You wouldn’t necessarily know it if you just visited the journalism course pages on the AUT website, but our journalism majors and graduate diploma students actually produce some pretty good copy.
Last year the student’s print edition of Te Waha Nui (“the big noise”) collected a prize for best publication any medium at the Journalism Education Association Ossie Awards, but our online presence is well hidden. We optimise content for search engines and we do get some significant traffic, but the site is not (yet) well promoted on the AUT home pages.
So I think it’s my duty to promote students’ work, particularly because I think they’ve actually done a good job and the whole staff here is very proud of them.
Our online news site TWN Online is edited by students with minimal staff supervision. We’ve done this for the first time this year and it seems to be working. We’re also encouraging more video content and that too has been a success, though it’s building slowly.
Click the logo to go TWN Online
Our new media students contribute to TWN Online alongside the journalism majors, but they also produce a series of their own websites on topics of their choice. We publish these in the New Media Gazette.
Click the logo for New Media Gazette
I can tell you honestly that this semester has been stressful for all concerned, but anyone who’s involved in tertiary teaching, or who has ever been a student will know that the final semester of the final year of study is always stressful.
So basically a big “Well done!” to all the journalism majors and minors who have contributed to the success of the programme and congratulations to all of those who have already scored jobs (about 25 per cent of graduating students).
To the rest of you looking for work, “Good luck!” As far as I’m concerned you’ve done very well and deserve an opportunity.
Posted by ethicalmartini 
