Ep 15: John Sellwood – “About stories, how they’re told, and the need to step back from judgement”

Over almost forty-five years of working in journalism – first in radio, then television – John Sellwood’s experiences taught him many lessons. From one, very early, “live cross” in Wellington the need to listen, double-check, then triple-check were all brought home to him. If things can go wrong, they will. There is that possibility in story-telling that empathy may be a negative, almost a selfish act. He recalls putting himself in a place where he should not have been. As a journalist ‘you are not the story . . . stories were gifted to me; they were never mine.’In all stories the ‘what’ of what happened is easy, but ‘you have to wait for the why.’ It may come much later. The human stories that interest him ‘take time and trust, and a connection to the individual to come to something that’s worthwhile’ – for them, for the journalist, and for an audience that’s listening.The treasure he sees now is the ‘democratisation’ of the story: that it does not have to be mediated by another. And in the many stories waiting to be told by those at the edges of society; people who've often tried hard and failed. It’s here that he questions our notions of what exceptionalism means and questions where our judgements may separate us from so many.