What has James Mahon been up to?

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) – News 12 viewers will remember James Mahon, a reporter here for three years.

He left a couple of years ago and has lived a varied and adventurous life since then.

James is back for a visit so we caught up with him about what he’s doing now.

After James Mahon left his full time journalist job here at News 12 Now, he became a Lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland… teaching bachelors and master’s level Journalism courses.

“It’s great to get content out there and it’s great to be able to do it from your pocket. We also need to not forget the principles of what makes good journalism, which is balance, fairness, honesty and being messengers, that’s our job, our job is to take the voice of the people, who don’t often get heard, and give them a platform and a place where they can be heard.”

James Mahon is teaching the next generation of multimedia journalists the usefulness of newsgathering, using a cell phone.

“So I’m doing a doctoral studies over the next five years, that’s half practical, half written. The practical element is a documentary shot on an iphone, around the world, so five countries, profiling five TV stations and how they, in turn use, iphones and mobile phones in different ways. To share locations, to find stories, to gather stories, to distribute stories.”

James also wrote a book, “Through Irish Eyes”, documenting his experiences living and working in the news gathering business in the southern part of the United States. He had a book signing event Sunday night as a part of his most recent visit to the states to work on his documentary.

“But yeah, the signing was fantastic, it was great so see so many incredible people that I got to share memories with and moments and live amongst, for so many years and I hadn’t seen them and they were all in that one room at that same time at the same moment. And it’s very difficult, there are certain times in your life when you get loads of people together, often they’re weddings or funerals, but it was really nice that it was neither of those.”