Len Granato (1938 – 2004)

EDUCATOR COMMITTED TO TRUTH

Dr Leonard Alan Granato was a journalist and journalism educator who was deeply committed to truth, accuracy and freedom of the press.

Born in New York, Len studied maths, history and government, and wrote his doctoral thesis at Southern Illinois University on Magna Carta, which reflected his own conviction of the importance of swift, evidence-based justice for all. He defended the rights of all journalists to work in an unhindered fashion, regardless of their political leanings.

Len worked at four newspapers in the United States before joining United Press International (UPI), where he held senior editorial positions. He became a lecturer, working at four US universities, including the University of Arkansas at little Rock, where he served five years as Head of the Department of journalism. He left the USA for Queensland in 1979 to work as Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the then Queensland Institute of Technology (later to become Queensland University of Technology), also becoming the head of the Journalism program.

Len took six months Professional Development Leave from QIT to refresh his skills and to build his knowledge of Australian journalism by spending six months as  a senior journalist with the Queensland Times in Ipswich. He was highly commended in the Walkley Awards for an eight-part feature series on Steet Kids that he produced during that period.

Len was deeply concerned when he arrived in Australia that students were almost completely dependent on American and British textbooks. His experience with the Queensland Times inspired his writing of Newspaper Feature Writing, with the first of several editions published in 1990, followed the next year with the publication of Reporting and Writing News. His two contributions became standard textbook for newswriting and feature writing classes across Australia during the 1990s.

Len became associate professor at QUT before retiring in 1996, and was conferred life membership of the Journalism Education Association (later to become JERAA) for his services to journalism.

He continued to teach for another year at the University of Southern Queensland followed by six months at Bloomsberg University in Pennsylvania, before retiring completely to dedicate his attentions full-time to his family and being an artistic director of community theatre.