Three weeks after giving birth to her first child, Catharine Lumby was preparing herself for another kind of birth. It was October 1999. In February, the first ever Media and Communications degree at the University of Sydney – a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications), a different degree than the Bachelor of Arts, with its own Universities Admission Index (UAI) requirements – was due to enter the world, and she, as its director, was responsible for its design. Some nine months earlier, Bettina Cass, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, had appointed her to the role. Lumby had just four months to finalise the structure and write full curriculums for two first-year units before 100 students would be entering the lecture halls.

Her partner brought their baby to her office each day to be fed. Sitting with her baby became Lumby’s daily highlight, a brief respite from a busy schedule planning to implement her vision of media and communications education. Having completed her PhD in media studies at Macquarie University the year before and working in journalism for 13 years prior, she had a good idea of what she wanted to achieve.

Throughout both her academic and journalistic work Lumby had always been deeply interested in human rights and experiences that were not captured by the mainstream media, particularly around the issues of gender, sexuality, and race. She strongly believed the fourth estate could shed light on such issues, expose abuses of power and inform the public about their rights. For her, the media practitioner’s role was a vital one: to enhance democracy by writing or broadcasting information in a way that served the public interest.

To achieve this, she knew students required more than production-based skills: they also needed a broad knowledge of the world and the ability to interpret information critically. Therefore, in addition to production subjects and an internship, the degree would include core theoretical subjects including Media Studies; Media Relations; and Media, Law and Ethics. Students would also undertake a second major in Arts or Economics. The 2002 degree brochure describes the program in terms of both “a vocational perspective” and “an academic perspective”: “the degree is focused on producing students with a portfolio of practical skills who also have the general knowledge and critical intelligence which comes from an excellent humanities education”.

The University of Sydney, a prestigious 150-year-old institution renowned for research within its Arts faculty, was an ideal place to provide this sort of education. To understand why the University established a media and communications degree – and why it took so long – it is instructive to begin in 1964. This is when the Menzies government put in place a binary system of higher education. On one side was the academic and research-oriented university sector – the older established universities supplemented with newly created ones – and on the other side was a new advanced education sector, which grew out of former teachers’ colleges and some technical and agricultural colleges.

Some teaching of media and communications in Australian universities dates back to at least the 1950s, but the 1964 expansion of higher education marked a “major impetus for growth in degree level studies.”1 Media and communications studies developed within the vocationally oriented advanced education sector, and similar courses were then developed at the newly established universities.

Within two decades, communication studies courses were established in at least a dozen tertiary institutions around Australia.2 The emergent discipline was enriched by the establishment of the Australian Communication Association in 1979, along with two affiliated journals. Henry Mayer, professor of political theory at the University of Sydney, founded Media Information Australia in 1976 (renamed Media International Australia in 1995) and, in the same year, Rod Miller founded Australian SCAN: Journal of Human Communication (renamed Australian Journal of Communication in 1982).3

Still, the older universities “showed little interest” in a communications degree.4 This began to shift, however, following another set of restructures to higher education. In 1987, the Hawke government introduced the “Unified National System”, which ended the binary system and merged 85 tertiary institutions into 37 large-scale universities. A raft of vocational courses that had been developed within the advanced education sector were brought into the university sector. This included media and communications courses, which were incorporated into restructured Arts faculties.5

At the same time, the government took action to increase student numbers and create a more egalitarian higher education system. Adapting to a diversified student body and a new emphasis on vocational relevance required a greater range of curriculum offerings. This was happening against the backdrop of the revolution in communications technologies that accelerated through the 1990s and created a demand in the labour market in Australia and its neighbours.6

Research in the field was continuing apace. In 1990, communication was included as a formal field of research category in the Australian Research Standards Classification.7 In 1994, the Australian Communication Association was expanded and reconstituted as the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association.8

From 1989 to 1999, Australia saw a three-fold increase in student load in media and communications courses. By 1999, media and communications courses were offered at 27 institutions and, according to a May 1999 Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs census, communication studies had the highest student load of any discipline in the humanities group at Australian institutions.9

Many of the older universities, feeling market pressure and the need to remain relevant in the new university environment, began to offer media and communications courses. Faculty minutes from 3 November 1997 contain a report from a working party led by Stephen Garton exploring whether the University of Sydney should join the trend.10 The report identified a number of pre-existing units across Education, English, Government, Law, Sociology, Women’s Studies and the Sydney College of the Arts that could be incorporated into such a program. Moreover, there was some existing production equipment across Arts, Education and the Sydney College of the Arts. The working party concluded that there was “sufficient staffing, curricula and equipment resources within the college to begin a substantial initiative in the field of media and communications”, but with a need for more investment in the future to ensure the reputation and attractiveness of the program. They also pointed out that the success of such a program would “depend on the establishment of sound institutional and industry links”.

The benefits of the proposed program were clear. The working party found, “On intellectual grounds the analysis of media and communications has become a central field of inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. The number of staff already offering units and conducting their own research in these fields is testimony to its significance.” Moreover, the University of Sydney was the only university in the region without a media and communications degree, even though the degree was becoming a significant criterion in student university selection and attracted high calibre students. The faculty approved the recommendations to establish a program of study in media and communications and appoint a director for five years, tasked with coordinating existing resources, planning a structured program of curriculum development and working with a planning group, which included Barbara McDonald (Law), Neil Becherwaise (Education), Rod Tiffen (Government), and Su Baker (Sydney College of the Arts). This is how Lumby, appointed as that director, came to be at the University.

When Lumby stared out across her lecture theatres that first year, she saw 100 brilliant young people who had worked diligently to achieve the high UAI required for admittance to Sydney’s newest degree. In MECO1001/1002: Introduction to Media Studies 1 and 2, she taught them the key concepts, methodologies, theories, and interdisciplinary roots of the field.

Production units followed in the second year. Students learned the theory and practice of radio and online broadcast news, the basics of writing news and features for print and online media, and practical skills required for media relations and advertising industries.

Lumby taught these production units in 2001, with assistance from Geraint Evans, deputy director and lecturer at the Language Centre, for MECO2001: Broadcast News (Radio and Online). Soon she was given the opportunity to recruit more lecturers and expand the range of production-based units.

Her first recruit was the late Anne Dunn, who had graduated from the University of Sydney with an honours degree in Education in 1972. Dunn had extensive experience working as a presenter and researcher for television and radio in Australia and the UK, as well as lecturing at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst and Western Sydney University.

“Anne Dunn was the most wonderful colleague to work with,” Lumby told me. “An expert, supportive and ethical, she was absolutely critical in the development of the degree and the department. Her legacy is written into every aspect of teaching and research we did and still do.”

In her video production unit (MECO3001) Dunn introduced students to the history, theory and practice of video production, both field- and studio-based. She helped equip students with skills in planning, researching and budgeting a video production, as well as in digital camera operation, video recording and video editing.

But Dunn’s particular love was radio. She felt it was the most effective way to communicate as it allowed a direct connection between her and her audience without interference from other people in the production or communication chain. Students in her radio broadcasting unit researched, scripted, recorded and edited a radio news magazine item. The course also looked at the history and contemporary status of radio and considered the role of the internet in audio broadcasts.

However, these production units were a slow starter for Dunn as the University lacked adequate media production infrastructure such as studios and specialised computer labs – an issue common among the universities that were new entrants to the communications field. This was in stark contrast to the specialist facilities offered by the newer universities at which Dunn had previously worked.

Media and Communications was succeeding, but it still struggled to establish legitimacy at the university. Many looked upon it as merely a vocational discipline, somewhat inferior to the established Social Science, Arts and Humanities disciplines the faculty had built itself around.

Lumby encountered this attitude frequently in the early years.

“Oh, you’re a journalist, are you? People like you don’t do research, do you?” Lumby remembered being asked by an English professor.

Lumby laughed as she recounted the interaction. She said she was used to people thinking journalists were “anti-intellectual” and “untrustworthy”. The media and communications degree would prove them wrong, as students developed strong research skills in an intellectually demanding environment.

By the time Lumby was setting up the degree, most undergraduate media courses at Australian universities combined research with practice.11 There had long been tension, though, over the orientation of the research component.

Helen Wilson’s 2001 Australia and New Zealand Communication Association’s presidential address describes the “cross-current” of traditions that influenced the early years of the field in Australia. One current was the American approach, which had a strong emphasis on applied psychology and media technique and tied the field to commercial activities including advertising and public relations. The other current was the British approach, which had a Marxist orientation toward critique and tied the field to cultural studies, structuralism, linguistics and semiotics.12

Peter Putnis’s 1986 review of communication studies in Australia pointed to “the growing influence of Anglo-European perspectives at the expense of earlier American-inspired approaches”.13 The confluence of the two paradigms, and predominance of the cultural studies approach, was evident in the University of Sydney’s curriculum.

In 2003, Lumby hired Kate Crawford. While also completing her PhD, which resulted in the book Adult themes: Rewriting the rules of adulthood (2007), Crawford created an online media production unit. The unit examined the development and growth of the internet and provided a critical framework through which to understand the way it was changing the media landscape. The unit also had a practical component, with students gaining skills in writing and producing for the web and learning to design and develop their own websites.

Crawford went on to become a widely published researcher, academic and author examining the politics, impacts and social implications of large-scale data systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Although it was unusual for someone to be hired as a lecturer before completing their PhD, Lumby saw her potential. From very early on, she recognised the value of the insights Crawford provided about digital media as an emerging key component of media and communications.

Many of Crawford’s former students are now working in the digital media industry, and one is a professor of digital media herself. “Some students thought they would never have to engage with the digital side of things, but now it’s a given,” Crawford told me.

Lumby further built the degree by recruiting Marc Brennan in 2004. Having completed a PhD in creative industries/media at the Queensland University of Technology the year before, Brennan brought a specialisation in the theories of cultural studies and media studies, and their relation to contemporary industries.

Brennan took on two existing units, MECO1001: Introduction to Media Studies and MECO3605: Media Globalisation, transforming them week by week over his first year. He infused the courses with theories such as semiotics, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory.

Brennan was known for his ability to engage students with contemporary topics, exploring media case studies within these conceptual frameworks. For him, theory and practice could not be separated. He intended to equip students to think about the politics of representation before they began to write, record or produce. He saw the urgent need to discuss these topics, particularly how ideologies and concepts of national identity shape ways of thinking and might influence the way a story is presented.

Richard Stanton also joined in 2004. He arrived with a wealth of industry experience, having worked in public relations, journalism, editing and publishing. He took over MECO2003: Media Relations, previously taught by Lumby and then Dunn.

Stanton guided students to critically analyse the historical and contemporary relationships between the media and public relations. They analysed material drawn from stakeholders in the media relations and advertising industries while also learning necessary practical skills, including how to write basic copy, prepare press releases and information kits, and develop a campaign strategy, budget and timeline. Stanton’s book Media relations, published in 2007, arose from teaching this unit.

Lumby also considered law and ethics to be an important theoretical and practical inclusion in media and communications. From 2002, she and Dunn alternately taught a unit titled MECO3003: Media, Law and Ethics, which introduced third-year students to key legal and ethical issues relevant to journalism and the professional fields of public communication. Students were given an introductory survey of the main ethical theories in Western thought to establish a framework within which to examine specific ethical issues that relate to media. They were also introduced to the structure of Australia’s legal system and to those aspects of the law that impinge on the work of media professionals. The 2003 book Remote control: New media, new ethics (2003), edited by Lumby and Elspeth Probyn, is a legacy of their work. It includes chapters by a number of University of Sydney scholars and PhD students including Dunn, Kath Albury, Milissa Deitz, Ghassan Hage and Duncan Ivison. Dunn’s work on the unit also led to the book Media, markets and morals (2011), co-authored with Edward H. Spence, Andrew Alexandra and Aaron Quinn.

Steven Maras was recruited to the University of Sydney in 2005, mainly to teach video production units. He also took over MECO3003: Media, Law and Ethics. Maras had completed his PhD in communication studies at Murdoch University and worked for 10 years as a lecturer at Western Sydney University. This was his first time teaching ethics, drawing from a philosophical research background evident in his PhD dissertation The hermeneutics of production: Extensions of the return to Bergson. He was instructed to interweave the teaching of ethics and law with discussions and debates around media practice.

“This was in line with the dual commitment of the degree to both scholarship and professional practice: an educational not just training commitment,” Maras told me. “Catharine wanted the degree to light an intellectual fire in the students.”

He used $500 that Lumby gave him to buy several ethics textbooks and recreated the unit. The unit was to focus not just on the laws and ethical considerations a practising journalist needed to know, but also on broader philosophical questions about the nature of government, law, social ethics and public interest. The idea was that if students could understand their role as journalists and carry this out responsibly, they could flourish individually and make a positive contribution to ethical debate in society.

By the time the Media and Communications program formally became a department in 2006, theoretical subjects based around media studies, the implications of digital technologies, cultural studies, and law and ethics complemented practical units on print, video, radio, online production, and media relations. Students were provided a well-rounded education, capped with a compulsory internship and an optional honours year. By the end of the undergraduate degree, students were well equipped to enter the workforce in a wide range of media and communications related industries.

Postgraduate students soon followed, completing the Master of Media Practice on offer from 2004 (see Chapter 9). All students left with production skills, broad knowledge about the world learned from wider subjects in the Arts faculty, and the ability to analyse and share information critically and ethically.

Lumby’s “baby” was truly up and thriving, with the path set for the next 15 years of expansion.

Works cited