Paul Osborne

Current job
Senior Political Writer, Australian Associated Press, Parliament House, Canberra.

Degree
Bachelor of Business (Communication) majoring in journalism (1989), Master of Arts (Journalism) 2000.

First job
Cadet reporter with Central Queensland News in Emerald.

Story so far
2015 marks 25 years in journalism for me.

I began my career with APN News and Media, having been headhunted by the company in my final year of journalism study at QUT (after winning a rural news award and taking out the newspaper publishing prize with my student team). I was somewhat surprised to find that having used the latest PCs, desktop publishing software and the AAP wire at QUT, the newspaper that hired me only had electric typewriters, and the compositors had to retype our copy into the system. We printed out and subbed the copy “on the stone”, using blue pencils and Exacto knives.

I worked in the Anglican Media office in Brisbane from 1995-2000, producing a monthly newspaper called Focus. The newspaper won a swag of Australasian Religious Press Association awards over five years including the top prize – the Gutenberg award. During this time I also kept my hand in mainstream journalism, working as a casual sub-editor at The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and a casual reporter with AAP, as well as a casual tutor at QUT in electronic journalism.

I joined AAP full-time in 2001 and have been state political correspondent in Brisbane, Queensland bureau chief and now senior political writer in Canberra.