#CroakeyGo Newcastle writes:
Some of the dynamic and contested spaces of journalism practice, research and education are on the agenda of a conference in Newcastle next week – and many are extremely relevant for those with an interest in health.
If you are in the vicinity of Newcastle next Tuesday (5 December), we invite you to participate in an early morning #CroakeyGO walk, which is being held in association with the annual Journalism Education & Research Association of Australia (JERAA) conference.
It will be an opportunity to hear more about the conference, which will include presentations about reporting on climate change, Islam, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, mental health and violence against women.
The conference will also feature keynotes about fake news, the future for newsrooms, journalism in regional Australia, Crinkling News (the national newspaper for Australian kids), and the role of satire in journalism and public spheres.
Facebook will give an update on its journalism project – a global initiative to partner with the publishing industry, while Chad Watson, Group Managing Editor Newcastle-Hunter, Fairfax Media, will present on Campaign journalism and community engagement: When setting the news agenda is no longer enough. Melissa Sweet from Croakey will participate in a panel on advocacy and journalism.
The 90-minute walk will begin at 6.30am from the conference venue, New Space, in the Newcastle CBD. A map showing details of the walk will be published closer to the time.
#CroakeyGO is an evolving platform for enabling placed-based acts of walking journalism (see previous stories here).
Felicity Biggins, a lecturer in communication at Newcastle University, and a member of the conference organising committee, said the walk will take in some of Newcastle’s spectacular harbour and coast-line, as well as provoke debate about the vital role of public interest journalism when it comes to health, especially in regional Australia.
She said:
There are lots of synergies here. The local newspaper, The Herald, for example, has been winning Walkley Awards for its coverage of the impact of contamination by fire-fighting foam on the health of people living near the Williamtown RAAF Base.
One of our conference sponsors is Mindframe, which is a locally based Federal Government initiative aimed at encouraging responsible, accurate and sensitive representation of mental illness and suicide in the Australian media.
There are also a lot of exciting research projects coming out of the University of Newcastle and the Hunter Medical Research Institute looking at things like accuracy when reporting on medical matters and the impact of the arts on health and well-being, so walking and connecting people up is a great way to share information.”
Summer May Finlay, Melissa Sweet and Mitchell Ward from Croakey will be among those tweeting and conducting Periscope interviews from the walk, and also hope to highlight issues raised in the Croakey Submission to a Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism, which is due to report by February next year.
Please join us for this walk and talk, whether IRL or virtually – follow at #CroakeyGO and #JERAA17.
• A write-up from our #CroakeyGO walk in Adelaide last month will be published later this week.
