Clair Weaver: Encouraging the next generation of women in media

As far as Clair Weaver is concerned, there’s never been a more important time for women’s voices to be heard.

This Sunday is International Women’s Day and Clair – Head of Factual at LiSTNR – will be driving home the point this week, as part of a stellar line up for SCA’s Women in Media event in Sydney, under the banner Future Proof: Winning in Digital Media.

Senior leaders across broadcast and digital media, advertising and audio – including SCA Non-Executive Director Marina Go AM – will discuss where the real opportunities lie across YouTube and podcasts in 2026.

As Clair tells Radio Today, “I think it’ll be a great opportunity to encourage the next generation of young women to really seize opportunities and to put themselves forward and drive that next generation of women in media.”

And not just seizing those opportunities, but making the most of them.

“I think the key is just being flexible and being able to adapt, because the industry is changing at such a rapid rate,” says Clair.

“And to pick up as many different skills as you can … you’ve really got to be able to do a bit of everything, or be willing to try.”

With a journalism career spanning 25 years, Clair – a former 60 Minutes producer – built a reputation for breaking award-winning stories.

Her reporting ranged from celebrity red carpets to to hard-hitting investigations into medical scandals.

Growing up in Perth, Clair caught the journalism bug early.

An avid reader as a child, she was drawn to a career in print media. But the road to get there was unorthodox, to say the least.

Clair went backpacking. At nineteen, she became a flight attendant for British Airways, whilst also studying journalism via distance education.

Going on to land a job in the UK on a local newspaper in Hertfordshire, Clair was in her element.

“I’m really, really nosy!” she laughs. I love to find out stuff. I love gossip! So I think it was a natural fit.”

Clair says being dogged and persistent by nature also helped.

“I never thought I wanted to be in front of a camera, or anything like that,” she says. “I wanted to be digging away in the background, finding stories and uncovering things.”

Reflecting on how journalism has changed over the decades, Clair says “Anyone can tell a story. Anyone can hop on social media or start their own podcast and really start broadcasting, which is great … there’s some really amazing citizen journalism out there, and certainly it’s also a way that more traditional journalists will find stories.”

“But as for the pitfalls, I think it’s kind of blurred the lines of what is journalism? sometimes, and that means that information that might not be true, or misinformation, disinformation – or very biased information – is swirling around in the same category now as traditional journalism.”

Clair notes that journalism in its traditional form has all the standard scaffolding in place, such as the need for verification, accuracy and the right of reply.

The same might not apply to someone who’s set something up on their own and is not a trained journalist.

Clair’s current role requires her to run the factual podcasts at LiSTNR, including news and commentary and finance.

“It’s a very exciting time to be in podcasting, especially (now) we’ve merged with Seven, because we’re working with the TV, print and digital side of their business.”

“There are a lot of opportunities there. This job is never boring!”

Reflecting on her own career, Clair says times have certainly changed for women working in media.

“If I look back to the first newspapers I worked on, yeah … it was a different world. The Evening Standard, where I worked, was run by men. There were still lots of opportunities for women, but it wasn’t like today.”

By the time she started working at Channel Nine in 2016, Clair had noticed a cultural shift.

“To be honest, it was a good time to join, and I think women had just as many opportunities as men.”

As for the future, Clair is excited about the cross-platform opportunities the recent SCA-Seven merger will generate.

Just last week, for example, Seven presenter Natarsha Belling – also one of the hosts of LiSTNR’s The Briefing podcast – conducted an interview with royal expert Andrew Lownie on the latest news surrounding Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein.

“We recorded that in the morning, and then were able to send some material across to Seven News,” says Clair.

“And so by the time Tarsh was (doing) the midday news, she was presenting a package about the interview she’d done earlier with us, and was able to point to the podcast.”

“So that story kind of got a double run there. We were able to benefit by collaborating.”

“I think it’s a really exciting time to see what we can do across all different platforms.”