Telum Media spoke to Lyndsey Rodrigues about her new role as Head of Lifestyle and Entertainment at Yahoo Lifestyle Australia and how lifestyle journalism has changed over the years. 

What does your average day look like?
Every day is different, except for the fact that they are all very busy! I usually start at 8am and check in with my team to see what they are pitching for the day and workshop angles with them. We always try to have as many original lines and angles as possible, and my team is amazing at tapping into their contacts to get them. I’ll check what is trending locally and overseas to see if we can make the story work for our audience, while also trying to identify smaller, more quirky stories that we could break. I’m also constantly checking our traffic and trying to identify ways we can improve it with the help of our fabulous audience team. 

Depending on the day, there will also be a fair few meetings to discuss upcoming plans, content strategy, progress / direction of the Lifestyle and Entertainment verticals, and individual meetings with each member of my team. We are also currently doing a vodcast called Behind the Edit, so we’ll have a debrief each week about the shoot before it goes live. Plus plenty of writing and subbing, of course! 

What distinguishes lifestyle and entertainment journalism from other forms of reporting? 
A big challenge is trying to deliver trending stories in a fresh way. A great example would be Taylor Swift’s recent Aussie tour. She was everywhere in the media, so we had to report on her, but we did our best to give our audience stories that they weren’t finding everywhere else. It’s tricky when the media is so saturated with a certain topic because you don’t want to be left behind, but you also don’t want to repeat the same stories as all the other outlets.  

I think what distinguishes lifestyle and entertainment journalism is that there is more opportunity for evergreen content so you can plan more - it’s not quite as ephemeral as news. You can also have a bit more fun with the stories because they are typically not as heavy, so you can inject a bit of humour. 

How does your team ensure the integrity of its reporting?
A big commitment of ours is making sure we have exclusive lines and information. My amazing team has so many great contacts in the industry, and they are not afraid to call on them to get quotes and confirmation. One of our big authority areas in entertainment is reality TV, and my team has done the hard yards to make sure they are always getting accurate and timely information about the big storylines that people are most interested in. 

Looking back at your career, what significant transformations have occurred in the industry?
People’s attention spans immediately come to mind! We have to be so nimble and clever with the angles we choose and how we platform the stories. It certainly keeps us on our toes and, of course, social media was not a thing when I started my career (yep, I am old), so that has transformed things too. Now, when thinking of stories and angles, your first thought is, "How do I make this work for social so it stops the scroll?" 

Are there any emerging trends you foresee in the near future?
It’s not an emerging trend anymore, but AI is a huge one that I think all journalists are a bit wary of. Not only are we worried about it ‘stealing our jobs’ but also about the potential it holds for misinformation (as if we need more of that!). In the bigger picture, with AI likely to become more integrated into search engines through SGE (Search Generative Experience), it could mean even less referral traffic for publishers. Seeing how we adapt and prepare for that over the next year or so will be interesting.