyond you. It forces you to confront everything that brings you hope and about yourself.
VFD: You're really selling it. A child sounds good!
Gina Rushton: I have to say, I started the book questioning the idea that I didn't want children so it's also like a… well, you’ll have to read it!
VFD: Little forward sizzle there: Does Gina change her mind? The reader will have to -
Gina Rushton: People keep asking me and I’m like Well go pay $34!
VFD: It's a small price to pay for a very personal, intimate question about my personal life. How did you land on that for the book?
Gina Rushton: I knew I wanted to write a book that considered motherhood. We build baggage, we can call it knowledge but it’s baggage - and I had that around reproductive rights. There was just so much stuff that didn't make it into my reporting because it would have been irrelevant or biassed.
VFD: Right, like what?
Gina Rushton: Oh just the bigger themes and politics around how we talk about this stuff. I've never written an opinion about reproductive rights. And I think it was kind of safe to do that. So the book deals a lot with reproductive rights, because I think that reporting on that stuff has really impacted how I think about motherhood because really the debate around, say, abortion access, is really tied up with a debate about what women should be doing with their bodies.
VFD: Yeah.
Gina Rushton: And I think it's hard to report on policies that coerce people into motherhood without thinking about that.
VFD: Yeah, yeah.
Gina Rushton: So yeah, I guess it started with the point of reproductive rights and then, I do genuinely want to answer questions for myself and thought I could write my way out of it, I guess.
The rest of the book… there's a lot of interviews. There’s like 30 interviews in the book with people that are thinking about the same thing: so, the climate change chapter, I interview climate change scientists who have kids about how they deal with…
VFD: … Knowing the world is going to end?
Gina Rushton: Yeah, seeing the literal data every day and then coming home and thinking about their children's future.
VFD: That’s a tough dinner conversation.
Gina Rushton: I’m making the book sound really heavy - there's a lot of hope in there! But there's also the acknowledgement that these things that we have read about, I'm not a person who will be disproportionately affected by a lot of this stuff. I get a bit tired with the millennial lol world is ending stuff.
VFD: Because you won't be here. It's not ending for you. It'll be uncomfortable, maybe, possibly.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, and it’s often from people who are going to be able to afford the bunker in New Zealand.
VFD: That's something to look forward to. Just end of the world. And we're hanging out in New Zealand. I mean, at least we’re close. New Zealand’s beautiful, I think we should all go there.
When does the book come out?
Gina Rushton: Oh, yeah. So the book comes out March 29. It’s the day of the federal budget.
VFD: Oh, cool. Good, nice. Did you do that on purpose?
Gina Rushton: Yeah, hopefully there’s funding for me there! No, it's really annoying. I had to move all the publicity stuff to two days later.
VFD: Oh, yeah. Yeah, bummer
Gina Rushton: I don't really care.
Is there anything else I need to add about the book… I feel like publishers might want me to say something. Oh, I know, buy it!
VFD: Oh, yeah. That's a good idea. What would you tell people that are trying to write their own book? Make a book, get it made?
Gina Rushton: Don’t do it in nine months.
VFD: That's good advice.
Gina Rushton: Yeah, genuinely, if anyone's writing a book and wants advice, DM me, I'll be happy to help.
VFD: Oh, you don't know what you've done. But that's very gracious of you.