Teeside Uni Evaluation

We went to Teeside Uni to get some advice and guidance on how we could proceed and what steps we could take next in our future paths/careers. For the first couple of hours we had a conference talk with two journalists. These different journalists were from different backgrounds and had different journalism jobs. one of these people was a freelancer and the other was a working journalist working for The Lad Bible. We found out that there is many different pros and cons to working in both freelance and working for a company such as Lad Bible.

Some of the pros of working for a company is that you get a gaurenteed pay as well as a fixed pay. If you show that you can work hard as well as show your true potential you will succeed up the ladder. I found out that one of the journalists who worked for LadBible got to experience interviewing famous Celebrities and famous Footballers. I found out that this journalist was working for the company for about 3-5 years before he proceeded up the ladder. He got the chance to interview people like Zidane Zidane, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, James Arthur etc. Some of the cons to this job is that you are working 6 days a week. these days are also, long days 9-5 shift. Also i got told that another negative of this job role is that you get negative people all the time. giving you criticism for anything you write or something you do. you get people being nasty to you as the writer just for4 the sake of being nasty. Sometimes there is no reason for the negativity.

Then we spoke to the other Journalist who was a Freelancer. This job was more complicated that i thought. There is many pros and cons to this job. I learned in Freelance that you need to stand out to the audience as there is lots and lots of freelancers out there. Also you need to pitch a story and create another story and pursuade them that they need to hear it.

Then later on in the afternoon we went into a talk with more journalist. Journalists from the BBC and Smooth radio. In my opinion these were the better Journalists as they were more inspiring and more assertive in the way they were speaking to us. They were talking to us about how they climbed the ladder to get where they are now and what opportunities they were able to take. One of these journalists were saying they were right at the bottom of the ladder and her manager asked if someone would cover a specific famous event and she arose to the challenge and covered this event. Which then led onto more opportunities as she did a good job.

So overall I learned quite a bit about Journalism and the different kinds of this specific media sector for example pros and cons of different kinds of journalism. Different job roles and how to succeed up the ladder of Journalism.