BREAKING NEWS: This is a blog post...

I’m sick of breaking news. To clarify, I’m fed up of people pretending they have breaking news to catch my eye. It seems that most of the time they just have plain old simple news. And what’s wrong with news? The clue is in the name – ‘new’s. It’s new because I’ve never seen it before. Some recent offenders I’ve seen: Some team news before a Rotherham football match Traders have voted in favour of setting up a Business Improvement District in the town I object because in the case of the former, it’s simply news....

How do you break a national news story?...

For a journalist, breaking a national news story is the ultimate coup. For some it comes early in their career and others after many years of work. On election night 2010, one student at the Department of Journalism at the University of Sheffield discovered a story. Through a combination of speed, contacts and Twitter we made her story go national – and this is how we did it. Let me set the scene The journalism postgraduates at Sheffield University work together for one week in the second semester to produce news output of the highest standard possible. I help the...