David Farrier opens talk with “not too boring” imagery

TV3 journalist David Farrier introduced his Spark presentation in Hamilton yesterday with imagery of a Japanese woman putting cats in her mouth.

The image, which went viral over the internet, set the tone to a presentation that Farrier hopes was “not too boring” but “not all fluff” just “somewhere in the middle.”

Farrier has the photo as his Twitter background and said it is fascinating and great that someone can become famous for simply licking a cat.

“What got me originally interested in journalism was seeing stuff that I found interesting and then being able to delve further into it and spread the goodness, or the filth, or theexcitement to other people,” he said.

The entertainment and technology reporter spoke openly about his journalism career and the industry to an almost full audience at Wintec’s Gallagher Hub.

Being an active Twitter and Facebook user, Farrier said social media can be good for giving journalists updates.

“There was an avalanche on Mt Ruapehu not so long ago and people tweeting about it was the first way we [journalists] got information about it because we couldn’t get through on phone lines to the mountain.”

However he said social media can sometimes misinform people who disregard long format journalism.

“There still needs to be room for in depth analysis of things and current affairs.”
He said nobody knows what the future of the media is, but increasingly, the goal is to distribute news as quickly as possible.

“It’s just going to be more of a ‘now’ mentality as opposed to working towards a specific time later in the day,” he said.

Spark festival director Kat Cox said she enjoyed Farrier’s presentation, saying it was really interactive and funny.

“[David Farrier] is someone that I think students can really relate to because he hasn’t been in the industry too long and he covers stories which are really interesting to people under 30,” she said.