About
Hi – I’m Leila Henderson, aka, Buzztart – a name given to me by my good friend Doug Jacquier of Connecting Up Australia My aim is to keep you informed about all things that add buzz to our lives.
I’ve been a journalist since Moses was a boy – a long, long time! I spent my very early years in Toronto, Canada, before moving to Scotland with my Scottish parents. That’s where I trained as a journo, at DC Thomsons in Dundee (then famous for ‘jam, jute and journalism’ – for those too young to know, jute is made from hemp, used in flooring materials).
My first big job was at IPC Magazines in London, in Covent Garden close to Fleet Street – it was a big step for a wee Scottish lassie but I loved it! A bit adventurous, I took off with my backpack and made it all the way to Australia – via Amsterdam, Athens and the Greek Islands, then through Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – what was then called the ‘Hippy Trail’.
After flying on the last leg of my journey, from Madras to Perth, Western Australia, just in time for Cyclone Tracy, I hitchhiked straight from the airport across the vast Nullarbor Plain (on my own – don’t tell my daughter!) – I just couldn’t fathom the miles and miles of nothingness, coming from tiny Scotland.
Fast forward to my whole career – from writing about Royalty at Australian Women’s Weekly during Ita Buttrose’s reign – working in Mexico as a travel writer – a sojourn in St Tropez for 6 months and Paris for another 6 – on to the Toronto Star and 5 wonderful years in Canada – then back to Sydney and Reader’s Digest, entertainment writing for People, and managing editor of Vacations Magazine. There honestly aren’t many topics I haven’t covered, with 20-odd books under my belt too! But my favourite time was the 7 years freelancing for The Australian IT Section – which led to where I am today, running a media technology business that includes Australia’s highest ranking press release service – Newsmaker.
Back in the heady dotcom days, when I was working for The Australian.
Newsmaker is an online press release service that offers professional PR and marketing tools for the social media age – Google News indexing, social media sharing and traditional media release distribution to thousands of journalists across hundreds of subject categories. The result is that our clients’ press release headlines are viewed by tens of thousands of people. We even give your press release a headstart by actively sharing across our extensive networks. That’s a lot of power to your marketing efforts, for a cost that’s less than a classified ad in your local paper!
