Pauline Hanson Hates It, But Who Cares: We’re Looking For A Video Cadet!

Well, God forbid a girl (independent media) get a little treat! (Some funding to help us develop new ways to speak to our beloved audience.) According to Pauline Hanson and her right-wing media buddies, anyway.

So here’s the tea – our two sister outlets Star Observer (published by Out Publications) and City Hub (published by Alt Media), are two outlets that recently received a grant from the the federal government’s News Innovation Fund.

We are very excited about this – we have a tiny little team that is always flat chat writing several AMAZING news stories for you every day, so while we’ve wanted to create all sorts of other content, we’ve simply never had the capacity to do so. Now with this funding, we can set up a studio, buy the equipment we need, and hire a video whiz to create some incredible video content for us!

Sounds like a super positive story, right? But hilariously, yesterday Pauline Hanson was apparently pissy about News Innovation Fund in general, accusing Labor of using public money to favour some news outlets and shut out others it thinks will criticise it.

“Once again Labor is treating taxpayers’ money as its own and spending it to serve its own political ends,” she said. “We saw it with multicultural grants and invitation-only sports and community grants.

“Now it is paying the newsrooms that are meant to hold it to account, while shutting out media organisations the government thinks will criticise it. Like this Labor government’s whole approach to taxpayer-funded grants, it stinks.”

Look, I can’t speak for the other outlets, but I and my writers have done pleeeeenty of holding politicians to account. Like this, or this. In fact, we LOVE holding the people who harm the LGBTQIA+ community to account. It’s literally one of the major reasons this outlet was created in the first place – because we couldn’t trust mainstream media to do it for us. Nearly 50 years on, we’ll continue to report the facts, and hold any party or politician to account if they do things that harm our community.

Anyway – Pauline gave these comments to right-leaning outlet News24, who remain the only news outlet to have published Hanson’s “takedown” of the federal government’s funding initiative for independent media.

Right under Hanson’s quotes, News24 listed our publishers, Out Publications and Alt Media, as outlets who received the grant. Which would be fine, except hilariously, they ONLY name-checked us. Out of 54 outlets, they just mentioned us, despite the fact that we actually received some of the smallest chunks of funding of those 54.

For comparison, another outlet was awarded more than $3 million and ten organisations received over $1 million.

So to mention us and us alone… mmm, I’m curious to know the reasoning for that choice, babes. But frankly, this is a thrilling amount of attention for such a small slice of pie. We live for drama!

Anyway, we’re putting it towards a paid job for a talented young video content creator. Is that you? Keep reading.

Love making videos? Come make them with us

So, with this grant, Star Observer and City Hub are getting into video, putting together a studio we can create video from, and we’re looking for a paid video cadet to work across both mastheads.

We want someone hands-on, who genuinely loves making video. Maybe you’re the person who volunteers to film mates’ gigs and you’re still fiddling with the edit at 2am because you want it to be perfect. Maybe you live for Tiktok, and spend all your free time creating all different kinds of content for it. Maybe you’re studying and itching to make content that’ll reach people outside your course. If you get a kick out of finding the best angle for a story, getting the footage that makes the whole thing click, and editing it all to create engaging content that will speak to our audience – it sounds like you’d be perfect for the gig.

The cadetship comes with hands-on training and real production experience across both titles. You’ll get to work on stories from pitch to edit, with people to help you figure out what works and why. We’re also building out our studio equipment and facilities so students and emerging videographers can have a space to create content in a professional set up.

Two mastheads, plenty to point a camera at

Star Observer covers LGBTQIA+ news and culture for our community across Australia. City Hub serves urban progressives in Sydney’s inner city areas, from Bondi to Balmain, where a fight over the future of a local nightlife venue can tell you a hell of a lot about who gets to live, work and make art in this city.

Both mastheads exist for people the mainstream media too often overlooks. We want the important reporting we do every day to reach more people through video, and we want the person making it to get their foot in the door of the journalism industry.

Applications open soon. If you’re keen on video journalism, keep an eye on Star Observer and City Hub’s channels for details on how to apply. And if someone immediately came to mind while you were reading this, pretty please send this to them!