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...

Web journalism vs. blogging...

Hi! I’m Adrienne, a work experience student from the University of Sheffield. Christine teaches us Web Journalism MA students about writing for the web, and she asked me to write a bit about what I’ve learned. The first thing I’ve learned is that although a huge and growing number of people get their news primarily online, most I’ve spoken to don’t have a clear idea of what “web journalism” actually is. When I tell people what course I’m doing, I generally get a reaction along the lines of, “So, is that, like,...

Personal feelings vs professionalism...

I do some teaching at Sheffield University’s Journalism Department – currently to the Web MA students. I talk to them about the importance of the headline, about how to grab users in the first three words and give a few examples of getting it wrong – and right – from my own career. Last week I was a bit baffled by one student. I’d asked them to practice different writing styles – sport, news and entertainment. I had prepared three stories for them to re-write. This student was finding the entertainment story particularly hard going. It...