Our people – Kathryn Bowd
UniSA’s
undergraduate journalism program is one of the most highly regarded in
the country, and I intend to keep it that way.
I worked as a journalist for 17 years both here and overseas before I took the helm of the undergraduate journalism program in 2001. I’m a graduate of the UniSA journalism program myself and use my experience and contacts to balance the academic and applied aspects of the program.
The program has a strong professional focus - we use a lot of industry guest speakers and many of the tutors we have are from the industry. These links are extremely beneficial for students because they are exposed to up-to-date skills, knowledge and perspectives, while at the same time obtaining an excellent academic grounding in journalism.
In the mid-90s I decided I wanted to extend my skills and pass on what I knew. I was working in the industry at the time, and put up my hand for some tutoring. I got a call a few weeks later, and things moved on from there … I’ve always been keen to pass on what I know about journalism to other people and to develop my own knowledge of the field.
As well as being program director, I’m working towards my PhD, focusing on the relationship between country newspapers and communities. Like many journalists, I started my working life at a country paper and I have had a long-term interest in exploring the way smaller newspapers and communities interact.
The undergrad journalism program has changed a great deal since I first began studying in the 1980s, and is now complemented by an excellent postgraduate program under the leadership of Associate Professor Ian Richards. In recent years a number of specialist courses have been introduced covering areas such as sports journalism, computer-assisted reporting and news design for both print and online media.
Many graduates go into mainstream media, but jobs in journalism are increasingly being found in niche areas as well, and these changes are reflected in the curriculum. Graduates of the program have ended up all over the world, from small local newspapers to The Times in London, and from commercial radio to foreign correspondent postings for the ABC and SBS.
Kathryn Bowd is journalism program director in the School of Communication, Information and New Media.