Steve Braunias takes up post as Wintec editor-in-residence
By Amanda Harper, Wintec Journalism student. Posted On: Wednesday, 10 March 2010
The latest addition to WINTEC staff breezed in on Tuesday after a leisurely train ride down from Auckland.
Respected journalist Steve Braunias is the new editor-in-residence for the School of Media Arts.
Once a week he will travel to Hamilton set on inspiring young journalists in the making.
His role is to work as a mentor, making himself available to talk to students one-on-one about journalism and writing.
Braunias is not a typical journalist and very much follows his own beat, a trait which, he says, has possibly attributed to his success.
However, he is the first to tell you it was not an easy run. “It took me absolute years to feel confident about what I was doing.”
Regardless, his track record is impressive. He has published four books (with one currently in the making); worked on a number of television shows; written for the television series Eating Media Lunch, and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand.
He writes for North and South, Listener, Metro and the New Zealand Herald. Last year he won the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship which allowed him to finish “half a novel”, a task he returns to sporadically.
However, Braunias says his greatest achievement in life is his three-year-old daughter. But he is stumped when asked for a career highlight. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest,” was his immediate answer.
Wintec is not his only project. He has a column in Sunday magazine, is the weekly satirist of both the “Secret Diary” column in the Sunday Star-Times and of “May Contain Facts”, published in the Waikato Times and four other Fairfax stable publications.
He also features on the TVNZ show The Good Word as a book reviewer and as a panelist for televised debates.
Braunias says he is looking forward to working alongside Media Arts students as opposed to teaching them.