First Kiwi Asian journalism scholarship awarded

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A young Filipino-New Zealander has been awarded the first Asia New Zealand Foundation Kiwi Asian Journalism Scholarship.

The successful candidate, Corazon Miller, is of Filipino and New Zealand European descent. She is bilingual in Tagalog and English.

Ms Miller is currently employed as a nurse at Auckland Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She intends to use the communication and cultural awareness skills she has acquired during her short career as a health professional to embark on her new direction as a journalist.

“Despite our growing Asian population, New Zealand has a shortage of Asian journalists. Many of the Asian population as a result fail to identify with the mainstream media. As Asian New Zealanders it is their right to have access to the media. As a Kiwi-Asian journalist I hope that I will be able to facilitate that within their community and within the media industry,” she said.

Ms Miller has enrolled in a Post Graduate Diploma in Communications Studies with a Journalism Major at AUT University in Auckland.

The Kiwi Asian Journalism Scholarship is designed to attract more young Kiwi Asians into journalism study and to encourage increased representation of Asian communities in mainstream journalism.

A 2007 survey of New Zealand journalists undertaken by the New Zealand Journalism Training Organisation (NZJTO) showed that only about 2 percent of all journalists working in the mainstream English language news media were Asian.

The Kiwi Asian Journalism Scholarship will apply to the 2010 academic year and is for the value of NZ$5000 to be paid on completion of Ms Miller’s course of journalism study.

The 2011 scholarship will be open for applications in August with the deadline on 30 November 2010.