Students, staff and wantok supporters of the Pacific Media Centre today farewelled a Papua New Guinean research journalist and the Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor while welcoming his successor.
Henry Yamo of the Southern Highlands and a former PNG Transparency International and Sunday Chronicle journalist handed in his Master of Communication Studies thesis investigating the use of mobile telephones in the health sector in the Western Highlands and is returning home next week.
"And now I'm looking for a job, but excited to be going back to PNG," he said.
He praised AUT University, the PMC and his supervisor, Professor David Robie, for the support, funding and encouragement on completing his research. He carried out his fieldwork last year during the usually volatile PNG general election.
Former Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor Alex Perrottet, now working part-time as a journalist with the Auckland bureau of Radio New Zealand International, also endorsed his AUT experience at the centre.
Perrottet will still be around PMC while completing his MCS degree.
A Norwegian journalist, Daniel Drageset, also an MCS student, is succeeding Perrottet. Although he starts officially next week on the PMW posting, he has already filed his first report on the visit of the King of Tonga to AUT and he has a strong interest in Pasifika issues.
Pacific Media Centre
