Journalist and teacher. Died in Auckland this
week, aged 76
By DON MILNE*
Journalism, said Mark Twain, was not much of a job, "but it beats working."
To Geoffrey Roland Black, journalism was not just a job but a lifelong enthusiasm that he passed on to hundreds of students at the Auckland Technical Institute (now the Auckland University of Technology).
It was also a vocation requiring not just the special skills he taught so ably but the persistence, determination, hard work, high standards and integrity that marked his own career as a journalist.
Students who took the journalism course he helped to set up in the early 1970s, and of which he became tutor-in-charge in 1975 (many of whom are in high positions in the craft today) found that while he set high standards of effort and achievement they were no less than he delivered himself.
Born in Auckland, Geoff Black's first taste of journalism came as a cadet reporter on the New Zealand Herald in 1942, when he took his share of wartime firewatch duties on the roof at night.
Then it was on to country papers, and then the Auckland Star where, from 1956 to 1966, he was sports editor and editor of the weekend 8 O'Clock.
In 1966 he was appointed full-time editor of the 8 O'Clock, transforming it from a mainly sports paper into a general weekend paper. Four years later, he became managing editor of Radio Hauraki, establishing and running New Zealand's first independent radio newsroom.
Around that time, Geoff Black and a few others saw a need for a basic journalism course in Auckland. When ATI won the right to set up a course, he became foundation chairman of its advisory committee. The course had its problems until he took over; since then, it has not looked back.
His successful formula was based on practical exercises linked closely to the real world of journalism, plus hard work. He had little time for ivory tower academics or paper-shuffling bureaucrats, relishing the hurly-burly chaos of the newsroom. Geoff Black retired from full-time work in 1989 but continued to teach various groups. He died unexpectedly in hospital from a brain haemorrhage. He is survived by his wife, Hazel, and daughters Debbie and Sherrie.
* Don Milne is chairman of the AUT journalism advisory committee and former chairman of the New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation.
<i>Obituary:</i> Geoff Black
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