'Not So Sloppy': an autobiography by journalist Ian Hyslop

The Penrose local shares these stories and other "tall travel tales" within the pages of his new autobiography, released recently.

"I started in journalism in 1973 as a cadet journalist with the ABC ... it was a great training ground, the best probably in the country," Mr Hyslop said.

"The trouble with doing something like this at a mature age and sort of reflecting on your career is that once you retire you're basically irrelevant. Anything you say sort of sounds like sour grapes."

He has been a broadcast and television journalist for most of his career. After the ABC he worked for Channel 10 and then Channel 7 as a US correspondent based in Los Angeles.

When he returned to Australia Mr Hyslop worked for Today Tonight: "The least satisfying professional experience I had."

He was expecting to head up a new bureau in Asia for Channel 7 but "cost-cutting put an end to that". However, he decided to "bite the bullet" and head to Taiwan anyway, where worked for five years as a freelancer.

Following this he met his partner Rhonda Barnett and together they have been producing family history documentaries for their company My Life My Legacy.

"Over a 40-year period about 30 of those years was in mainstream television," Mr Hyslop said.

The highlights were of course those overseas postings.

"To be able to spend time over there and have the autonomy to call your own shots, that's what was so satisfying about it all," he said.

"In seven years I went to 46 states in America. I was on the road almost all the time."

He covered Central America and the war in Honduras. He also interviewed presidents. But Mr Hyslop says he never forgot the lessons he learned as a cadet working in regional and rural communities including Kempsey, Grafton, Tamworth and Darwin.

"It's there in those little places that you learn all the lessons about being accountable to a community," he said.

"You try very hard to get your facts straight but in big city journalism scribes often take liberties because they don't get that immediate feedback from the community that is so essential in making a good journalist."

The idea for a book came around the time his grandchildren were born.

"You sit down and sort of say to yourself that you should write something so that they can understand what a fascinating old coot you are," he said.

"I describe it as half memoir because quite frankly it's just a journalist talking about his life, which might be a bit interesting to some but it's also half tall travel tales."

The couple has been travelling around the world extensively for the past 15 years. However, this book was written in the "mancave" of their Penrose home.

"I didn't think I was going to become a Highland devotee but it's a fantastic place to be," Mr Hyslop said.

He's "a bit bleak" about the future of media and journalism.

"The change was always going to be inevitable once you had the digital age coming into it," Mr Hyslop said. "To manage that change and still uphold good journalistic values and principals is the challenge," mr Hyslop said.

"You have a situation where you get all the social media platforms now. The voice of journalists and analysts is being somewhat diminished."

The last chapter of his book is devoted to this topic.

"Once upon a time I had a cameraman, I had a sound man, I had someone with a bounce board to light up my gorgeous features and it was professional. Every length was taken to make sure it was well produced," Mr Hyslop said.

He recalls walking along the foreshore of Sydney Harbour recently and watching as a young female reporter broadcast live using the city as a backdrop.

"She was there on her own with a camera perched precariously on a tripod buffeted by winds," Mr Hyslop said. "She had a microphone in one hand and an iphone in the other. She's got a car that she's driven down there by herself, and there's no doubt she's got to go back and edit it herself.

"How on earth can you expect to have the product at the same standard when that sort of thing happens - and that's all about money," he said.

But Mr Hyslop's book is "not a weighty tome" on the state of journalism.

"I don't go into the intricacies of the coverage. I put out the stories that I remember," Mr Hyslop said.

"I did a story on a little girl from northern NSW who flew to America and I met her and her parents in Idaho. She suffered from the aging disease and she flew there to meet another boy who was also a victim of this rare genetic disorder. Her parents wanted to show her that there was someone else going through the same thing."

Mr Hyslop spent two days with the family.

"Her hair had fallen out, her body was wracked with arthritis. She looked like a little 80-year-old lady," he said. "She returned to Australia and died a week before her high school graduation at the age of 18."

Not So Sloppy chronicles a career in journalism and business that started with a young boy's pledge: "When I grow up I'm going to be a journalist."

It launched throughout Australia and New Zealand on Wednesday, May 1 and can be purchased through Booktopia and Angus & Robertson. It's also available worldwide as an ebook through Amazon.