The Esme Fenston Fellowship

To celebrate The Weekly’s 90th birthday, we honour a trailblazer and offer a special opportunity to a woman journalist working in the bush.

For 90 years, The Weekly has celebrated the lives of women from rural and regional Australia, from Country Women’s Association bakers to Royal Flying Doctor Service pilots, stockwomen, shearers, nurses, artists and teachers. We’ve told their stories of struggle and victory, and supported them through fire, flood and drought. This year, we’re taking our commitment to the bush a step further. In collaboration with The Walkley Foundation, which is synonymous with excellence in Australian journalism, we have created The Australian Women’s

Weekly Esme Fenston Fellowship, named for one of our beloved editors, and offering a career-shaping mentorship opportunity for the winner.

Who was Esme Fenston?

Esme Fenston (pictured, top left) arrived at The Weekly in 1938, five years after our first issue, joining a close-knit team of the finest female journalists of the day, including war correspondent Dorothy Drain, Adele (‘Tilly’) Shelton-Smith and Joyce Bowden. Esme came from The Land newspaper, so she was closely attuned to the lives of country women. She was also a crack sub-editor and an observant social commentator. Her 1944 op-ed piece Who Will Do the Housework? predicted social upheaval when men returned from the war and women “wanted to discard the duster and earn pay envelopes of our own”.

In 1950, Esme was appointed editor of The Weekly. Its circulation at the time was 750,000, and its cover price sixpence. Esme avoided the limelight but had a canny sense for what readers wanted. She edited the magazine through the massive social upheaval of the postwar 1950s, the sexual revolution of the ’60s, and on to the women’s liberation movement of the early ’70s.

Esme also had an eye for talent.

Ita Buttrose was a copy girl under Esme’s stewardship. “Esme Fenston was not very tall, but she was a giant of an editor with an innate instinct of what Australian women wanted to read in their favourite magazine,”

Ita recalls. “She believed in the common sense of women and among the usual homemaking articles included stories about diplomacy and politics. Under her editorship The

Weekly often led the way. She wanted women to be informed.”

In 1967 Esme received an OBE for services to journalism, and worked tirelessly until her death in 1972.

“I started my career at The Weekly in 1957 when Mrs Fenston was editor, and when Sir Frank was looking for an editor to create Cleo, she recommended me for the job. I shall always be grateful to her,” Ita says.

What is The Esme?

The Esme Fenston Fellowship will support an emerging freelance woman* journalist who lives and works in regional Australia with the aim of shining a light on the issues that mean most to regional Australia. The winner will receive a week-long paid mentorship at The Weekly, where they will spend time with our editorial, digital and photographic teams. They will then return home to work towards producing four feature-length stories for The Weekly, created with the guidance of the News and Features Editor, and published over the course of one year. These will be paid at The Weekly’s standard freelance features rate, and travel expenses will be paid for the mentorship and story research. To find out more and enter, visit walkleys.com/professionaldevelopment/scholarships-andfellowships/the-esme-fenstonfellowship/ Entries close on May 4.