Steve Braunias signs up for second tour of duty at chalkface

Author and columnist Steve Braunias has returned to Wintec as editor in residence at the School of Media Arts.

He will spend this year mentoring journalism students, organising the sell-out Media Bites talks, and chatting to school pupils around Hamilton.

Winston Peters has accepted Braunias’ invitation to appear as the first guest speaker at the 2012 Media Bites season. The New Zealand First leader will speak at an invitation-only event at the Ferrybank in Hamilton on May 16.

The audience will include personalities from media, sport, politics, business and hospitality in the Waikato as well as Auckland.

“I very much enjoy Media Bites and want to continue my practice of inviting news makers as well as news media functionaries,” Braunias said.

“Partly it’s because newsmakers are usually really good fun. But it’s also to acknowledge their contribution to journalism. After all, journalists would be nothing without people who do things.”

A well-known journalist who has won over 20 national writing awards in print journalism, book publishing and television, Braunias was previously editor in residence in 2010. He took a sabbatical last year to write a book about 20 New Zealand towns, tentatively titled Happy Endings, due to be published in October.

“I am delighted to be back in Hamilton, my favourite city, and mentoring students at the journalism class, some of whom I think have a bright future.  Others I think will have a bright future in a different career. “

Braunias joined Metro magazine last year as a staff writer, and continues to pen a weekly satirical diary which is syndicated to six newspapers in New Zealand, including the Waikato Times.

He has previously worked as a senior journalist at the Sunday Star-Times, deputy editor of  the Listener, and editor of Capital Times. He is the author of five books, including How to Watch a Bird, which featured on the best-seller list in 2007. He is also a regular panellist on TVNZ 7 show The Good Word, and has written for TV comedies Eating Media Lunch and The Unauthorised History of New Zealand.

Since joining Metro, he has written profiles of broadcaster Mikey Havoc and disgraced politician David Garrett, a crime story about the prevalence and terror of armed robbery, and an essay about walking almost the entire length of New Zealand’s longest street, the Great South Road.

“I feel privileged to be writing long-form features for Metro alongside editor Simon Wilson and the incomparable Donna Chisholm,” he said.

He lives in Auckland, and will commute to Hamilton once a week to work with diploma and degree students at the School of Media Arts.

“The standard is probably higher than the class of 2010,” he said. “They’re not as nice, though. That’s a shame.”