Stephen Smiley

Executive Producer, triple j Hack

Hi, I’m a journalist based in Sydney, Australia. I have 15 years of experience as a commissioning editor, people leader, reporter and presenter, covering current affairs and investigations. Right now, I’m the Executive Producer of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship youth current affairs show, triple j hack. At triple j, I manage a team of 10 award-winning reporters and producers based all around Australia, working across linear radio, podcast, text, video and social platforms. In 2023, I was the Supervising Producer of The World Today program on ABC Radio, commissioning and coordinating more than a dozen reporters and correspondents, and before that I was the Supervising Producer of ABC News Daily, Australia’s biggest daily news podcast.

Between 2018 and 2021 I co-hosted The Signal podcast, and also worked as a reporter for AM, RN Breakfast, The World Today and PM on ABC Radio. I spent three years as the State Political Reporter for the ABC in Tasmania; eight months reporting from the Queensland outback, based in Mount Isa; and a year training in the ABC’s cadetship program, based in Adelaide. For some of 2019 I lived in London, where I worked as a producer at Associated Press, scripting, editing and fact-checking video features, and as a contributor to The Guardian, where I compiled a weekday newsletter.

Between 2015 and 2017 I lived in New York, where I completed a Masters degree in political reporting at the Columbia Journalism School and was awarded Best Thesis. In 2017, I worked at Columbia as a postgraduate journalism fellow, co-authoring a prize-winning investigation for ProPublica, writing about the American school system for Slate, and producing a podcast for The Atlantic.