He said, “Journalism is a great life” although it is now harder to get in to.

“You need to be nosy, to get on with people, and you need to be able to write and be accurate.”

He noted the value of getting experience whilst at university and said it was a mistake on his part for doing very little whilst there. He then failed to get a job when leaving university and was forced into taking a postgraduate journalism course at Cardiff.

Whilst some journalists belittle journalism courses, Maguire said they’re good as “you can hit the ground running”.

Hi career started on the Western Morning News, where he spent three years. He said experiences like death knocking and learning to deal with people sensitively prepares you for your future career.

He also worked for six months on a trade magazine, the New Civil Engineer; the Press Association for two years where he learned to work quickly; the Daily Telegraph for over four months under the editorship of Max Hastings; the Mirror for four years, until falling out with Piers Morgan, a “kid that just wanted to make a noise”; and the Guardian, which he jokingly described as his “break from journalism”.

He added that you need luck to get a break in journalism and determination to be able to take the knockbacks. Maguire told the students he wrote 60 job letters after leaving university and got turned down by them all.

He also offered advice and situations to avoid for students about to embark on work experience: “We had someone on work experience who thought he was on the Daily Mail.”

He also said to arrive on time and not to turn up looking like you’re going clubbing; some turn up in high heels which would be inappropriate for walking should they get sent out on a job.

You need ideas: “All editors complain about reporters sitting like they are in a taxi rank. If you have an idea go to the desk and say it.” Whilst there is a balance that needs to be found between being keen and being pushy, Maguire says at least they will talk about you if you’re pushy.

And one final piece of advice: “If you don’t know something don’t try to show it.”

Helene Mulholland, politics reporter at The Guardian said her first reporting job was at 35 years old. She did three weeks working at Newsnight, had a slot at The Guardian, and a week at the Independent. She left the Indy after two days because they were using her “as a secretary”, and to her it felt like “exploitation”.

She said you shouldn’t “sacrifice who you are just for the next job”.

She noted difficulties in journalism, such as no “equal playing field”, but added, “don’t get angry, get even”. You need to stick with it.

“Before I decided to go for it I thought journalists were very cut throat, hardcore, not very nice people, because that’s the reputation they had.” However, after her work experience she realised this representation of journalists was wrong and decided to pursue a career in it.

However, she said: “You don’t have to be a certain type of person or personality” or be the most confident, you just have to “act like the journalist you want to be and it soon becomes your second skin”.

She also offered the following advice:

- If you don’t know anyone in journalism, start mixing with journalists.

- Be ready to adapt in the new multiplatform world, but make sure you aren’t working longer and ridiculous hours – your union will serve you well here.

- You don’t have to be brilliant across all types of media. You need to be able to do a broadcast, but as long as you can get the message across that’s what matters most.

- Notice the organisation’s house style because people like that. It makes your copy cleaner.

- Speed will come with time. If you are not the quickest person, don’t worry it will get easier.

- Never sacrifice speed for a standard because if you get something wrong it’s on your shoulders.

- Be prepared to go and do something else for a while until the climate improves.

- Think long and hard about working for free; it is about self-respect as well. There’s a ‘pebble in a pond’ effect and you all pay the price.

- Be brave enough to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that” to an editor.

Mulholland also warns about the use of Twitter where a young journalist on work experience was tweeting critically about an interviewee, severing all future links with that person.

Maguire agreed stating you can tweet all day about the newsroom, but they won’t give you a job there, or maybe anywhere else – it’s a small world.

Paul Mason, Economics Editor, Newsnight worked as a music lecturer before going into journalism at the bottom, subbing.

Having worked on Newsnight for years he has watched it change with the advent of rolling news. He said you have to deliver much quicker nowadays. Stories, which they used to call ‘investigations’, are now being made in 48 hours, instead of two weeks. The danger is that some other person gets the story when everyone is moving so fast.

Here are his top ten tips for future journalists:

1. Be good at journalism – find things out, meet deadlines, know what’s happening, watch the news/read the papers, go to places.
2. Specialise in something that you can bring yourself to care about/ that’s relevant/ that might be in demand.
3. Be low maintenance/ zero bullshit – do what needs to be done quickly, talk about the story not journalism, you are up against “the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority” – emulate it, teamwork and logistics are key in TV, know the law and the rules.
4. Read widely, read fast, read grown up stuff – editors read books: they know what’s in the papers before they’re out, don’t waste time reading crap, don’t just read as if the world started when you turned 16, follow your instinct crazily from one mindblowing book to the next.
5. Write well, write fast, write translucent prose – Orwell: Politics and the English Language, Robert McKee: Story, The New Journalism: Tom Wolfe, Harlan County USA: Barbara Kopple, Kerouac: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.
6. Manage your contacts – everybody you meet could be a contact, file them and make notes about them, guard them jealously, work them like crop rotation. He said contacts are like “tapping into the mother load”.
7. Network relentlessly – Brits are too shy: imagine you are from California, get a business card, find out where people you need to know hang out, get your face known/associated with a skill-set, ideas etc., mix with journalists.
8. Abandon your ideology – write the truth.
9. What is your story? Always have a story to pitch to somebody. Always be thinking: what’s the story nobody’s covering, listen to the zeitgeist.
10. Be the journalist you are trying to be.

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.

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: