22 November 2008
Top journalism educators join AUT media school
19 February 2007
Te Waha Nui Online
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Two innovative journalism educators have joined New Zealand’s largest media school at AUT University and are helping strengthen the industry and academic programmes.
Australian Dr Martin Hirst, author of the new global textbook Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast, has been appointed an associate professor and journalism curriculum leader in AUT’s School of Communication Studies. He plans to introduce the country’s first j-school digital newsroom.
Dr Hirst, a plenary speaker at December’s Australian and New Zealand journalism conference in Auckland, joined AUT from the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at Edith Cowan University. He has an extensive media industry background and is also strong in academic research in journalism and communication/media studies.
As well as co-authoring Communication and New Media with John Harrison, he has produced two other books - Look both ways: Fairfield, Cabramatta and the media (2001, with Antonio Castillo) and Journalism Ethics: Arguments and Cases (2005, with Roger Patching).
Dr Hirst has written extensively on his research, including many refereed journal articles and several book chapters on the political economy of journalism, the impact of the “terror frame” on reporting of significant terrorist incidents and on the politics of journalism.
He is a former radio and television journalist and has worked for the ABC and the SBS as a senior correspondent and spent three years in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra. He's also had several short stints in government PR in NSW and Queensland. He is a consultant to Media Manoeuvres and an executive media trainer.
Dr Hirst succeeds long-standing curriculum leader Susan Boyd-Bell.
His appointment boosts AUT’s communications professorial team to five. Besides head of school Professor Barry King, the team includes associate professors Wayne Hope (communication studies), Sigrid Norris (research) and David Robie (Asia-Pacific media).
Former BBC journalist Helen Sissons has joined AUT as a senior lecturer in journalism. She has an extensive background in journalism teaching, having spent six years at the University of Leeds in Britain.
Her recent textbook Practical Journalism: How to Write News was published last November.
Before moving to the Bay of Islands with her family in late 2002, Helen spent 16 years as a journalist, 10 with the BBC and six writing for both national and local newspapers in Britain and the United States. For six years she combined her reporting at the BBC with teaching news journalism at the University of Leeds
“Teaching helps me to take a step back from my reporting and look at it reflectively. It also offers a valuable opportunity to engage with the best of tomorrow’s talent,” she says.
“When you have to explain what you have done for so many years and show people how to do it well, it rekindles your passion for the job. I’m very much looking forward to meeting this year’s students here at AUT.”
