South-east Queensland can be a bit funny. In recent years, especially since COVID, it has seen considerable population growth with new residents from Sydney, Melbourne, and beyond flooding over its borders. It’s estimated that in 2023-24, Queensland gained 125,845 people, which places its rate of growth beyond the national average. But despite all of that growth, it still looks at outsiders with a slight side-eye.
For new Channel Nine evening news reader Joel Dry, he is joining current host Melissa Downes on air as sort-of an outsider, but he is very quick to point out (avoiding the aforementioned side-eye from locals) that he is not a stranger to the river city.
“I’m Brisbane by choice, Queenslander by choice. I wasn’t born here, but I’ve elected to make my home because I fell in love with the place. When I came here in 2011, it very quickly became home. It felt like a comfortable place,” Dry told Mediaweek.
Early in his career he put in several years in Brisbane working with the Nine News team, but has spent the past few years in London, where his wife, Jessica Milward is the Nine European correspondent.
Dry and Downes are the co-hosts of Nine’s hour-long 6pm bulletin in South-east Queensland. Like all on-air TV news teams, it is somewhat of an arranged marriage, but the two have been making an effort to build some chemistry before Dry joins her on air this coming Monday.
Downes told Mediaweek that promotional photoshoots have been a great opportunity to spend time together: “There was a lot of, as often these shoots are, there’s a lot of standing around waiting. So we had lots of time to chat and talked about everything from, from work to family and school and babysitters and, you know, kids’ lunchboxes. All, you know, everything from one end to the other.
“And then even doing interviews like this. That actually is good as well because you are already working as a team doing the interviews. I often describe reading the news as like learning to dance with someone. You kind of have that on-air partnership and it’s knowing when to step in or step out or whatever it is. Doing these interviews, doing our rehearsals, doing the promo shoots, it’s all learning to dance together. And, you know, it can take time.”
The benefit for Dry and Downes is that they do know each other and worked as colleagues during Dry’s previous stint in the Nine newsroom.
For Dry, he really is hitting the ground running, having just flown back to Australia recently with his kids. He’s not only starting a new job, but he’s also doing the mundane normal things like setting up a new home with the kids.
Mediaweek casually asked Dry how long he has been back in town and immediately Dry seemed short of breath: “What is today? Today is Thursday, so about a week and a couple of days, which has felt like much longer. I’ve got two streams of chaos going on in my life. There’s the work stuff, getting everything settled and prepared and rehearsals and this sort of stuff.
“And then there’s the unpacking chaos at my house. And thankfully the work is going better than the unpacking.”
As Dry gets started, he is thinking about his Brisbane home and neighbours in the suburb of Moorooka. It’s a local news bulletin and there is a need to reflect the interests of those in Brisbane: “News is localised. You have to put everything in the frame of you’re talking to people that you might see on the street or at the park or at the school gate. That’s always at the forefront of our mind. We are a local news service and they are our audience.
“But of course, our audience, our community want to know what’s going on across the country and across the world. So we also make sure that we pay enough attention, enough credit to the big stories because sometimes I think news services can do a bit of a disservice to their audience and think that they only want to hear about local news.
In Sydney and Melbourne, one of the first questions a person gets is “What school did you go to?” In Brisbane, the question is always: Southside or Northside (meaning, which side of the river are you from)?
The new Nine news presenting team are unified in their response:
“South side also. All the way.”