Cathy Strong cracks ribs while snowboarding

1970s Beacon Journal State Desk reporter Cathy Strong has been a snowboarding instructor for years when she wasn’t teaching journalism. But she cracked her ribs recently while snowboarding in New Zealand's mountains.

Quips Cathy: “Darn.   I've had a fairly good, and long, snowboard career with very few injuries.   This annoys me (as well as pains me).“

It’s not the first time Cathy has dealt with fractures. She slipped on a stairwell in 2009 and broke her foot during her three years teaching journalism in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. UAE is a federation of seven independent states in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

Cathy recently went from communication and media sciences professor at Zayed University in Dubai to the faculty of the Wellington Journalism School within Massey University. She is developing a masters program in journalism.

The journalism campus is in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. Cathy lives about an hour away on the Kapiti Coast’s Te Horo Beach.   

Cathy is teaching converged journalism at Wellington.  She wrote, “I’m  teaching them to use cameras, videos, mics, pad and pencils to gather news to put on all the platforms.   Last week we were doing news audio package podcasts, this week is video podcasts.   Next week I'll make them into mojos (mobile journalists) using their mobile devices to collect and upload news stories.”

Cathy has 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 has three daughters: Rebecca, Penelope and Amanda.