Alan Samson is the Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) representative on the Pacific Journalism Review editorial board and is a former reviews editor.
He has been a lecturer in Massey University's School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing since 2002.
Before that, for nearly 20 years he was senior reporter at the Dominion newspaper, now The Dominion Post. Stories he covered for the paper included the 1987 Fiji coup, the 1990 Aramoana massacre, the long-running Peter Ellis child molestation case, and the Lord of the Rings' phenomenon.
For his last five years on the paper, he reported the science and environment round, notably covering the ground-breaking Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. Alan has also worked at the Christchurch Press, the NZ Press Association, and edited two management magazines in London.
A several-times Qantas winner and finalist, he sat on the news media watchdog body, the New Zealand Press Council for eight years, latterly chairing the committee that rewrote its Statement of Principles.
His recent research interests relate to news media plagiarism (his Masters’ thesis) and understanding the oft-used journalistic justification, “in the public interest”.
Staff profile at Massey University