Hi, I’m Nicky and I currently teach journalism courses to undergrads at the University of Colorado, Boulder, while a Ph.D. candidate in the Journalism track of the Media, Research and Practice Ph.D.
My research interests center on media industries, the funding of investigative journalism and how to communicate its value, and algorithms in the development of news habits.
Living just a short walk away from the Denver Press Club, I’m a member of the club’s scholarship committee that seeks to support and shine a light on young talent, and the youth engagement committee.
My professional background in the communications industry spans nearly two decades and three countries. The first five plus years, I worked as a broadcast and online news reporter, producer, researcher and presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney and rural Australia.
Every weekday, I presented and produced a regional current affairs radio program for ABC Rural. To generate original stories I traveled to remote areas in the Australian Outback and the Queensland Tropics to attend community events and do outside broadcasts and live crosses after dust storms and cyclones, filing to statewide and national programs.
My work was broadcast on ABC NewsRadio, ABC Radio National, ABC Radio Australia, ABC Local Radio and ABC television News 24.
I also did stints reporting from Mongolia on violent election riots where my phone was trampled and I broke the story using a salvaged SIM card, a borrowed cell and a hostel computer.
For my reporting from Timor-Leste on agricultural aid projects and peace efforts, I was selected as finalist for a national award, the Australian Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting.
Other roles with the ABC included Sydney-based international radio desk producer, radio news reporter and researcher for a Foreign Correspondent television documentary about the 2008-09 Gaza War.
In Germany I reported on German DAX and MDAX companies for Dow Jones Newswires, contributing to The Wall Street Journal online and print editions, and flashed earnings and breaking news on the English spot desk.
Following that I spent several years as a remotely employed news translator, freelance journalist and content producer to take advantage of location flexibility.
Working remotely in Mexico to learn Spanish, I was asked to work as an instructor and ended up staying several years in Guadalajara teaching Business German and English to Mexican university students and young professionals.
This experience plus my long-standing concerns about the funding issues in the journalism industry and their effect on reporting quality and thereby on society at large led me to pursue a Ph.D.
While being an avid reader and writer ever since childhood, I found my love for learning about different cultures, countries and people as a teenager when working three months in the Himalayas as a harvest hand in a village without electricity or running water, and no shared verbal language.
This did not prevent communication. I learned harvesting techniques, how to build a threshing floor, thresh barley, mill and roast grain, make butter and appreciate butter tea and tsampa while living with a Ladakhi family.
Having grown disillusioned and demotivated in boarding school in my home country of Germany, I had quit after year 10 to work and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Yes, I had my midlife crisis early.
After the harvesting work in India, and spending the rest of a the year working long hours in retail, hospitality and market research with colleagues who were jobbing next to university, I decided to return to high school for college prep. I realized I wanted to learn a lot more about, well, everything and university might be one of the places that could help with that.
I am now fluent in English, German and Spanish and my education includes a Master of International Relations (Australia), a Bachelor of Communication and Media Studies, majoring in journalism (Australia), a NAATI accreditation as a German-English translator, several diplomas in sports injury therapies and remedial massage (Australia), a certificate in online course design and another one in digital photography (Mexico), and two years full-time training in contemporary dance and performing arts in Norway and Germany after school.
Journalism didn’t immediately follow after dancing. I was in my late 20s when I received my first undergraduate degree.
Needing a more reliable income and familiar with professional athletes and injuries, I first trained and later worked several years in Sydney as a sports injury and massage therapist with amateur and professional triathletes, including some that went on to compete (and place! Yay) in the Olympics and Triathlon World Championships.
In addition, I tutored students as a clinical supervisor at the Australian College of Natural Therapies Student Clinic. I still hoped to pursue dancing, and practiced by myself and took casual dance classes in my spare time.
That ended after I lost a fight with a car while cycling home from early morning work at a race horse stable. I used to work 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. mucking out boxes and warming up race horses before college classes started at 9 a.m. I was busy, and now I was injured.
Standing at my hospital bed while I remembered nothing of my ambulance trip, the police recommended I don’t make a report unless it was really, really serious, which they suggested it wasn’t.
My boss at the time urged me not to apply for worker’s compensation, because that would get him in trouble as he had let us go early that day from work at the stables.
Relatively new to the country from overseas, having suffered a concussion, and unfamiliar with local laws while also not yet speaking English as fluently, I ended up getting no financial support in the aftermath to pay for medical care nor could I miss income from my casual employment.
Therefore I returned to physical labor at the horse stable two days days later with severe back pain due to a stable vertebra fracture.
That was not so great and led to years of pain that made a long-term career in the field of sports injury treatment unrealistic. Concentration difficulties following from the concussion paired with no support services at college led to failed exams and meant I couldn’t stay in the study track I was in.
By now I had seen quite a bit of the world, including its less enthralling aspects, from dire poverty and lack of opportunity in regions of India, to the various traumas I became aware of through my dad’s work running a home for foster children, and my own experiences trying to find my way in various countries while not living with my parents from age 15 and working in a range of unskilled labor jobs.
After the end of one career, I wanted to make a more judicious choice with my next one: something that was more crisis proof and had greater social impact, while also having some ethical people involved who might care if people were, let’s say, hit by cars and needed support.
Journalism for me combined intellectual curiosity and international experience with creativity and an urge to find ways of drawing attention to issues that thrive in silence or ignorance, and perhaps make the world a little better that way.
I had come to the conclusion that the stories we tell each other can be extraordinarily powerful in shaping the way we think about our surroundings and the people in it, and that this has real consequences for people’s lives.
I didn’t always like the way issues were framed in broadcast and print, and wanted to be involved in the decision-making process on what stories were selected and how they were told.
I switched to a degree in journalism and while studying went from work experience and internships, community television and radio, to work at the national broadcaster as a transcriber and newsroom assistant before moving to reporting and producing.
Journalism was also a great opportunity to chat with and learn from a great variety of people I otherwise would not have met and work with some very smart, dedicated and inspiring colleagues.
I still love all that and now dedicate my time to researching the funding challenges that impede the proliferation of high-quality journalism.
Outside of work I love the outdoors, albeit in a more relaxed manner than I used to. Marathons (12) and ultramarathons (18) I’ve run are below, with the longest a 150 mile footrace from a beach to the top of Australia’s highest mountain.
It took me nearly 40 hours. In Colorado’s San Juan mountains, the Hardrock 100 with 33,000 feet of accumulated climb, plus the same in descent, took me even longer without sleep or rest.
I don’t think I’m running away from something. I got into it after I had to give up contemporary dance due to the car accident, and only months later also surviving a crime that left me with PTSD.
As my recovery came along I needed to fill the hole left by dance training and funnel a lot of energy somewhere new. I also appreciated the fragility of physical and mental health more, so that I wanted to make the most of it and celebrate life while I could.
I always found sports good for mental health management and enjoy the psychological endurance and openness it takes to test our limits and see whether we can be more than we, or others, think we are.
The running community was outstandingly welcoming and offered positive camaraderie and support, and the natural areas trail ultras are held in are usually stunning, so I stuck with it.
When I run long distances, I tend to mostly feel gratitude for being alive and healthy enough to do this, plus a ton of fun and excitement about the adventure. Any phases of suffering I do feel I tend to forget later, or learn from them on the very rare occasion that much of a race feels like a downer.
Therefore, if any direction needs to be applied, I’d say I’m running toward something. And sometimes it’s just hugs and hot soup at the finish line.
If you have questions, want to work with me or chat about trail running, get in touch.
2023
Run Rabbit Run 50 Mile, trail (USA) – 13:39:17
2017
Hardrock 100 Mile Endurance Run, trail (USA) – 45:35:14
Tarawera 100k, trail (New Zealand) – 14:35:39
2016
Coast to Kosci 240k/150 miles, road mostly/some trail, (Australia) – 39:43:41
Carcoar Cup 60k, road (Australia) – 6:55:36
Blackmores Sydney Marathon, road (Australia) – 4:13:17
Leadville Trail 100 Mile Run, trail (USA) – 28:03:34
Ultra-Trail Australia 100k, trail (Australia) – 15:29:14
Sixfoot Track Marathon 45k, trail (Australia) – 6:48:07
Taupo Length of the Lake 67k, road (New Zealand) – 9:40:28
Tarawera 100k, trail (New Zealand) – 16:43:42
2015
Javelina Jundred 100k, trail (USA) – 20:45:08
The Bear 100 Mile Endurance Run, trail (USA) – 33:37:33
Glow Worm Tunnel Trail Marathon, trail (Australia) – can’t find time, no longer online.
The Miwok 100k Trail Run, trail (USA) – 14:12:54
2014
The North Face Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc CCC 100k, trail (France, Italy, Switzerland) – 25:33:38
The North Face Ultramarathon 100k, trail (Australia) – 18:54:57
2013
Ultima Frontera Ultramarathon 83k, trail/road (Spain) – 13:28:06
Berkeley Trail Adventure Ultramarathon 50k, trail (USA) – 8:06:25
Swiss Alpine Ultramarathon 78k, trail (Switzerland) – 13:38:38
2011
Beirut Marathon, road (Lebanon) – 3:55:53
Athens Marathon, road (Greece) – exact time no longer online, it went okay
Frankfurt Marathon, road (Germany) – 4:12:39
Amsterdam Marathon, road (The Netherlands) – 4:11:58
Boston Marathon, road (USA) – 4:17:03
2010
Muenster Marathon, road (Germany) – 4:02:36
Townsville Running Festival Marathon, road (Australia) – 3:38:38, Boston qualifier at the time
Dili Marathon, road (East Timor) – finished 5th woman, but the exact result is gone online 🙁
2009
Yurrebilla 56k, trail (Australia) – DNF
2008
Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset Ultramarathon 100k, trail (Mongolia) – 17:00 hrs
2007
Blackmores Sydney Marathon, road (Australia) – 3:36:18