Matthew Ricketson

Matthew Ricketson is an academic and journalist. He is head of the Communication group at Deakin University. Before that, he was inaugural professor of journalism at the University of Canberra between 2009 and 2017. For three years before that he was Media and Communications Editor for The Age. He ran the Journalism program at RMIT for 11 years and has worked on staff at The Australian and Time Australia, among other publications. He is the author of a biography of Australian author, Paul Jennings, a textbook about feature writing (updated with a co-author for a second edition in 2017) and a monograph, Telling True Stories: Navigating the challenges of writing narrative non-fiction. He co-edited Upheaval: Disrupted lives in journalism, and, in 2022, co-authored Who Needs the ABC? Why taking it for granted is no longer an option. He has edited a collection of profile articles and, in 2012, Australian Journalism Today. In 2011 he was appointed to assist former Federal Court judge, Ray Finkelstein QC, in the Independent Media Inquiry which reported to the federal government in 2012. He has been a  chief investigator on four Australian Research Council grants which are examining the impact of largescale newsroom redundancies on journalists, business models for local and rural media, and, more broadly, on the future of journalism.  He was president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia for six years and chair of the board of directors for the Dart Centre Asia-Pacific for seven years. He has been the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council since 2016.

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