UQ journalism students today participated in a national radio broadcast from Musgrave Park in Brisbane as part of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee) Week celebrations.
The broadcast was the grand finale for the inaugural UQ School of Journalism and Communication NAIDOC Project initiative.
Students participated in live crosses from the Family Fun day to 98.9fm and their interviews were featured in two hour-long broadcast on the National Indigenous Radio Service and news bulletins.
Project leader and UQ journalism lecturer Heather Stewart said students had travelled to Bundaberg, Stradbroke Island and Toowoomba over the past 10 days to gather their content.
"The idea was to give students an opportunity to generate real content about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues for industry outlets with the support of experienced journalist mentors," she said.
"Too often reporters are thrown into the field without any understanding of the complexity of these issues and many do not have any cross-cultural awareness about the need to approach these stories sensitively."
Eighteen students from UQ, Griffith University, QUT and Triple-A Training gathered content on Indigenous issues, including stories on the 2009 NAIDOC theme "Honouring our Elders, Nurturing our Youth".
NIRS Manager Matthew Leonard said that the Indigenous Voice project had enabled the National Service to supply valuable additional coverage of NAIDOC week events to its audience from the NAIDOC national focus city for 2009, Brisbane.
"The participants in the Indigenous Voice project gave us a lot additional firepower for this important week of the Indigenous calendar," he said.
"Highlights for me were a great package on the Sam Watson play Oodgeroo - Bloodline to Country produced for our industry partner SBS radio and a fascinating interview with Toowoomba elder Uncle Wally McCarthy.
"I was particularly pleased to see the students engaging with and learning from the Indigenous community. It's a great start to an important ongoing journey."
Ms Stewart and Michael Williams, Director of the UQ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit, won a $65,000 Higher Education Equity Support Program grant to develop teaching materials for journalism education relating to reporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content.
"I think one of the things that most Australians would know is that we have here in this country the longest continuously surviving culture in the world," Mr Williams said.
"Now it's incumbent upon us to not only say that but to understand it and develop a deeper understanding and this project that we're working on will do that for the individuals that are part of the project and hopefully journalism as a profession will benefit from that and see the value in that."
Stories were streamed from NIRS, SBS and 98.9fm and will be posted on the project's soon-to-be-launched website.
"None of this would have been possible without the support of QUT and Griffith universities, BIMA (Brisbane Indigenous Media Association), SBS and in particular the National Indigenous Radio Service which is based in Brisbane and feeds to 130 Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Stations," Ms Stewart said.
Media: Heather Stewart (0418 830 938, Heather.stewart@uq.edu.au)
