Leading journalist to speak at reunion

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Leading journalist to speak at reunion

Leading New Zealand and Australian journalist Paul Cutler will be guest speaker at the University’s journalism reunion on 4 June. The reunion is a celebration of 40 years of professional journalism education in New Zealand.

A former managing editor of Television New Zealand, Mr Cutler is director of news and current affairs of Australia’s multicultural and multilingual public television channel, SBS Television. Before that, he served as CNN International’s Asia and Pacific managing editor, for six years leading its news and current affairs programming.

Mr Cutler will speak on where journalism is heading and whether traditional journalism is on the way out.

He will also lead a discussion later in the evening on why the guests are still working as journalists, and if not, why not.

Massey School of Journalism head Dr Grant Hannis says the school is honoured and excited to have Mr Cutler speak.

“Paul has worked as a journalist at the highest level and his range of experiences will be fascinating.

“We anticipate the discussion he will lead will result in many an old war story from our guests!”

Mr Cutler has broad experience in the reporting of other cultures. At his appointment, SBS head Shaun Brown described him as “an outstanding journalist and editorial manager with an extraordinary breadth of experience in international journalism”.

Mr Cutler completed what was then the Wellington Polytechnic journalism course in 1969 and began his career on newspapers in New Zealand and South Africa before joining Reuters in London.

He entered television journalism with the BBC in 1978 before returning to New Zealand. He produced a number of successful news and current affairs programmes, including the country’s first bilingual indigenous current affairs programme.

In 1995 he became Deputy Managing Editor at TVNZ and, three years later, was appointed Managing Editor with responsibility for five hours of daily news coverage and a wide range of current affairs programmes. He joined CNN in Atlanta in 2001 before transferring to Hong Kong. In 2004 he joined SBS.

ENDS

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