One January day in 2011, Hamish Boland-Rudder travelled from Sydney to Seoul. It was 40°C when he got on the plane and -17°C when he got off. He was unprepared for the Korean chill and had to dig through his bag at the airport to find some warm clothes.

Back then, Boland-Rudder was a final year Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) student at the University of Sydney. He applied to MECO’s Overseas Fellowship Program and was selected as an Australia Korea Foundation Fellow for 2011. A few months later, he arrived, cold, to begin work as a media intern at The Korea Herald.

The Overseas Fellowship Program began in 2004 with Richard Broinowski’s idea to send media students to work at English-language newspapers and other media organisations in Asia. Broinowski had a long career as a diplomat with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and served as general manager of Radio Australia in the early 1990s. After retiring from DFAT in 1998, he became an adjunct professor in Media Studies at the University of Canberra. Three years later, he assumed the same position at the University of Sydney.

Broinowski used the contacts he gained as a diplomat to develop the program. In its first year, then called Media Students to Asia, he sent two students to Bangkok: one to the Bangkok Post and the other to The Nation. Over the next year or two, he extended the host outlets to include The Phnom Penh Post, The Cambodia Daily, The Star (Malaysia), a television channel in Kuala Lumpur, and the Philippine Daily Enquirer. Around 2010, he expanded the program to include Korea JoongAng Daily, The Korea Herald and TBS Radio in Seoul; Global Times, Beijing Review and Caixin in Beijing; and Agence France-Presse in Tokyo. Broinowski recalls that MECO academic Fiona Martin and MECO undergraduate program internship coordinator Robin Moffat accompanied him on a “setting-up” trip to meet with the editors in these three cities. Thereafter, he added newspapers in the United Arab Emirates, India and Santiago, Chile.

Broinowski tells us he was initially motivated by experiences he had during his career that exposed the ignorance some Australian journalists had when it came to Asia. He wanted “to imbue [students] with sophisticated experiences that they would not get from being mere tourists in Asia.”

These motivations accord with the current objectives of the Overseas Fellowship Program. Adriana Hernandez, who has been internship coordinator since 2014, explains that the program improves the quality and sophistication of Australian media reporting overseas, and promotes the bilateral relationships between Australia and other countries. Students undergo a competitive application process. Each year of her tenure, the department has received 20 to 25 applications and offered 12 to 15 fellowships.

Boland-Rudder describes his time working and living in Korea as “a mind-blowing experience, both in terms of the journalistic challenge and the opportunities of exploring a whole new country.”

The language barrier didn’t stop him from creating good content. He built a network of sources by calling people who could speak English and asking them to help him navigate the local media landscape and the city.

He published “Americans’ lifelong love of Korean music” in The Korea Herald on 10 February 2011. The story featured a 79-year-old American medic who mastered the art of playing the Korean gayageum. Boland-Rudder remembers how difficult it was jumping on a train alone and finding where he needed to go without Google Maps or a smartphone. He also remembers sitting in the man’s apartment listening to music together. “It felt like a real privilege and a real moment of meeting fascinating people and doing things I never otherwise do,” he said. “This is one of the joys of journalism.”

Boland-Rudder identifies The Korea Herald fellowship as a formative moment in his career. He is now an online editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He works with more than 400 journalists from 80 different countries on one to two big stories each year. His experience in Korea had a significant impact on landing a job with this cross-border organisation. The experience opened his mind to the possibility of working in media outside Australia. It enabled him to work with reporters from different cultural backgrounds and taught him how to go about finding stories in a completely unfamiliar world.

Another lesson Boland-Rudder learned was giving everything a go in both career and life. Trying kimchi for the first time, hiking up a mountain outside Seoul and publishing his first news story were all part of his unique experiences in Korea. “The whole experience taught me the power of just saying yes and trying everything,” he said.

Broinowski tells us that all host editors agreed fellows would be treated as journalists. For a four- to eight-week attachment they could choose their own stories, do the research and get published. One drawcard for the editors was that this was free labour. The fellowship covered airfares and a living stipend. Initially, Broinowski obtained funding from the Myer Foundation in Melbourne. Baillieu Myer, a businessman and philanthropist, was a friend. By 2010, funding was coming directly from DFAT. 

Lydia Feng is another alumna who participated in the Overseas Fellowship Program. While undertaking her Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) degree, Feng chose politics and international studies units as her electives. She found herself passionate about becoming a journalist, especially one who would report on world news and politics.

A few years after Boland-Rudder, she became an Australia–China Council Fellow for 2014 and worked as a media intern in Beijing with Caixin Media. Working alongside senior journalists and editors, she was able to put theories she learned from university into practice. During her time there, she attended a press conference on the World Economic Forum, created a feature spread on the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, wrote an article about the Beijing Art Exhibition and reviewed a book.

“Working overseas at the leading media company has given me confidence in my abilities and inspired me to work as a journalist overseas someday,” she posted to Parallax, the blog that fellows contributed to during their placements.

The fellowship program ensures that future Australian journalists have an in-depth understanding of foreign cultures, politics and history. The fellow’s placement is preceded by a debrief at the Australian Embassy/Consulate in the host country. Feng spent her first week at the Australian Embassy in Beijing discussing the current economic and political climate in China and its impact on Sino–Australian relations. The week affirmed her fascination with international affairs.

In Feng’s spare time, she immersed herself in China’s rich culture, visiting the country’s most iconic landmarks from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall. Her Chinese heritage made her feel even more interested in and connected to the country.

“Walking ten thousand miles of the world is better than reading ten thousand scrolls of books,” Feng posted to the blog, quoting an old Chinese proverb. Being the new kid on the Beijing block was not as daunting as she had imagined. Though she stumbled her way through many Chinese conversations at the time, she knew this allowed her to practise her Mandarin.

Her internship in Beijing wasn’t just a chance to familiarise herself with Chinese culture and meet Chinese journalists; she also met people from all over the world who shared the same passions, including people who were interning from other countries. “It was good to have that international perspective and great to see they [former colleagues] are flourishing now in their careers in various countries,” she told us.

Feng’s experience of working in an overseas media organisation enabled her to apply and expand her knowledge in news writing and had a significant impact on her career. After graduation, she earned a competitive SBS cadetship and then worked as a reporter at SBS for several years. Feng is now a reporter for ABC News Sydney with a focus on local communities, world politics and immigration. Speaking over Zoom from her ABC office, it seems she has achieved the goals that she set herself while at university. “The fellowship was undoubtedly a rewarding experience,” she said.

The same year that Feng headed to China, Mikaela Griffith was selected as a 2014 Australia Thailand Institute Fellow. She spent five weeks in Thailand, with one week at the Australian Embassy and four weeks at the Bangkok Post.

At the Australian Embassy, she worked in the Public Diplomacy Unit, writing and editing press releases and having briefings with various organisations including Australian Education International and the Australian Trade Commission. She gained experience in public relations and saw many ways Australia was working to strengthen the bilateral relationship with Thailand. Working and living in Thailand allowed her to experience the culture of the country as more than a tourist.

During her time at the Bangkok Post, Griffith worked as a lifestyle writer and reporter. Her role involved researching and pitching article ideas, conducting interviews and writing stories across a wide range of topics.

Griffith published seven articles at the newspaper and participated in a range of projects at the embassy. Her experiences in Thailand gave her the chance to practise her journalism skills and gave her great insights into the local media landscape. In a Parallax blog post, she described the day she opened up Tuesday’s Lifestyle section of the Bangkok Post and saw her name in print: “I actually let out a squeak of excitement and did a little dance, a big silly grin all over my face.”

“One of the most valuable things this fellowship gave me was a stronger sense of confidence, in both myself and my ability as a professional journalist,” Griffith wrote.

Seven years later, Griffith names the fellowship program one of her “most cherished life experiences to date.” In an email from Amsterdam, where she has lived and worked since 2019, Griffith wrote, “My MECO studies and overseas fellowship undoubtedly armed me with lifelong skills that have helped me adapt and succeed in this international environment.”

After completing her degree, Griffith studied design thinking at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She began working as a copywriter for the global advertising agency Ogilvy, and she is now a content writer at the global headquarters of Adyen, a Dutch financial technology company that has 26 offices around the world, from São Paulo to Tokyo. “International collaboration is an integral part of my job,” she wrote, “from supporting local offices … to navigating the cultural nuances of our blog’s diverse global audience.” One of her recent projects was a case study with the Rijksmuseum that will be translated for local markets around the world.

The fellowship “has had a lasting, positive influence on me both personally and professionally, from building my confidence to inspiring me to continually seek out new challenges and opportunities around the world,” she wrote.

Close to 200 graduates, like Boland-Rudder, Feng and Griffith, have participated in the fellowship program. The program has continued to help the next generation of Australian journalists gain a better understanding of other countries while also helping other countries gain a better understanding of Australia. Students have acquired knowledge and professional skills in different countries and media landscapes. They are applying their international perspectives and developing a sophisticated approach to their own media work.

The fellowship program has been paused since 2020, due to changes in funding by DFAT and the COVID-19 pandemic. Bunty Avieson, the MECO academic who runs the program, is looking forward to its full restoration. In the meantime, MECO has resumed a partnership with the Korean Australian Community Support Incorporation, sending 11 final year students to Korea for an immersion program in 2022, with another group scheduled to go in 2023. MECO’s collaboration with the Australian Consortium for “In-Country” Indonesian Studies recently enabled two students to intern at Metro TV and The Jakarta Post.

The Overseas Fellowship Program “puts students right at the heart of what is going on in a foreign country,” Avieson said. She has witnessed the way this enables students “to understand different cultures and how the media best serves their communities”. It is “an extraordinary opportunity that changes lives”.