Sophie Kitching, a Journalism student at Hull School of Art and Design, reports on the their first Journalism Day, held at Hull Truck Theatre…
Journalism day at Hull Truck Theatre was an opportunity to give anyone wanting to get into the industry an insight into what it entails. It covered a range of ideas and opinions on the current issues regarding media regulation answering the question ‘what is next for press freedom?’ The event was the first of its kind in Hull and something that is intended to become an annual event for anyone hoping for a career in journalism.
Organised by the Journalism and Digital Media BA (hons) degree at Hull School of Art and Design and in partnership with Mail News Media, the day brought some big names, ideas and people together. The event attracted students from local high schools, colleges and universities and guest speakers including: Jamie Macaskill, Assistant Editor at Mail News Media, Sian Harrison, Court Reporter, Dave Betts, Senior News Editor at BSkyB and former War Reporter and Broadcaster Martin Bell.
The event informed students about the current state of the media, sharing some controversial opinions, and at times created opportunities for lively debates. With a different guest speaker every twenty minutes the day was a valuable opportunity to bring people from all aspects of the profession together to inform the budding journalists of the future about what they need to know to break it into this increasingly competitive field. Not only did the speakers share their knowledge on press regulation but they also gave advice about how success and failure will define your career and how you achieve it. The day was a chance for the speakers to pass on the ups and downs of their careers so far to a new generation of journalists about to follow in their footsteps.
Martin Bell was among the speakers at Journalism day, lecturing in his signature white suit, as he passed on a wealth of advice and stories from his journalism career. He spoke of how it is a journalist’s responsibility to report the truth, saying that we often do not get the big picture of the casualties or the damage being done and spoke of how we are retreating into a world of unreality, suggesting that media audiences and practitioners are becoming more passive. He added to this by saying that if we chose journalism as a career for the money we’d simply picked the wrong one; a comment which seems to be echoed by most journalists I’ve met!
David Torrance spoke about media regulation, in regards to print and broadcast journalism, stating that members of the Scottish Parliament would often complain at the typical editing style of television reporting which meant the odd ‘er’ and ‘um’ was edited out and spoke of his horror at the thought of this degree of restriction to print media. He expressed his distress at the idea of a reverse in press freedom saying it would be difficult to embrace and added that “Journalists and politicians are not meant to like one another but we both need to conduct ourselves within the rules of the game.” Which supports the idea that politicians regulating the press could never work!
Super injunctions, citizen journalism and social media were all key topics for the day and it was clearly evident that a journalistic presence online is finally being embraced by even the most traditional journalists. Jamie Macaskill spoke about the changes at the Hull Daily Mail and how they are making more effort to invest in their online presence. Sian Harrison spoke of how citizen journalists and bloggers are increasingly filling the gap for hyper local content that established media organisations do not have the capacity to cover.
Unlike most of the lectures that day, Dave Betts took a different approach to the day by creating an informal but engaging debate with the audience about media ethics and quizzed us on scenarios which conflicted our personal ethics with the professional ethics of a journalist, testing our desire to share news that we deem within the public interest; which sparked comments of controversy from audience members.
As a journalist student myself, it was a busy day of filming, tweeting and networking but it was also a great insight into the issues that are being addressed in the media today.