The first of our guest lecturers in La Trobe Journalism is 2010 will be ABC TV reporter Jane Cowan. Jane will join the Broadcast Journalism class on Monday 8 March at 9AM at the Hooper Theatre (for directions see D7 in this map).  Other students, staff and jounalists are welcome to attend.

Jane Cowan never graduated in Journalism but has degrees in Social Policy and Criminology. She joined the ABC on the Gold Coast in 2001 working as a field reporter/online producer for Local Radio Programs. Her work garnered the Best New Talent prize at the ABC Local Radio Awards in 2004.

She cut her serious reporting teeth in the Orange newsroom though, covering a region that spanned two thirds of country New South Wales . She then accepted a bimedia position in the Darwin newsroom and, between trips to remote Aboriginal communities, eventually became the Political Reporter. After a year and a half in the Top End she moved to Melbourne, again filing bi-media reports for both radio and television.

She then transferred to Radio Current Affairs for a year and a half, filing extended stories for the national programs AM, PM and The World Today. Her work there won a commendation at the 2008 Melbourne Press Club Awards, the Quills – for her live crosses on the Office of Police Integrity corruption hearings.

She returned to ABC Television News last year as a senior reporter in the Melbourne newsroom. Since then her work has been focussed on covering the Victorian bushfires – she was the first TV reporter on the ground in Marysville after Black Saturday, and she has been reporting on the 2009 Bushfires Royal Commission for ABC TV since it was established.

Jane recently won the Australasian Society for Post Traumatic Stress Media Award 2009 for sensitive reporting of a traumatic event – for the Black Saturday and Royal Commission coverage, and her ‘Marysville’s Gone’ report received a commendation at last year’s Walkley Awards.