From migrants’ child to leading television journalist, Jana Wendt surveys her career and speculates for Michael Sheather on what lies ahead.
JANA WENDT HAS a gift for understatement. What she finds “uncomfortable”, most people would find terrifying. What she defines as “a moment”, others might describe as heart-stopping. During a career spanning more than 26 years, most of it as one of Australia’s most high-profile, successful and influential television journalists, she has covered more than her fair share of small but savage wars, encountered some of the world’s most brutal and erratic leaders, and enjoyed the thrust and parry of encounters with the rich, the powerful and the outright extraordinary.
The truth is that Jana’s life has been as extraordinary as those she has documented, a life rich with experiences that most people can only dream about.
Jana, 49, prefers to play down stories about her life on the road, yet there are times when, in recounting them, she lights up with enthusiasm, a little spark in her eyes letting slip the fact that she loves the thrill of the chase, the game of cat-and-mouse often played out in the getting of a story.
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, she reveals what it was like to be the first woman to join an extraordinary and established team of male reporters at 60 Minutes. How, as a 24-year-old with little experience, they doubted her credentials to handle the job and how, though she harboured doubts of her own, she proved them wrong.
She talks about growing up the only child of parents who fled political oppression in their native Czechoslovakia, and the inspiration she drew from her father, a passionate man of words who, for most of his life, fought an intellectual battle with the regime that forced him to leave. And she speaks openly about the changes wrought by the birth of her son, Daniel, now 17, and how his arrival opened her to new depths of feeling, including the remorse that many mothers feel as they juggle work and family life.
For the full story, grab your copy of the November issue of The Weekly.
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