Anne Reevell’s advice for journalism students
Anne Reevell addressing the Centre for Journalism today said if you walk into a work experience placement without knowing about the organisation and the work they do then you will face “instant death”. She said: “When you send out your CVs make sure that you have watched something that the production company has produced.” “What does surprise me with people who come and work with us is that they don’t watch TV enough and they’re not reading newspapers enough. People should be reading op/ed pages, they should know what is going on in the news and be fluent in world...
Read MorePeter Simmonds’, Assistant-Editor BBC TV News, tips for journalism students
Peter Simmonds, Assistant-Editor of BBC TV News, visited the Centre for Journalism today. During his journalistic career he has worked across commercial radio, Sky News, 5 Live, BBC World News and more. Simmonds has spent the last 16 years at the BBC, during which he says ‘things have changed a lot’. “When I started there wasn’t any online journalistic presence.” He also added that the ‘BBC used multimedia quite slowly at first’. When asked the question of tips for getting a job he said when he was starting out he ‘managed to get a job in the downturn’. He offered the...
Read MoreThe journalism student’s life
My journalistic life recently has involved renting myself to pay the bills, talking to drug dealers in a pitch black park, and uncovering which shops are selling fireworks to under age youths in Chatham, Medway. Alongside this I’ve been working on an investigative piece for my final year project. I don’t want to tell much about it at the moment, except that I’ve found out that the BBC are working on a very similar documentary, so the competition is on. It’s myself vs a much larger, more experienced, and better-resourced BBC. I’m looking forward to it. As usual we’ve been kept busy...
Read MoreCatherine Quinn’s tips for freelancing
‘Never say you’re a student journalist, ever’ was the advice given to us at the Centre for Journalism today by the freelancer Catherine Quinn. Why? Because it often ends up potential interviewees suddenly becoming too busy to help and leaving the soundtrack to my life being ‘Don’t hang up’ by The Orlons. I thought I’d share some other tips she gave us after talking to some journalism students at the NCTJ student council, who said they’d like some information on freelancing: - Quinn said that being a freelancer is the ‘ultimate sales job’. It’s 70% selling and...
Read MoreAllan Little’s top tips for student journalists
BBC correspondent Allan Little visited the Centre for Journalism today for the second time. Unfortunately this time, Little’s visit was declared ‘off the record’ by the gods of journalism at the CfJ. This therefore ruined my planned blog for the day. However, Little did advise never giving excuses for failing to get a story. So whilst I won’t report on the more topical issues discussed in a Q&A session, I will point out five of his top tips for student journalists as his talk was largely covered on the BBC College of Journalism website anyway: Have something to say. He...
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