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Where are they now?
Stephanie Busari | Deputy News Editor, First
“The teaching at Newcastle is first rate and the hands on experience you get is invaluable. ”
I joined the Training Centre as a Mirror Graduate Trainee and stayed at the paper for four years before moving on to take up a post as Deputy News Editor on a newly launched women’s weekly magazine, First.
The teaching at the Newcastle Training Centre is first rate and the hands on experience you get during the course is invaluable.
We were lucky to get Mr Law himself, Walter Greenwood, coming in to coach us for our law exams and myself and other trainees have very fond emories of our time there. While on the course, you are assigned a patch to work on, which allows you to get out on the road and gain practical reporting skills, any stories found are published in the Newcastle Chronicle or Journal and sometimes in the Daily Mirror.
Above all the course was enormous fun and I have made lifelong friends, most of whom are working on national and local newspapers around the country.
Hannah Collier | Reporter, Channel Television
“The course gave me a fantastic grounding in the media world.”
I undertook the Newcastle training course in Spring 2006 having already worked with Staffordshire Newspapers for a few months.
For me the course was invaluable, especially spending the days on our given ‘newspatch’ hunting for stories. The course gave me the opportunity to work a wide range of stories, as well as experience different newsrooms.
Although I only stayed with newspapers for a year the course has still helped me immensely with my television career and gave me a fantastic grounding in the media world. It may have been intense but the course was one of the best four months in my journalism career so far.
Michael Greenwood | Assistant News Editor, The Daily Mirror
“The training is the real thing.”
There is plethora of so-called journalism training centres but Newcastle is the real thing. Unlike many courses it is based in a newspaper office NOT on a university campus. The staff there will arm you with the skills to tackle tough stories and tough news desks.
Patrice John | Senior Reporter, Birmingham Mail
“The training gave me all the skills I needed to be a real reporter.”
Patrice John, aged 27, is a senior reporter at the Birmingham Mail. She started at the Mail in April 2004. She trained in Newcastle from September to December 2003.
“The training in Newcastle was invaluable because it gave me all the skills I needed to be a real reporter. I was not cooped up in a classroom all the time, learning about the theories of how to get a good story. I was sent out there, given a patch to work, and encouraged to pitch my stories to working news editors and editors. It is a course that allowed me to build up my cuttings while I was studying and that is like gold dust to any reporter.”
Ryan Parry | Senior reporter, Daily Mirror
“Unlike those on many journalism courses, the teachers come straight from the newsroom.”
I had spent 10 months on a post-grad course at Leeds before starting the Trinity Mirror foundation course and I was not looking forward to another four months training. But the course packed so much in that it proved invaluable to my development as a national newspaper journalist.
Unlike those on many journalism courses, the teachers come straight from the newsroom and trainees benefit from years of experience. Reporting skills are honed to be able to take on any news story in any environment.
Rhodri Phillips | Reporter, Mail on Sunday
“I found the course intense and testing but extremely rewarding.”
I was a privately funded delegate but managed to get a job on The Journal, the morning paper in Newcastle, after finishing the course in December 2003. I am now working on the Mail on Sunday.
I found the course intense and testing but extremely rewarding and worthwhile. You don’t stop from day one until the exams at the end. The pressure and pace of the course are an ideal preparation for what life will be like in a real newsroom. The news drive days, when you have to go out to your allocated geographical patch and come up with stories, are particularly useful.
Rosa Prince | Daily Telegraph Political Correspondent
“The training course at Newcastle equipped me with every skill I needed to hit the ground running.”
The training course at Newcastle equipped me with every skill I needed to hit the ground running when I joined the Daily Mirror news room as a green as grass reporter nearly nine years ago.
By focusing on the practical skills I would use every day as a working hack – from interviewing technique to writing style and shorthand – I felt confident of my abilities as I took on the formidable challenge of jumping in at the deep-end.
Newcastle is a such great city (or news “patch” as I learned to call it) in which to learn the trade, and the staff at the training centre were so friendly and kind, that on a personal level it was also a fantastically fun and rewarding four months.
Victoria Richards | Senior Reporter/Features Writer, Media Wales
“The course also has a great, fun, social aspect too – and I know that I have made lifelong friends among my contemporaries.”
I began my training at the Newcastle offices just a month after returning from living in Japan, a culture shock – yes, but an extremely stimulating one. The training was absolutely top-notch; very extensive and a thorough grounding in exactly what we needed to develop skills as first-class news reporters. Not only did we benefit from testing our wings ‘on the patch’, it was greatly beneficial to work within the offices of leading national newspapers and to have the chance to see the products of our work printed within their pages. The course also has a great, fun, social aspect too – and I know that I have made lifelong friends among my contemporaries. The highlights for me were the guest speakers – particularly David Randall of the Independent on Sunday and Panorama’s Tom Mangold. Being able to learn first-hand from these stalwarts of the journalism world was incomparable and something I shall take with me throughout my career.
Since the course, I have graduated as a senior news reporter and have moved on to features writing for the main Welsh national titles the Western Mail, South Wales Echo and Wales on Sunday.
Roger Waite | Reporter at the Sunday Times
“The course is based in a newsroom rather than a classroom giving it a practical edge that other courses lack.”
The Newcastle training course is perfect for anyone wanting to land on their feet in the whirlwind that is a daily newsroom. It teaches you to hammer out tightly-written news stories in record time and drums in all the legal knowledge you need to ensure you aren’t landing your editor with libel writs and contempt of court charges.
It also gives you the tools to take a different approach, teaching the importance of skills like contact building, tenacity and how to work a patch. The shorthand teaching is relentless but will get you to 100words a minute very quickly which you’ll be immensely grateful for when you first sit down in a courtroom.
The fact that the course is essentially based in a newsroom rather than a classroom gives it a practical edge that other courses lack. The tutors are also extremely dedicated to getting (dragging) everyone up to the right standard and most trainees would give them at least 3/10 for their sense of humour.
Tom Wells | The Sun
“Even now I still find myself falling back on tips I picked up during the course.”
I was at the Newcastle training centre between September and December 2002, after landing a job with the Birmingham Post & Mail trainee scheme earlier that year.
I remember my four months in the company of David Banks and Paul Jones as actually being pretty hard work. The shorthand took a while to master, and the whole experience was very intense.
After leaving Newcastle, I was given a permanent job with Birmingham’s Sunday tabloid, The Sunday Mercury, where I had a great two years. I’ve no doubt that Newcastle gave me the tools to succeed in Birmingham, where I landed some solid splashes and gained a great deal of useful experience.
I moved away from Birmingham in November 2005 to take up a job with Ferrari Press Agency. I am now working on The Sun. But even now, three years after Newcastle, I still find myself falling back on tips I’d picked up during the course. It was the best type of journalism training: practical, very professional, and great fun too.