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.jpg "Ross Monaghan") |
Ross Monaghan is an experienced professional communicator, academic, blogger and podcaster. He is currently an academic at Deakin University in Victoria and co-founder of themediapod.net, a blogging and podcasting website with a focus on public relations and media related issues.A former Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, and Chairman of the Mobile Carriers Forum, Ross has represented some of Australia’s largest organisations such as BHP, Telstra and Optus. He has a unique combination of communications theory and practical experience and is well known for his current work and research in the area of new social media.
Ross began his career as a journalist working for a regional daily newspaper and spent several years involved in general news reporting before completing a BA. In 1988 Ross was recruited by BHP and spent eight years with the company at sites around Australia and North America. He was involved in a range of internal and external communication management issues such as editing employee journals, developing community relations strategies and managing the public affairs and media response to issues such as industrial accidents and disputes with environmental groups such as Greenpeace. In 1996 Ross was appointed Community Relations Manager for Optus. He helped establish, and was the first chair of, the Mobile Carriers Forum. Ross also chaired other groups such as the Australasian Crime Commissioners Taskforce on mobile phone theft, and dealt with issues at all three tiers of Government. During his time in the telecommunications industry Ross gained general management experience as the CEO of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association. A key responsibility of that role was to represent the industry in all levels of the media, from daily newspapers to television news and current affairs programs. In 2006 Ross received a fellowship from Deakin University and co-founded theMediaPod.net with academic colleague, and former BBC producer, Colleen Murrell. The site deals with a range of global media and public relations issues and contains interviews with many leading journalists and public relations practitioners. Ross is also the Professional Development Chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (Victoria), and he continues to maintain strong links with industry by providing pro bono services to several national organisations. He is a member of the Melbourne Press Club and chaired the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Public Relations and Corporate Communications Summits in Sydney. |
| More Information: http://rossmonaghan.prblogs.org |
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Colleen Murrell is a staff lecturer at Deakin University, teaching units in broadcast journalism and feature writing. Colleen hails from London, where she worked for many years as a producer, reporter and news editor for a number of international news organisations including the BBC, ITN, Associated Press Television, Television Francaise 1 and CBC-Radio Canada. During this time she travelled widely, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. She speaks fluent French, reasonable Spanish, and has occasional flashes of inspiration with a few carefully chosen words of Italian and Arabic.
Colleen is a co-founder of www.themediapod.net and likes to post stories on current affairs and news issues. She encourages her students to post their radio assignments on to the site as well. In 2007 Colleen will be spending time at City University in London as a European Union Erasmus Mundus Fellow in Journalism. She will be conducting research for her PhD on the role of fixers in international newsgathering. While she is away she hopes to produce some podcasts for the site on issues to do with citizen journalism and foreign news coverage. In 2007 Colleen also won a Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2006 Colleen won a “Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant” with Ross Monaghan, which enabled them to set up www.themediapod.net |