Professor David Robie, founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre, has relaunched Asia Pacific Report as an independent Pacific affairs and analysis portal with many students or recent graduates around the region among the contributors.
Partnering with Selwyn Manning, publisher of Evening Report.nz, he is nurturing young Pacific journalists following the tradition that they started as an industry partnership with Pacific Scoop in 2009.
Asia Pacific Report has a growing audience in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and also in other Pacific nations.
“There is a continuing need for an independent portal of this kind given the dearth of Pacific outlets in the mainstream New Zealand media,” Dr Robie said.
“Apart from RNZ Pacific, Tagata Pasifika, and the Pacific Media Network, which do a fine job, there is little else.”
Asia Pacific Report, a non-profit publication, has community partnerships with the Asia Media Centre, RNZ, In-Depth News, Earth Journalism Network, University of the South Pacific, The Pacific Newsroom, Wansolwara and others.
Dr Robie retired from AUT in December after 18 years at the university – 13 of them as director of the PMC. He was the first journalism PhD (2004) at AUT and also the first associate professor and then professor in journalism (2012), specialising in Asia-Pacific and development media studies.
Previously he had been head of journalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific for a decade.
He was awarded the AUT Vice-Chancellor’s teaching award in 2011 and the AMIC Asian Communications award in Dubai in 2015 and has authored or edited 10 books.
He founded Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) research journal at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 and the publication is continuing independently with the current editorial team. However, Dr Robie has swapped editorial roles with former associate editor Dr Philip Cass who has become editor.
- Dr David Robie retires at AUT University
- Asia Pacific Report on Facebook
- Pacific Journalism Review on Facebook
