opinion

Triple J newsreader Nas Campanella will make you think twice about complaining about your job.

 

If you’re a Triple J listener, you’d know the familiar honeyed voice of Nas Campanella.

As the station newsreader, the 27-year-old spends her days racing the clock, churning out news copy, writing scripts and cutting audio to an hourly deadline.

It’s a job that would be stressful for anyone. But to make matters slightly more complicated, Nas is totally blind, and she has a condition which means she can’t read braille.

For a woman who’s heard “how the hell can you be a journalist?” many times over, the stories of her life and the lengths she’s gone to for her dream job are extraordinary.

Nas opens up about how hard it was for her to get a job:

The Sydneysider landed her dream job at Triple J after years of knockbacks and discrimination by potential employers. She told Mia Freedman on the No Filter podcast that she could sense the hostility in the room.

“I knew I had a really good CV. It was long and I had a huge portfolio full of published work, so I knew I was ready and that I had potential. But it wasn’t until I started looking for work where I realized that loads of people loved me, except for one reason – and that was because I was blind.” she said.

“And it did feel like a bit of a kick in the guts.”

Then, in 2011, Nas got a call from the ABC offering her a cadetship. And the rest really is history.

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Nas in the podcast studio

The 27-year-old from Sydney, has four streams of audio feeding through her headphones during the three-minute live news bulletins on Triple J. She navigates the sound panel via velcro dots placed on the buttons. And she writes and cuts her own segments.

"It has to happen in a nano second", she tells Mia.

"You’ve got to listen, you’ve got to process, you’ve got to deal with this American accent and change it in your mind into English and pronounce it properly.”

 

Being a journalist was something she always knew she wanted to do, and it didn't come easy. But she says she doesn't want to be put on a pedestal and called "an inspiration", she just wants to be recognised for being good at her job.

"I got into this because I wanted to be a good journalist, and a good news reader. And I happened to somehow also become a role model for other people and a disability advocate... I am so stoked if people find inspiration from my story, but it isn't what I set out to do."

We're pretty bloody impressed.

Listen to the full interview with Nas here, where Mia also asks how she can text, how she goes shopping, and what's next for her: