News

Don Watson to give key media address

Media Release, Tuesday 17 August 2004

Writer and historian, Don Watson, will speak about “The Media and the Language” when he gives the University of Melbourne’s A N Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism on Thursday 19 August.

Author of Death Sentence, the best-seller dealing with the decay of public language, Dr Watson spent 10 years as an academic before resigning to write, among other things, satire for TV and the stage. In addition to books about Australian history, he has written columns, articles and reviews for all the major Australian journals and newspapers.

After a stint as Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, much of which was spent lecturing in Tokyo, he became Paul Keating’s speech-writer and adviser in January 1992 and stayed until Keating’s defeat in 1996.

For the past five years, in addition to regular articles and essays, he has been writing feature films, the latest of which was The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis.

His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Essay Prize in the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards. His book, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, was published last year and won the Age Book of the Year and Non-Fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Colin Roderick Award.

His other books include Brian Fitzpatrick A Radical Life; Caledonia Australis, Scottish Highlanders on the Frontier of Australia and The Story of Australia. His Dictionary of Weasel Words will be published in November.

Regarded as a most prestigious lecture on journalism in Australia, the AN Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism has attracted a series of distinguished speakers over its more than 60-year-history, including Rupert Murdoch; then editor of The Australian Paul Kelly; former Prime Minister Bob Hawke; radio presenter Jon Faine; political commentator, Michelle Grattan; prominent television journalist, Maxine McKew; Fairfax CEO Fred Hilmer; and cartoonist Bruce Petty.

WHAT: AN Smith Lecture: Don Watson: ”The Media and the Language”

WHERE: Lecture Theatre GM 15, Law Building, Unviersity Square

WHEN: Thursday August 19, 6pm.

RSVP is required, phone (03) 8344 3885.