Veteran ABC broadcaster and long-serving Radio National presenter Julie Copeland has died.
Over her long and hugely respected career in the n media, Copeland became a legend for her arts coverage.
She has also been remembered as ‘a respected colleague, treasured friend, mentor and teacher’.
ABC’s Art Show host Daniel Browning said ‘It is an unacknowledged art to draw a person out in a radio interview – and Julie Copeland was a master practitioner of the craft.
‘She also had unfettered access to senior figures in the arts, many of whom would have passed if anybody else were holding the mic.’
Copeland started her career at Melbourne radio station 3AW, where, Browning wrote, she ‘ruffled the feathers of the establishment’.
She later worked in television news and interviewed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
She moved to the ABC in the 1970s and worked as a freelance contributor to the groundbreaking and influential women’s program, The Coming Out Show.
When she was made a fulltime staffer, her first presenting role on Radio National was hosting a literary program called First Edition.
It was the first of many such shows she presented in the following decades.
‘Julie Copeland was intrepid, the quality in a journalist that drives them to do just about anything to get the story, to ascertain the facts without inflicting harm,’ Browning wrote.
‘But she was more than intrepid and her commitment to story was deep and unwavering.’
Over her long career, Copeland ‘spoke to just about every n artist you care to name,’ Browning wrote.
‘Perhaps her greatest legacy is the public record she leaves in the extraordinary range and depth of the many hundreds of interviews she recorded in the field and live on air across her long career at the ABC.’
There have been many tributes on social media to Copeland, with one person writing that she was ‘One of the best radio presenters ever on the ABC.’
Others fondly recalled her contribution to a book called HorseDreams: The Meaning of Horses in Women’s Lives.
Another wrote that ‘She was feisty and curious right to the end.’
Copeland’s passing comes just weeks after the death of her former ABC colleague Ken Randall, aged 88.
The respected political journalist spent six decades reporting for newspapers, magazines, radio and TV.
He was also the longest serving president of the National Press Club – a role he held for 22 years.
Current Press Club president and ABC Chief Political Correspondent Laura Tingle led the tributes to Randall.
‘Ken was literally the first person I ever worked with when I came to Canberra and he was a kind, generous and wise colleague to me and other young reporters,’ Ms Tingle said.
More to come…