Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney

Anna Patty really mixed the practical with the theoretical when she completed her Master of Arts (Journalism) degree at the University of Wollongong in 1992.

Anna was a young journalist at the Illawarra Mercury when she studied at UOW, working the late “police rounds” shift from 6pm to 1.30am. She’d finish work, grab a few hours sleep, and head off to university for her Journalism studies under Professor Clem Lloyd.

Since completing her course, Anna has worked on some of the biggest newspapers in Britain and Australia, including The Times in London. She is currently The Sydney Morning Herald’s Education Editor.

“When I joined the Mercury I had an undergraduate degree, majoring in English literature, from the University of Sydney,” says Anna. “I thought the Masters degree would provide a good opportunity to expand my skills in an area directly relevant to my career.

” Anna says she was also attracted by the idea of learning from the late Professor Lloyd, who had an outstanding career as a journalist and media educator when he established the Master of Arts (Journalism) course at UOW in 1990.

“Professor Lloyd gave me an enormous amount of encouragement and inspiration,” she says. “He was an excellent teacher and had a great sense of humour, which made the classes enjoyable.

“Anna remembers being exhausted by the schedule of day-time study and night work. “But being much younger, I had enough energy to enjoy campus life and the friendships I made,” she says. “And working at night was fun because there were often opportunities to write late-breaking page one stories, and then pick the paper off the rolling printing press an hour or two later.

“Anna moved from the Mercury to The Sun-Herald and then The Daily Telegraph in Sydney before working in Athens during the 2004 Olympics and The Times, on a News Corporation exchange. She returned to Australia to work at the Telegraph's state parliament bureau.

In 2006 she was appointed Education Editor at the Herald, where she oversees the paper’s coverage of secondary and tertiary education and reports on school-based issues.