Profile:

• Helen Sissons joined AUT’s School of Communication Studies in February 2007. She has an extensive background in journalism teaching, having spent six years at the University of Leeds in the UK. She published a textbook – Practical Journalism: How to Write News (Sage, London, 2006) – in November 2006.
• Helen spent sixteen years as a journalist, ten with the BBC and six writing for both national and local newspapers in Britain and the United States. For six years she combined her reporting at the BBC with teaching news journalism at the University of Leeds.
• Her research interest is the effect on journalistic practice and the news product of media convergence and PR-isation. It investigates media mergers, multi-skilling and new technology and also studies the relationship between PR departments and news organisations.

Research Interests:

• Media convergence and PR-isation in Journalism

Current Projects:

• PhD into the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists and how this is affecting current journalistic practices.

Selected Publications:

• Articles / Book Chapters:
• Sissons, H. (2006). Practical Journalism: How to Write News. London: Sage.
• Publications in progress:
• Sissons, H. Symbiosis and Parositosis: A Tale of Two Discourses. Text and Talk.

Recent Conference Activities:

• Sissons, H. (2009, July). Traversing discourses: Interactions between a public relations department at a police station and the media. 2nd International Discourse and Cultural Practices Conference, Sydney.
  Sissons, H. (2009, Jan). Journalism and Public Relations: Who is now the gatekeeper? 7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities.
  Sissons, H. (2007, Dec). Multi-platform, multi-skilled: The convergence conversation in the newsroom and academia. New Zealand Discourse Conference, Auckland University of Technology.

Affiliations/Memberships:

• Journalism Education Association of NZ