Experience

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  GAAP Consulting

  • Communications Director

    • Jan 2014 - Present

    I hone this financial consultancy's reports and newsletters and rewrite and consult on clients' tender documents. To be frank, the financial, auditing and accounting industries are not known for their thrilling prose. I shorten and try to make more user-friendly what GAAP Consulting and i...

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  Stephen Downes

  • Freelance writer and journalist

    • Jan 1986 - Present
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  Stephen Downes & Associates Pty Ltd

  • Melbourne, Australia

  • Journalist, writer, adult trainer, uni teacher, speechwriter

    • 1986 - Present
    • Melbourne, Australia

    Please see the summary.

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  David Syme and Company Limited

  • Melbourne, Australia

  • Education editor, feature writer, section editor, leader writer

    • Nov 1975 - Oct 1986
    • Melbourne, Australia

    These were salaried jobs at 'The Age', but from 1977 onwards -- sometimes intermittently -- I reviewed restaurants as well. For most of the years I was a feature writer, but I was sent to Iraq just after Hussein came to power. I also covered the Kanak insurrections in New Caledonia in the...

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  Agence France-Presse

  • Reporter, editor

    • Oct 1971 - Oct 1974

    I began on the English-language sports desk at AFP. While most of the work involved rewriting from French correspondents' copy, I was one of the few anglos who left the desk to report. I interviewed Bjorn Borg when he was an up-and-comer, and for a week covered the Monte Carlo Rally, huge fun...