Final year Law/Media student Erdem Koc has been appointed editor of upstart for the rest of 2009.

In this capacity, he’ll be handling all the day to day editorial decisions, the commissioning of content, and the development of the site in consultation with the rest of the editorial team and program staff. He will also contribute a column and other pieces to upstart during the tenure of his editorship.

Erdem already has an impressive track record as a media practitioner. For six years, he’s been part of a team presenting the Turkish youth program on SBS radio. Over the last year, Erdem has also undertaken a range of roles with English-language SBS programs, including reporting from the February bushfires, and is currently employed on a permanent part-time basis with their Melbourne news room.

His articles have been published in The Age (where he completed a month-long internship earlier this year), and Crikey, and last year he also completed an internship at the Channel 10 newsroom.

I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Erdem to this new role. He can be reached on ekoc@students.latrobe.edu.au or on upstart at contact@upstart.net.au.

As of this semester, some assessment tasks in several of our journalism and media subjects at La Trobe are being designed specifically for publication on upstart, which, we hope, will provide more of our students with publishing experience. Erdem is undertaking a tour of duty this week to demonstrate the site to students commencing their second semester subjects.

In the meantime checkout this profile piece about Erdem that was written by Master of Global Communication student Stephanie De Campo.