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 affairs.”

“People will be interviewing you who are actually obsessive about news and journalism. I still listen to all the news bulletins I can.”

She said it is part of the daily fabric of a journalist’s life.

She also added that any kind of experience can be helpful for working in the media “so if it takes you a little time to get going don’t worry about it” and she noted the importance of “networking like crazy”.

Reevell said she started out knowing that she wanted to be a journalist and now avoids being caught up in management too much by ensuring she is still making programmes, because it is what she loves.

When starting out she applied to the BBC and was rejected because at that time “they all came from Oxford or Cambridge”.

Later on she applied to the BBC again and got onto a course. She was one of the first intakes not from Oxbridge.  She said: “I do remember being very patronised and someone said to me ‘Isn’t it marvellous that they are taking people like you on the course.’”

She also noted how few women used to be in TV management positions at the BBC, adding that she would often be the only woman on a course.

She said the BBC used to be like a “gentlemen’s club” before the invention of electronic newsgathering. Everyone used to go off to the bar once they’d met their deadlines, but technology caused the end of deadlines.

Anne Reevell has worked for Radio 4 for more than 20 years, she was Chief Producer of Network Radio in Manchester, Deputy Home Editor at BBC TV News, started her own company, Moonbeam Films, producing documentaries for a wide range of outlets, and has made one of the most watched documentaries Diary of a Princess/Diana in Angola, amongst more.

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 following tips for journalism students:

- Get experience and get yourself seen.

- Find out a good story and find out as much about it as you can about it.

- Ideas and treatment are the most important things to bring into the newsroom.

- Embrace everything that’s going to come along.

- Be prepared for an interview: “If you can’t even research the programme how are you going to research a story for the programme?”

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 at the Centre for Journalism. In fact you can even hear one of our students take on the notorious Kelvin Mackenzie after he calls us lazy students.

This year we’re spending a lot of time on live news days. I was joint editor for last Friday’s one. We spent the day working on a news website, the CfJ Newswire, covering a mix of local, national and international stories.

During the day we splashed a bunch of exclusives including my own titled ‘Drug dealing haven discovered in children’s park in Medway’. It includes an interview with a local drug dealer, Martin, who is laughingly dealing only metres from Medway Police Station.

Rebekah Floyd made her splash with a Kent law professor declaring anti-violence campaigners, who voiced their disapproval at the riots at the recent student protests, are ‘living in cloud-cuckoo-land’. Kent Online picked up the story and published it on their website, with reference to the CfJ Newswire.

James Woodcock and John Saunders reported on how fishing quotas are risking lives, with a video interview from Whitstable and Nick Poskitt reported on 3G problems ‘plaguing’ Kent customers, with a multimedia Flash presentation embedded.

The day was a success on the whole and we received some great feedback from readers. You can see more of our work on the website while it’s still visible.

You should keep up with our activities at the Centre for Journalism on our main website.

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 30% writing.

-       Different editors like different styles of pitching. Her most successful one is known as the ‘headsell’. It includes the headline, standfirst, lead in paragraph and body text in bullet points.

-       Make sure that the publication you’re pitching to takes freelance – quickly ring the editor to check.

-       Make sure it fits the publication.

-       Go for publications that have low levels of staff.

-       Interestingly she said ‘Stop wasting your time on regional papers who’ll give you tiny clips for no money,’

-       Pitch with confidence

-       Pitch good ideas

-       Think of the publication needs above your own

Our lecturer, Sarah Lonsdale, also said to pitch on a Friday for any weekend supplement, as that’s when they’re generally getting ideas together.

Quinn has published a book on the subject. It’s called No Contacts? No Problem! How to Pitch and Sell Your Freelance Feature Writing.

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:

1. Have something to say. He recollected a time at Edinburgh University when he wrote an essay without doing any background reading. He received it back with a note from his teacher saying “You have a pleasing turn of phrase, but nothing much to say.”
2. Read. He highlighted the need to read more than just newspapers and online. You need to read books, fiction and even poetry. Poetry can be a brilliant example of short words creating powerful meaning.
3. Add up the number of words in your work then divide that by the number of sentences. If the average is more than 15 words, then your sentences are probably too long.
4. Avoid using metaphors if you don’t understand exactly what they mean.
5. Always have a notepad on you because often things people say off the record are the most important. Jot things down; don’t leave it in your mind.

You can watch Allan Little give more advice on ‘good writing’ on the BBC College Journalism website.

You can also watch highlights from his first visit to the CfJ below:

You can view the CfJ’s coverage on our website.

And you can read my piece on Journalism.co.uk too.

If you scroll to the end of the Cover It Live section you’ll find Ian Reeves’ question unanswered. Seeing as the CfJ itself hasn’t actually enlightened you on Thompson’s answer – I will. However, someone seems to have taken my notebook, thus it will be from my rusty old memory.

Thompson started by posing the rhetorical question of whether or not BBC executives should expect to get a smaller salary than commercial equivalents.

He then went on to explain that they apply a 50-80% discount to the corporation’s executive salaries.

So let’s do the math:

Mark Thompson’s current salary = £834,000

If this was a 50% discount, Mark Thompson believes he should actually be on:

£1,668,000

80% discount:

£4,170,000

Now for a summary:

Mark Thompson thinks his salary should really be somewhere in between £1,668,000-£4,170,000.

Shocking. I could pay my monthly rent somewhere between 4830-12087 times with that salary.