MEDIA RELEASE
30 June 2009
For immediate release
Future Australian journalists to meet PNG media
The Australian High Commissioner to PNG, His Excellency Chris Moraitis, will host a ‘Meet the Media’ morning tea on 2 July for a group of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) journalism students and several Port Moresby-based journalists.
Mr Moraitis said the morning tea is intended to give the students a chance to meet local and foreign journalists and improve their understanding of the PNG media industry.
The students have spent the last week at Divine Word University (DWU) in Madang undertaking local reporting and filing their stories via MP3 back to Brisbane as part of a QUT program called ‘Journalism Reporting Field Trips’.
“I am looking forward to hearing what the students have learned during their time at DWU and giving them a chance to practice their interview skills on me,” Mr Moraitis said.
The students are accompanied by Dr Lee Duffield, a journalism lecturer at QUT who has spent the week at DWU conducting an investigative reporting course for final year Bachelor of Communication Arts (Journalism) students and some PNG journalists. It is Dr Duffield’s third visit to DWU.
“We have really enjoyed our time in Madang and interacting with the DWU journalism students. The QUT program is designed to give students practical experience as foreign correspondents, in addition to learning about the culture of PNG and the local media industry,” Dr Duffield said.
The QUT ‘Journalism Reporting Field Trips’ program has a seen a total of 69 students travel to various Asia-Pacific and European countries on 12 separate occasions since 2000. The last trip to PNG was in 2004.
This particular group includes a mix of full-time journalism students as well as several students undertaking a postgraduate year of journalism on top of their primary degrees. One of the students is originally from Port Moresby and another is an international student from the European Union.
The visit to DWU was thanks to a partnership arrangement between QUT and the DWU’s Communication Arts Department.
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