A story of women in journalism and the prejudice they face…

Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Autobiography

No. of pages: 352

Lisa Wilkinson has lived her life in the public eye. One of Australia’s most admired and respected journalists and media personalities, her warm, intelligent and elegant presence has graced our television screens for many years, where she has shared and shaped many important national conversations. Australians of all ages love and respect her warmth, empathy, humour, integrity and fighting spirit. But it all could have been so different…

When she was at school, Lisa found herself wishing she could just disappear. Subjected to horrific bullying as a teenager, she survived by making herself as small as possible, but she swore when she left school that no one was ever again going to determine who she was – or limit what she was capable of. That determination and drive led to Lisa blazing an unprecedented and enormously successful trail through the Australian media and cultural landscape for more than four decades.

She was only twenty-one when she became the editor of Dolly – the youngest ever appointed to a national women’s magazine – and four years later, after almost tripling the circulation, Lisa was head-hunted by the late Kerry Packer, who offered her the editorship of the iconic Cleo magazine. which she transformed into the number-one bestselling women’s lifestyle magazine per capita in the world. Moving to television, first on Channel Ten’s Beauty and the Beast, then as host of the Seven Network’s Weekend Sunrise, she went on to spend almost eleven years as co-host of the Nine Network’s Today Show, becoming its longest-serving female co-host, and where her talents took the program to the number-one spot in breakfast television. Lisa then caused a media storm in Australia and the world when she moved to the Ten Network as co-host of its prime-time award-winning program The Project.

Lisa’s interviews with everyone from George Clooney to Lady Gaga to Sophia Loren to Kim Kardashian, to every one of the country’s last eight prime ministers, always create headlines. But it is her most recent work and the leading role she took in uncovering the misogyny in Parliament House, with her powerful, exclusive interview with Brittany Higgins, of which Lisa says she is most proud. A fierce campaigner for women and gender equality, Lisa has fought her own personal battles on this front, and continues to lead the way.

It Wasn’t Meant to Be Like This, the story of how a young girl from Campbelltown came to be such a force in Australian cultural life, is honest, warm, funny, engaging – and powerfully inspirational.

I’d only known Lisa Wilkinson from her appearance on the ‘Today’ morning tv show, and then later on ‘The Project.’ There was some controversy around her leaving Channel Nine breakfast television and the ‘Today’ show when she asked for the gender pay gap to be closed and requested the same wage as her co-host Karl Stefaniovic. But that was it.

I’ve had a good run with female memoirs lately and looked forward to Lisa Wilkinson’s take with ‘It Wasn’t Meant to be Like This’ as journalists tend to deliver some great reads.

I found out so much about Lisa Wilkinson and she is definitely an incredible woman. Her writing style is very conversational. I think this is where things weren’t matching my expectations. I was hoping for something that tied together her story – some push button topics that she had been facing all her life. Granted we re-visit gender politics and how women are objectified (and assaulted) and not given the same opportunities and pay as their male counterparts. But because of the conversational tone and the book following a sequential timeline from childhood to 2021, Lisa gets caught up in the memories and the details. But for an outsider, it can be a little too much peripheral information. So I got the impression that ‘It Wasn’t Meant to be Like This’ was overwritten. And because of that the pacing was slow. I really didn’t get into the book until we started to see Lisa grapple tension and difficulty in her job in the last 100-150 pages.

I was delighted to find out she was a masthead of both Dolly and Cleo magazines. Looking back, I think it may have been mentioned somewhere in the press, but it’s not something that stuck in my brain. And those years of her working her way up the ranks and dealing with pushy male bosses really sets the tone for what she is going to face in her television career. But on the whole, the narrative is very soft, compassionate, still very non-threatening. Like Lisa herself was retreating into her shell when writing it because she doesn’t like conflict.

Getting the behind-the-scenes dish on the sudden sacking of Lisa from ‘Today’ because she dared ask for the same recompense as a man was eye opening. And I love that she got to stick it to the Management by walking into another job the same day they let her go. It was pretty nasty that they did not let her say goodbye or receive her accolades in leaving the show. It was glaringly obvious the movers and shakers had plenty of prior knowledge, and had met behind her back and conspired to ambush attack her with a sudden firing. Not cool in anyone’s books.

Lisa does a lot of name dropping in this memoir, and why not, she worked hard to get to the point to have the opportunity to work with, or interview these people… but a tiny voice in the back of my head wondered if they were included to validate her career and choices. I don’t want to feel like I’m dragging down another woman and her achievements. Maybe it’s a mix of her conversational writing style and journalistic integrity for facts and receipts.

I think I wanted to see her championing causes more in the narrative of the memoir. Pointing out adversity she had faced and show the changes that had happened because of her actions or those close around her. This felt very light on those aspects.

There is some loss and grief in ‘It Wasn’t Meant to be Like This’ which brought more than a few tears to my eyes. It was quite triggering for me having lost loved-ones and pets too. As I was equally maddened and outraged that fourteen year old Lisa had to escape from her friend’s father trying to grope her at a sleepover, and the way Lisa was treated later in the public eye and at the negotiating table. There were the bits I connected most strongly with. I wanted to hear more about some of the news stories she covered and the personal impact of them… we get it to some extent, and then there was a page summary going through a list of them near the end of the book. In all honesty I would have loved to see the childhood and early career section whittled down and see more of the modern world through her eyes and how it has affected her.

A lovely nostalgic read that sheds some light on gender politics that I found delightful, but I think I was expecting something more hard-hitting. Now that she’s gotten her story of growing up out of the way, her next memoir will be the type of book I’m hoping for. I’d definitely pick up what she publishes next.

Overall feeling: Look at what women have to put up with…

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