Donna Chisholm


Donna Elise Chisholm is a New Zealand investigative journalist and author.

Career

Chisholm was the first female chief reporter at the Auckland Star newspaper. Former New Zealand Listener editor Jenny Wheeler has called her the most "outstanding health reporter New Zealand's ever seen." She is best known for her campaign in the Sunday Star-Times to free David Dougherty from prison for a rape he did not commit. Dougherty was subsequently exonerated and awarded $868,728 in compensation. Chisholm's six-year investigation was dramatised in the 2009 Television New Zealand film Until Proven Innocent, and recounted in the 2017 book A Moral Truth: 150 years of investigative journalism in New Zealand by James Hollings.
Chisholm is the author of the book From the Heart, a biography of the heart surgeon Brian Barratt-Boyes.
She lives in Auckland, and is the editor-at-large for monthly current affairs magazine North & South, and senior writer for the weekly New Zealand Listener.

Awards