Award winning journalist gets Fulbright award

Award winning journalist gets Fulbright award

Fresh from winning three of this year's Qantas Media Awards, talented young Auckland journalist Tim Hume has been awarded Fulbright New Zealand's inaugural Sir Wallace Rowling Memorial Award.

The new award, offered in honour and remembrance of Fulbright alumnus, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Ambassador to the US, Sir Wallace (Bill) Rowling, provides funding towards a congressional internship in addition to Tim's study in the United States on a Fulbright Graduate Award.

Tim was one of 22 New Zealand graduate students to receive 2006 Fulbright Awards last month. His US$25,000 Fulbright New Zealand General Graduate Award will allow him to complete a Master of Science degree in Journalism at Columbia University in New York. A staff writer at the Sunday Star-Times, Tim has already been recognised as one of New Zealand's leading young journalists. In May he won both the Senior and Junior Newspaper Feature Writer categories of the 2006 Qantas Media Awards, as well as the sub-category for Newspaper Feature Writer - Government, Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs.

Tim looks forward to further developing his skills at Columbia's prestigious journalism school. "I'm at a point in my career where I want to broaden my horizons as a journalist and devote more time to longer-form feature writing", he says. "I hope my time at Columbia will help me learn new narrative techniques and develop my voice as a writer."

The supplementary Sir Wallace Rowling Memorial Award gives Tim the added opportunity of completing a congressional internship in Washington, DC at the end of his studies in mid-2007. "This congressional internship will provide a level of access into American political life that will be remarkable for a New Zealand journalist. I hope it will allow me to observe firsthand the relationship between US politicians and the media, the influence of lobbyists, and provide an insight into how Americas domestic concerns impact on its actions abroad."

Tim plans to contribute to the Sunday Star-Times from the US.

Applications for 2007 Fulbright Graduate Awards close 1 August 2006 See www.fulbright.org.nz for more information.

ENDS

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