Jo Chandler (born 1965) is an Australian journalist, science writer and educator. Her journalism has covered a wide range of subject areas, including science, the environment, women's and children's issues, and included assignments in Africa, the Australian outback, Antarctica, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea.[1] She is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advancing Journalism[2] and Honorary FellowDeakin University[3] in Victoria, Australia.
Chandler edited Best Australian Science Writing 2016 and is author of Feeling the Heat. She continues to work as a freelance journalist.
Career
In the industry for more than 30 years, Chandler started out on country newspapers, working as a cadet using a typewriter.[4]
Chandler started with The Age newspaper in 1989;[5] where she worked for much of her career, culminating in the role of Fairfax senior writer and roving national and international correspondent.[6] As senior writer with The Age Chandler wrote in-depth reports and analysis of topics; with particular interests in humanitarian, women's issues, aid and development, Indigenous affairs and climate change.[7]
Chandler's journalism has evolved and she has built on her skills and experience through a range of professional fellowships. She studied in the USA at the University of Missouri School of Journalism as a Rotary Scholar (1988/89) and travelled in 2006 to the UK on a Harry Brittain Fellowship for future senior editors with the Commonwealth Press Union and the British Foreign Office. She received two media fellowships with the Australian Antarctic Division, reporting from Casey Station and field research sites in 2007 and in 2009/10.[8]
In 2005, after more than a decade in editing, she went back on the road as a reporter.[9] She has filed news and features from assignments across Africa, Antarctica, Afghanistan, rural and remote Australia and Papua New Guinea earning numerous distinctions as an essayist, profile writer and narrative journalist, and is recognized across a range of specialty areas. Distinctions earned include the Walkley (Australia's Pulitzer Prize) and Quill awards, the Bragg Prize for Science Writing, the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism and the ACFID (Australian Council for International Media) Media award.[10]
^"Winners of the George Munster Award"(PDF). University of Technology Sydney Australian Centre for Independent Journalism. 21 March 2014. Retrieved 27 February 2018.
