Throughout my time during the BA Hons course (at the Cumbria Institute of the Arts – now University of Cumbria), I grabbed every work experience opportunity I could: Local paper. Local radio. Local BBC. Some were offered to me; others I sought after myself. The insight I gained I could never have gained from degree education.

It was actually through writing a blog over two years ago for the N&S that I caught the eye of the then deputy editor and was offered paid employment for various website/print projects. The greatest benefit to me was the ability to work under those who took the time to listen to ideas and had the foresight to see what possibilities the online medium could offer. Especially for somewhere such as Cumbria, so typically regarded by others as somewhere in the dark ages.

I’ve always been interested in web design, creation and its multimedia possibilities. In the first year of my degree, I developed and created the initial website for our student paper in 2004, which was nominated for a Press Gazette team award the same year. Yet, during the time I worked on it, barely any other students were interested in contributing. I found this staggering.

For my second major project in the final year of my degree this year, I liaised once more with Nick Turner at CN Group on creating content for a website celebrating 25 years of The Great Cumbrian Run. Through meetings, we were able to plan what strengths the site could offer to the reader that print couldn’t. It is online at http://www.greatcumbrianrun.co.uk This site recently won me the Press Gazette Student Online Journalist of the Year 2007 award.

So, as for now… I’ve been at the N&S for a week and already have drafted a list of online potentials for upcoming articles. Already I’ve had comments from the news editor saying, “Oh! Yes, actually that would be the perfect story for a video clip” etc.

I’m in something of a unique position at the N&S as this is the first time they have brought someone in under a role of online reporting as well as print. For a regional paper in a location such as Cumbria, this is a fantastic opportunity and certainly one I would never have expected to be offered, even so close as two years ago.

Web 2.0 is an extremely exciting development and produces topics extremely interesting to discuss in detail – I wrote a dissertation on the subject. However, having visited many, many groups on Facebook and elsewhere, sometimes I do feel like shouting: “Alright, already! Enough talk! Let’s just go – come on!” This isn’t a great way to approach things, but in the same way that journalism needs academics discussing where all this Web 2.0 is going, it also needs those to embrace its potential and get on with utilising it!

It’s not all peachy, though. One of the biggest dangers I face is that I risk alienating myself in the office as the ‘Internet guy’. I am by no means the perfect journalist graduate. I barely got past the initial stages of shorthand [I'm working on it!] and I didn’t get the NCTJ accreditation in law or PA [again...]. What the editor (and, obviously, myself) hope is that we can all learn from each other, so while I get the skills to be a reporter with a great eye for news, I can help others to look at the wider scope of coverage when reporting.

This has turned out to be something of a mammoth reply, but as a journalist graduate who is just starting his career – with plenty of anxiety, nerves and, I have to say, a lack of confidence compared to others – the best advice I would give to graduates is to just get your work out wherever you can. It is never too late. Passion and drive is absolutely the key – even without being some over-confident, fully accredited journalist graduate. Good luck.

By the way, can anyone recommend a good mobile phone to capture audio and video?

It’s not just proof that you can write — it’s proof that you have original ideas.

If you don’t have #5, you’re in the wrong business.

It’s amazing how many trainee reporters aren’t “on” even during working hours. Often they’ll walk past half a dozen stories on their way to work in the morning and not notice any of them.

So someone who is aware of, and interested in, the world around them will win hands down over a reporter who thinks being a journalist is about showing up and being told what the news is.