Jay

I am Jay Hartwell, a media educator and consultant, who provides lectures, workshops, and editorial assistance to university and professional journalism associations in the United States and Asia.

This work developed from 20 years of training and guiding undergraduate reporters and editors as the faculty adviser to student-led media programs at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa on the island of Oʻahu, where I went to high school, worked for 38 years with news and communications after college and graduate school on the continent, and helped raise a daughter and son with my wife Cindy.

From 1997 to 2017, I was the faculty advisor to Ka Leo O Hawaiʻi, now a twice-a-month student newspaper, with a website and social media @kaleoohawaii operation for the Mānoa campus, and Hawaiʻi Review, the biannual literary journal. For eight years I also served as advisor to KTUH, the student-managed, 3,000-watt FM radio station (90.1-Honolulu and 91.1-North Shore) that is licensed to the UH Board of Regents. These programs and University of Hawaii Productions, which I also advised, are governed by the university’s Student Media Board.

As president of the Hawaii Publishers Association, I continue to assist with the annual Hawaiʻi High School Journalism Awards in the spring, and provided testimony in Hawaii Scholastic Journalism Association's successful effort to pass New Voices legislation in 2022 for the state.

I came to the university after 20 years in journalism, writing and editing; first as a summer intern for Oʻahu's afternoon newspaper (Honolulu Star-Bulletin 1977 and 1979), then as a general assignment reporter for the morning newspaper (The Honolulu Advertiser 1980-1988). Those papers merged in 2010 to form the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

I left the newspaper to write Nā Mamo: Hawaiian People Today (ʻAi Pōhaku Press), which won Hawaiʻi Book of the Year and Excellence in Hawaiian Culture honors in 1997. I also served as Communications Officer for the Honolulu City Council (1992-1994).

While working at the university, Ka Leo and KTUH staffs won national and state honors for their work, including consecutive Paʻi Awards for College Newspaper Excellence. The College Media Association selected me in 2012 for the Reid H. Montgomery Distinguished Service Award and made me a Lifetime Member in 2017.

In 2013 I accepted a Fulbright Scholar award to teach journalism at universities in Viet Nam for the 2013-2014 academic year. That opportunity led to a workshop at the U.S. Embassy's American Center in Yangon, Myanmar, and in subsequent summers to conducting seminars, panels and lectures for university programs in Singapore, Viet Nam, Korea, and Japan, for the Asian American Journalists Association-Asia Chapter annual N3Con conference and the Vietnam Journalists Association, and for the Associated Collegiate Press' annual conventions in the United States.