Lucy Hockings visits AUT

One of AUT’s international success stories has come back to share her stories with budding journalists.

Lucy Hockings – who graduated from the university in its earlier incarnation – now hosts her own BBC news show, GMT.

The former TVNZ reporter and producer, who has also worked at CNN and Reuters, returned to her roots this week.

Ms Hockings spoke to current journalism students about her international experience and how she sees the media.

“The world right now is so challenging. What we are facing as journalists every single day makes it really interesting, challenging and stimulating. Sometimes just getting through the day is a success story,” she said.

Ms Hockings shared stories that covered everything from covering the 2016 Presidential Election to Brexit and Syria – “Every major international news story over the past 15 years I’ve been involved in,” Ms Hockings said.

She underscored the importance of her role by saying it was principally about making people care. As an example: “My brother had no interest in international news, he was interested in house prices. But by explaining to him how it affected him made him care a lot more,” Ms Hockings said to her enthusiastic audience.

As for her future: “I have my own programme at the BBC, in some ways it doesn’t get much better than what I’m doing right now. I would love to do some longer form debates, maybe have three people on a panel and go for an hour, that would really push and challenge me.”

Her love for the BBC has not wavered after 15 years with the broadcaster. “There’s nothing better than being a journalist, writing, researching and reporting on things but also learning and growing at the same time, and I still feel that way.”

Her main tip for budding journalists, “I would say to all journalism students out there there is a huge amount of opportunity. We live in a very interconnected, dynamic and changing world and people’s need for information is still quite insatiable, so it’s a great time to be a journalist”.

Her parting advice to us was, “The heart of every story you do has got be about people”.