Macleay College has strengthened the credentials of its award-winning journalism faculty by appointing Stephen Davis as its new Head of Journalism.
Davis has been involved in journalism for more than 30 years, most recently as the head of Convergence Journalism at the University of Arts, London, where he developed and introduced new convergence and cross-disciplinary teaching across its BA programs.
Davis’s newspaper skills saw him work as a reporter on the famous Insight investigations team of The Sunday Times in the UK and as a foreign correspondent. Davis also worked on the launch team of the Independent on Sunday newspaper in the UK among many other roles. In his home country of New Zealand, he was editor of the NZ Herald. While under his editorship, the NZ Herald won the Pacific Newspaper of the Year award for campaigning journalism.
He also has strong TV experience having been senior producer at 60 Minutes on TV3, and senior producer of Assignment on Television New Zealand, where he won seven national television awards as well as a silver medal at the New York Film and Television Awards.
Davis was the writer and producer of Last Flight to Kuwait, an investigative documentary broadcast by the BBC and Discovery Channel in the US. He is also author of the book The Secret of Flight 149: Spies, Lies and Saddam’s Human Shields.
“There has never been a more challenging time for journalism,” Davis said. “Media companies all over the world are trying to work out what sort of journalism they should be doing and how they should be delivering it. Journalism schools must keep pace. So it’s the perfect time to be revamping the Macleay journalism programs to meet these challenges. We aim to build on its existing successes and develop smart, multi skilled, future proof journalists.”