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History unfolds for Tom Steinfort

Nine's Tom Steinfort tells TV Tonight when he was sent to LA after winning a journalism award, he had no idea he would wind up covering the biggest entertainment story of the year.

tomst“‘Lucky’ isn’t the right word, but you feel fortunate to be in the mix,” says Channel Nine reporter Tom Steinfort. “It’s what all reporters want to do –cover the biggest news story possible. That’s how it’s panned out.”

Reporting on the death of Michael Jackson has fast turned into one of the major stories of Steinfort’s young career -a major media opportunity, that has fallen into his lap at the age of just 24.

“I won the Young Journalist of the Year award from the Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards and part of that was that they send you to a conference in the States. At the back end of that they said, ‘if you want you can tee up some work while you’re over there,'” he said.

“So I spoke to a few of the bosses at Nine and said, ‘how about I do a week in the LA bureau?’ because long term I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of work over here.”

Little did he know that he would soon find himself smack bang in the middle of the biggest entertainment story of the year.

Steinfort arrived in LA around June 20th, working alongside US correspondent Rob Penfold.

“I was just doing run of the mill stories with Rhianna and Chris Brown, US politics and whatever was going on at the time. When Farrah Fawcett died I thought, ‘This is a pretty big story.’ But we all thought they were taking the mickey when people started talking about Michael Jackson dying. Lo and behold it was true.”

A one week stay has turned into 3 week stay as he files stories for Nine’s many news programmes: Today show, THIS afternoon, Nine Morning News and Nine News.

“Nine’s trying to do as much coverage on this as possible given the interest. As such the more hands on deck the better. They figured while I was here they might as well make use of it, so I put the flight back one week and then another week again.”

Prior to his timely stint in LA, the Melbourne-based reporter says his only other big story had been Black Saturday bushfires.

The Jackson story has afforded him national exposure.

“Generally at night time each city takes its own people. So it’s given me a chance, I suppose, to get my head on telly a bit more for a wider audience.

“It’s been likened to Princess Diana’s death and in many respects it is similar. It’s a huge event that people will remember for years. Where were you the day that Michael Jackson died?”

As the story broke, Steinfort’s early reports were filed from outside UCLA hospital.

“Then after that I was basing myself around the family, which is around Encino, just a little bit outside LA. The last few days I’ve been pretty much entirely on the Memorial at the Staples Center.

“There’s been plenty of long days, on average about 14 hours. I’ve had the odd day where I decided not to bother with anything for the Australian afternoon. So that ends up being about 5 or 6 hours,” he said.

“Time zones make it very challenging.”

For yesterday’s Memorial Service, Steinfort worked an 18-20 hour day, before readying to leave Thursday night, LA time.

“I get back to Melbourne on Saturday and then Sunday I’m off to Darwin to shoot another story up there, so my housemates are wondering if I’m ever actually coming home.”

9 Responses

  1. @mac – actually most journalists probably dream about uncovering a Watergate-type affair rather than reporting on celebrity deaths in LA…

  2. wow how lucky is that to just happen to be in LA when all this happened, i’m sure this is something all journalist’s dream of. also considering he was in LA due to winning the young journalist of the year award wouldn’t it be funny if tom then won again due next year due to his coverage of michael jackson.

  3. I’m a huge fan of Tom … not only talented but such a gorgeous man as well (love his smile) so to see him get that national exposure is great for him and hopefully we get to see more and more of him. Thanks David for posting this.. a great suprise to click on your site and see Tom’s article was a treat !!

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