It’s not what you know…

Today we had a Journalism networking event, which was organised by the Careers Service. It was brilliant. There were a panel of people from the world of journalism and media.

These people were:

Becky Hogge from Open Democracy
Amar Singh from The Evening Standard
Jim Latham from Broadcast Training (BJTC)
Siobhan Curham, who is a writer and freelance journalist
Gina Antchandie from the Arts Council
Maxim Ford who is a documentary film maker.

Each of them gave a small talk on how they got to where they were in the world and gave general tips and pointers to anyone wanting to enter into the media world.

The people I found most helpful were:

Becky Hogge, who was a personality; I found her talk really interesting. She was easy to relate to because she was quite near to our age being just 27. It was good listening to her story, as although she works in the media world, she does not have an NCTJ qualification or a journalism degree. In fact, she took a degree in linguistics.

From starting out as a dance music journalist, to a business journalist, she said she started writing about her passion which was technology. She now works for Open Democracy and has a weekly column in the New Statesman.

Her three tips to us were pretty simple:-
1) Use your contacts, people you know. Tell their story.
2) You need a lot of confidence in this business.
3) Not to get caught up in your own ego and take criticism.

The third is something I really need to do; I take criticism far too personally. Instead, I need to listen to what the person is saying and take it on board. It’s not always a personal attack. Becky also said what David and Chris have been saying all along, that if you have a blog, then you’re already a step ahead in the journalism world.

Amar Singh was very helpful. I really like what he had to say. He told us that journalism is not always a straight path, and definitely not predictable.

Amar actually went to Westminster University and graduated in Broadcast Journalism. I love the fact that he now works for a newspaper, because as a print journalist I would one day like to do some broadcast work.

He started out by being a runner for a film company, which is terrible pay apparently! But he said you have to learn from your experiences, and although he was only making tea for producers, he made a lot of contacts.

He’s worked on Asian magazines and newspapers including Eastern Eye and Asia Weekly. He became an editor for the latter, but decided he did not want to just be hiring and firing people as a career. Through contact with the Evening Standard, he became a journalist and has not looked back since.

His tips to us were:-
1) When looking for work, be persistent.
2) When freelancing, always be networking (make business cards, hand them out)
3) Everyone is a contact potential. You never know when you’ll need a person’s number.

Maxim Ford

Maxim was a student at a polish film school, and so learnt all about the culture and language of the country. He made a film on the political situation in Poland , but said that this was not so much because of his film making talent, as much as it was because he spoke polish.

He said the money available for making films and documentaries has decreased. When Channel Four was first starting out, he got £100, 000 pounds as a budget. Apparently it’s not that easy to get so much money now.

It was also mentioned that developing film used to very laborious and now the media has moved on. A high definition camera (about £3-4000) is available along with editing machines, which leads to a lot of individual film making.

I talked to him after the presentation and asked him a few questions about how to get into the industry of documentary making. He told me that you need to:-

1) Find out what are of film making you want to go into.
2) What aspect of that you want to do, i.e production, presentation of.
3) Find out names and contacts for people in the area of documentaries that you are interested in and approach them.

He made it sound quite simple really, I wonder if it so?

Siobhan Curham started off as a freelance journalist. She does not have a degree, but told us a weird story about how she got a diploma in freelance journalism.

Basically, she applied through the back of a newspaper, to ‘The Morris School of Journalism’, she told us she had not heard of it either. She got her diploma by sending off a cheque and completing various random assignments.

Although graduating with a distinction, she wondered if that was just what part of the money was for, to guarantee it. I am sure she is being very modest.

Siobhan told us she got her first article published in the magazine ‘That’s Life’. It was about pregnancy. She told us to write about something that related to ourselves, but to slant it differently. She made her story different by writing about the fact that she did not enjoy her pregnancy.

Siobhan has now written four books, and writes articles for the ‘Wolverhampton version of the Evening Standard’. I was amused when she said she considered herself similar to Carrie Bradshaw. (make link here)

Jim Latham from the BJTC explained the role of the BJTC to us, and warned us about some of the implications of work experience.

These were:
The fact that we need to be careful about people exploiting us when on work experience. He explained that a girl recently was working for a company and was sent to find a place in London that would allow a party with hard drugs. Of course people are willing to do mostly anything for that first chance he said, but if the police got involved, who do you think would immediately get blamed?

This was something I had not thought about before if I am honest, but I am glad he made us aware of it.

If you do a work placement, if it is longer than four weeks than the company has to pay you after that time.

He also explained to us the issue of ethnic and social diversity. Four years ago, 96% of journalists were white and middleclass, today this figure has decreased to 90%. Jim said that it needs a continued effort to get a proper representation of people who represent this country.

I think he is definitely right, Britain is multicultural and is a real shame that this is not more represented by journalists who write on behalf of the public.

Over all

I think that the whole afternoon was a major success. I really did learn a lot, I am just quite angry that it was not publicised more to say it was quite important.

To say we were on a journalism course, with such a precedent placed on the importance of networking, nobody told us about it. We were only given the time off this afternoon because somebody mentioned it at all. But we did get to go, and it’s been one of the most informative afternoons I have had about general journalism. I wonder if the university will arrange more of the same. Perhaps if we suggested it to them, it would happen again? I hope so.