Water, walkleys and our research

We have some wonderful news. Under our Regional News Media research program, which is philanthropically funded by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, we were able with our partner, Guardian Australia, to appoint a total of 5 of our UTS Journalism students or graduates to reporting positions on the Guardians rural reporting network. One has just received her first Walkley Award.

All our students have been high achieving. We have seen Natasha May, a graduate of our Master of Advanced Journalism program embed in Gilgandra in NSW for one year. She was followed by Khaled Al Kawaldeh, also a Masters student, who is now in Townsville in Queensland and by Fleur Connick who is stationed in Denniliquin in NSW. Fleur graduated recently with a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) from UTS.

Fleur has won her first Walkley Award for her work in Denniliquin. She was awarded the Walkley Award for best short form journalism for a body of work including an examination of the testing conducted after the Minindee fish kills, the fallout from the Ecucha fish deaths and the calls for an investigation in the aftermath of the second mass fish deaths.

We congratulate Fleur. And you’ll be able to read Fleur and Khaled’s reflections on the impact of their regional reporting in our next Regional News Media Report, to be published in November. If you’d like to read our first report, you can, here; it includes a reflection from Natasha May on her time reporting from Gilgandra.

Monica Attard, CMT Co-Director

This article is from our fortnightly newsletter published on 16 June 2023. 

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