Denise Hruby: From South-East Asia to Europe

Denise Hruby graduated in Journalism and Public Relations in 2012. After her studies she worked in Cambodia, China and other parts of South-East Asia and Africa for more than eight years. In the winter semester, she returned to her former university as a guest lecturer for the lecture Newsroom: Reportage Writing.

During her studies at Journalism and Public Relations (PR), Denise Hruby already did an internship in Cambodia. In South-East Asia she gathered experience in many kinds of journalism. At first, she worked at the copy desk and as a reporter. “One of the first stories I reported on was this stampede, where 450 people died on a bridge”, she said.

She continued as an Associate Editor and finally became Features Editor at ‘The Cambodia Daily’. After three years, Denise Hruby wanted to do something new and moved to China. There she worked as the Head of Features for the online magazine ‘sixth tone’ managing a team of 20 international journalists. “It was wonderful, we won a lot of awards, we got a lot of recognition”, she said.

In her stories Denise covered topics like the environment, social conflicts, land evictions, human rights or human trafficking and travelled to countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and took trips to India.

Since returning to Europe in autumn 2018, she has been working as a freelancer for different newspapers like “The Guardian”, “The Washington Post”, “Die Zeit” and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and has been visiting countries all over Europe.

As a guest lecturer at Journalisms and Public Relations (PR), she would give every student the advice that the people you get to know at university are the most important thing. “Some of my best friends, are people I met here”, she said and added not to forget about internships. “Do as many internships as you possibly can. Aim high, don’t just apply for some local paper, go for the best paper you can write for.”

Denise Hruby can be followed on http://www.denisehruby.com/

An article by Anna Papst and Barbara Stipper, students of Journalism and Public Relations (PR).