Te Kete Kōrero has made leaps and bounds

Third year Media Arts student Donna-Lee Biddle is excited to see where Te Kete Kōrero can progress from here.

Te Kete Kōrero is a student based magazine at Wintec which Biddle is the head editor for.

For the students: Kahurangi Waititi and Donna-Lee Biddle stand in front of the marae holding the third edition of the publication
For the students: Donna-Lee Biddle (left)  and Kahurangi Waitit  stand in front of the marae holding the third edition of the publication

“A few of the team will be graduating next year, including myself.” Said Biddle.

“We are looking at Jason Renes to take over as editor of Te Kete Korero.”

Jason Renes is a 3rd year journalism student who started mid-year so will still have six months left in his course.

Renes contributes stories to Te kete Kōrero.

Biddle had been the only person to turn up to the first meeting three years ago, but from there was able to attract more attention from the Wintec public.

“I actually just wanted to meet Kahu.”

“Being a Maori student myself I was interested in meeting a Wintec Kaiawhina.”

Kahurangi Waititi is the managing editor of Te Kete Kōrero and also the founding member of the publication.

She is also the only Wintec Media Arts Kaiawhina, giving her great respect amongst students and in particular Maori students.

Biddle is already an accomplished news writer haven written a number of stories for the Waikato independent and has even had front page stories for the Waikato Times.

So her role as Editor and Sub Editor for Te Kete Kōrero came as no surprise to anyone.

“I also sub edit, so I check the content all flows and also check for grammatical errors.” Said Biddle.

Since the beginning Te Kete Kōrero has produced three editions of the publication.

Every edition being longer and more professional, which is from having a larger group of people join the publication, all interested in sharing their stories and ideas.

“Every edition we’ve released, we’ve had to push back the deadline.” Said Biddle.

“We all have study to focus on and lives outside of tech which makes it a little bit harder to meet these deadlines.”

Looking ahead Te Kete Kōrero has made huge leaps and bounds from their first edition to their third edition.

Waititi and Biddle will be able to look back in years to come and be proud of what they achieved.