Listen to Cathy Strong's radio interview

Former Beacon Journal State Desk reporter Cathy Strong, who has been in New Zealand for so long that you can't tell her from the native Kiwis, is a communication and media sciences professor at Zayed University in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate.

Cathy was interviewed on radio DubaiEye's "Nightline with James Piecowye" about gender in the media.

Her Zayed research class is involved in a 130-country project on that topic.

Points that Cathy made in the 37-minute interview:

-- While a majority of media presenters are women, only 21% of the newsmakers they interview are women.

-- Dubai TV news usually is presented by a woman.

And then there are other statements that caught my attention:

-- "At my first big newspaper for my first big story, my editor yelled at me and I jumped back on the desk and yelled back at him. You have to break your way in to show that you’re rought and tumble." The late BJ State Editor Pat Englehart was known to yell, particularly at new reporters. But nearly all of them wound up loving him, as I did.

-- "Online journalism is better than working for a newspaper if you don’t like swearing all the time.” Again, that sounds familiar to 1970s BJ State Desk folks.

If you want to hear the radio interview, punctuated by a lot of laughter by Cathy, click on the headline. The interview will start after the short promo.

She got her journalism degree from the University of Washington and her master's in mass communications from Kent State.

Cathy has held positions on newspapers, magazines, radio and television in nearly three decades of being well-known in journalism circles. That includes the Morning Report, Radio New Zealand news, Television New Zealand, South Pacific Television, National Business Review and the Beacon Journal.

She's been a lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand's oldest journalism school, and lectured or trained journalists at four New Zealand tertiary journalism schools; Radio New Zealand; TVNZ, Te Karere and BCNZ, Kiwi stations; Solomon Island Broadcasting Corporation, and Japan as far back as 1970. Cathy often judges media contests.

If you want to see photos of Cathy in New Zealand and the Solomon Islands, go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/JohnOlesky/CathyStrong2009#