"Journalism education (based for most of the past three decades at three Pacific universities) and industry short-course training have followed different yet parallel paths in the region. Aid donors have played important roles in both sectors, although often not particularly well coordinated. While journalism education was being established in the region for the first time at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1975, media industry executives met to plan a strategy to boost on-the-job training and to defend themselves from growing pressures from post-colonial governments. The industry established the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), which became a major regional media lobby group. Subsequently, the region’s state broadcasters broke away in 1988 to form a rival body, Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association (PIBA), and to establish the region’s first news cooperative, Pacnews. For a brief three-year period between 1988 and 1991, the university journalism education sector and industry training managed reasonable cooperation under UNESCO’s Pacjourn project. During this time, UPNG hosted Pacjourn and its staff of media academics and trainers ran short-courses for the benefit of the media industry. The focus then swung back to Fiji with a new UNESCO project leading to the establishment of the PINA-initiated Pacific Journalism Training Development Centre. While the UPNG Journalism Programme was funded initially by New Zealand aid, DWU was a private institution funded primarily by the Catholic Church and staffed mainly by volunteers. The degree programme founded at USP in the mid 1990s was funded by the French government for four years. In 1994, the Fiji media industry established a vocational training centre, the Fiji Journalism Institute (FJI), with UNESCO and other donor funding assistance along with the Fiji government, which provided office space. Although this venture collapsed after six years under a cloud over financial accountability, both the Fiji Media Council and PINA moved to revive the centre through the Fiji Institute of Technology. The Samoa Polytechnic (now the Samoa Institute of Technology) also established a vocational journalism school in 2002. Fiji has been the only Pacific country where the media industry has established a vocational programme competing with an established journalism school at a university—the region’s largest. This has prompted concerns about duplication and wastage of resources. AusAID, through its Pacific Media and Communications Facility and its associated Media in Development Initiative programme in Papua New Guinea, has gained ascendancy in the region as a media aid donor—and in most other fields, too. It has sought to achieve greater coordination in the region’s media training and aid cooperation between agencies. This also led to the merger of PINA and PIBA in 2004 for the benefit of the region. However, this trend has also led to growing concern in media and academic circles over a loss of independence and sovereignty over media training and educational policies—is aid a panacea or Pandora’s box for media training and education sustainability? It is critical for governance that future media training aid should have more transparency with funds being spread more evenly across several agencies so that no single industry group effectively holds too much power over journalism training policy. And the media should become proactive over reportage and debate over media aid issues and challenge conflicts of interest. Non-government organisations such as AusAID and the UN organisations need to tackle aid policy more robustly to push for a new funding paradigm in support of the Fourth Estate in the region in the digital age." (Conclusion)