Re-framing the riot : journalism, creative non-fiction and telling the story of Australia's black history

On 19 November 2004, an Aboriginal man was arrested on Palm Island, off the coast of Townsville in northern Queensland. He was taken to the local watch house on a drunk and disorderly charge. An hour later, he lay dead on a cell floor. His liver, an autopsy showed, had been split in half and his spleen ruptured. But when that autopsy report also found that Mulrunji Doomadgee&rsquo;s severe injuries were not caused by force, the Palm Island Indigenous community, enraged and grief-stricken, went looking for payback.<br /><br />The Palm Island &ldquo;riots&rdquo; ensured that this Aboriginal death in custody made international news headlines where others barely got a mention, if at all (Hollinsworth, 2005). The ensuing Coronial Inquest and criminal prosecution of the arresting Queensland police officer, Chris Hurley, also were covered consistently by the news media. Senior Sergeant Hurley has, however, so far escaped punishment and the Queensland media&rsquo;s most recent report of the case was to tell how the Qld Police Union now funds a legal bid to clear his name. Meanwhile, little is heard in the news media of the Doomadgee family, the Palm Island community, or of other deaths in custody occurring steadily through the 18 years since the Royal Commission that was supposed to implement a raft of preventative recommendations. <br /><br />While the news media&rsquo;s framing of these issues has most often followed historically predictable and ultimately racist lines, a work of creative non-fiction tells the story with warranted complexity and power. Chloe Hooper&rsquo;s The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island documents Cameron Doomadgee&rsquo;s death, the riots, and the ensuing legal farce from the front row. Hooper, in the tradition of Truman Capote, arrived at Palm Island as a white writer from a big city. But by &ldquo;walking the talk&rdquo; &ndash; being with the Doomadgee family and their community through the hearings and after, Hooper was given extraordinary access to community, history, and significant cultural nuance barely identified by, let alone understood by, non-Indigenous readers. <br /><br />By focussing on Hooper&rsquo;s experience with sources and court reporting, compared with some print media coverage, this paper will consider the comparative roles of journalism and creative non-fiction in re-framing the Palm Island &ldquo;riot&rdquo;. It will suggest that Hooper&rsquo;s work subverts some dominant (and racist) news media representations of Australian Indigenous peoples through its use of source relationships in an extended narrative structure. <br />

Journalism students' experience of mobile phone technology : implications for journalism education

This study investigates journalism students&rsquo; usage of mobile phone technology when they begin their university studies and considers the implications of these baseline data for journalism education. This paper reports on the findings of three consecutive annual surveys of first year journalism students about their use of the applications available on their mobile phones. The surveys confirm that as well as using their phones to text and call, many are making video calls and most have shot photos and videos on their phones by the time they arrive at university. Many are using their phones to send or publish these images. More than half of the students now go online on their mobile phones. This evidence will inform journalism educators seeking to update their teaching practices and curricula.<br />

Teaching journalism students and regional reporters how to work with cultural diversity

This paper examines the effectiveness of a set of curriculum materials developed for a Reporting Diversity and Integration Project tailored for Australian journalists and journalism students. The materials take a problem-based learning (PBL) approach to a hypothetical case study that involves Muslim netballers being banned from competition because they want to wear headscarves during play. Deferring to ideas developed by Russian psychologist, Leo Vygotsky, we proposed a few &lsquo;scaffolding&rsquo; strategies to support student learning. The material was trialed with 30 first-year Deakin University journalism students and 30 regional journalists. The responses showed that both groups felt the materials we added to the curriculum resources, which provided information on Muslim women and the headscarf, affected how they would write the story. They also thought it was important to provide this kind of information for readers. This paper argues that providing cultural information in an accessible format for students and journalists in newsrooms should be integral to education and training materials designed to improve media coverage of cultural diversity issues.<br /><br />

A visual mining system for theme development evolution analysis of scientific literature

Theme development evolution analysis of literature is a significant tool to help the scientific scholars find and study the frontier problems more efficiently. This paper designs and develops a visual mining system for theme development evolution analysis to deal with the large number of literature information. The analysis of related themes based on sub-themes, together with the dynamic threshold strategy are adopted for improving the accuracy of system. Experiments results prove that correlations of themes obtained from the system are accurate and achieve better practical effect in comparison with that of our early work.<br />

Indigenous research ethics : new modes of information gathering and storytelling in journalism

Veteran Indigenous affairs reporter Tony Koch emphasises the importance of respect, trust and listening in his journalism practice. This paper draws on Koch&rsquo;s insights as well as recent scholarship on the policies and value of listening to support the proposal that Indigenous research ethics provide a concrete framework for improving media representations of Indigenous people and their access to news media. The university ethics process cannot replicate the understanding Koch has gained from 25 years of interacting with Indigenous people and their communities. However, this paper argues it provides a pathway along which journalism academics and their students can learn to engage with Indigenous people, navigate Indigenous public spheres and produce high-quality reporting that reflects Indigenous people&rsquo;s aspirations. Journalists within the academy, who are not subject to the commercial or organizational pressures of the news industry, are especially well placed to collaborate with Indigenous people to deliver new ways of conducting research and telling stories that privilege their perspectives. Koch&rsquo;s newsgathering practice demonstrates that many principals of this progressive approach are also achievable in mainstream journalism.

Unusual suspects : a newspaper's coverage of a scuba diving rescue and journalism's role in narrating Australia

Brisbane&rsquo;s Courier-Mail newspaper ran a fantastic story a couple of years ago about a couple left at sea behind by their tour boat, after going scuba diving. The story suggested American diver Allyson Dalton and her British partner Richard Neely ignored advice when they ventured away from a lagoon where the tour boat was anchored. But the focus was on how Neely and Dalton survived by treading water for 19 hours at Paradise Reef, part of Queensland&rsquo;s Great Barrier Reef, not so much (yet) on how fortunate they were not to be attacked by sharks. It would not be long, however, before that old journalistic maxim that implores practitioners to &lsquo;question every assertion, doubt every claim&rsquo; shaped the reportage into an extended narrative about chequebook journalism, credibility, and culpability.<br /><br />The scuba dive rescue story analysis presented here reflects contemporary journalism&rsquo;s role in the formation of ideas about cultural value and character, and in more complex determinations of who gets a participatory stake in the formation of national narratives. As such, the article concludes with some signposts toward a critical approach to journalism-centred studies of culture in Australia.<br />

Benchmarking journalism courses with a focus on graduate employability : case Studies from three Australian universities

Benchmarking is commonly perceived as a key part of quality assurance and enhancement, and universities have had limited success to date in benchmarking, nationally or internationally, in matters concerning teaching and learning. This is partly due to the paucity of comparable quantitative indicators. The challenges are even greater when benchmarking is at course (program) level. As part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council fellowship (Benchmarking partnerships for graduate employability), a process was designed to enable course leaders to engage in collaborative and confidential benchmarking at course level, with a particular focus on graduate employability (or, more specifically, the assurance of graduate capability development and achievement). Among the 24 benchmarking partners were three course leaders in undergraduate journalism. This paper describes their collective experiences and some of the outcomes of the benchmarking exercise. It also highlights some of the challenges of benchmarking in a discipline where graduates may follow a range of career paths, and where technology means professional practice is evolving at a very rapid pace.&nbsp;Given these underpinning uncertainties, discussions around employability and appropriate graduate capabilities are best had face to face with adequate time for establishing common understandings. This has also been a focused way of building capacity and scholarly networking.