Stewart Fist
Stewart Fist is an Australian journalist, newspaper columnist , magazine editor and operator of the investigative journalist's [1] web-site, which is gradually being transferred to SourceWatch.
He has also worked internationally as a TV current-affairs and documentary film maker and academic. He was the Training Director, then head of the external training arm ('Open Program') of the Australian Film, Radio and TV School. For journalists, he also ran a series of UNESCO's video-training courses in India and Burma (Myanmar) and produced reports on the need for specialist film and video training in these areas.
When electronic text systems first came to Australia's he established a private on-line research company, 'IMFORM' and wrote the manual introducing on-line searching for the Overseas Telecommunications Authority (OTC), and later their user's manual for the first email system (Minerva) in Australia. This was pre-internet and before home computers were available; the OTC system used Teletype printer terminals and the X-25 protocol over dial-up phone lines to access the mainframe USA-government databases.
Background
His original qualifications are as an Optometrist (Uni of Western Australia) and he practiced as a specialist contact lens clinician at both Royal Perth and Fremantle Hospitals.
He joined TCN Nine in Sydney in 1993 and moved to join its documentary series, Project'64 (until Project '69) working with Robert Raymond, the original founder of the ABC's "Four Corners". Later he ran his own film company "Special Project Films".
After a period with the AFRTS he moved over to print journalism editing a number of technical magazines for the Fairfax subsidiary, Magazine Promotions. Between 1990 and 2004 he wrote the political-technical 'Crossroads' column for News Limited's national newspaper, The Australian.
His encyclopaedia of terms used in the early days of electronic communications ["The Informatics Handbook" 1998] and "The Australian Database Directory" written for OTC were both out-of-date before they rolled off the press. They are only of historical interest today. However they are still being sold on-line and at generous prices. BE WARNED.
