Student Media Conference

On the 25th of November I was lucky enough to join all the Canvas editors to a trip to London to attend the annual Student Media Conference by The Guardian. It was a very early start to the day since we had to be at the train station at 7:50, but it was worth it! I had the chance to meet amazing working journalists and also get great tips of the trade, before arriving at The Guardian Headquarters in King's Cross, we had to choose the sessions we wanted to attend, I chose:

1) Five star reviewing:

Here we heard from Melissa Dane ( deputy editor, the Guardian), Miranda Sawyer ( radio riviewer and cultural commentator, the Observer), Krissi Murison ( editor, NME) and Paul Morley ( writer and broadcaster). They gave the audience of budding journalists a view into the world of reviewing, generally focused on music. I found it really interesting to see how each one had made it in the business, and all the great bands and musicians they had met. However, what I found the most interesting was Krissi, since she had worked for Nylon magazine in New York as their music director! Nylon, being one of my favorite magazines for fashion and inspiration I took the time to go up and talk to her after the session had ended!!

LUNCH

Simply amazing! I did not expect lunch to be as delicious as it was, very impressed. And best brownies ever, I gave in and had a naughty second. Had opportunity to speak to other journalism student, some quite.. confident, to put it in a nice way, since they were from very fancy uni's like Oxford and York, maybe just not my type.

2) 'to tweet or not to tweet'

This session was conducted by the sky news team, and their social media correspondent Ruth Barnett. I must say that I thought it was going to be much better, they did have a live twitter feed on the screen behind them which made it quite fun and interactive. But, maybe twitter is just not my thing since I did not find this session as interesting as the rest. The speakers were reading their information and tips from paper, they just did not seem as inspiring as the rest. Made me a bit scared of losing my future job ( if I get one ) to the power twitter gives to "citizen reporting"

3) Last and final session: 'Meet the interviewers'

This session by far my favorite! Three amazing journalists took the stage to vividly tell the audience about the do's and dont's of interviewing. I was quite shocked at the vast amount of people they had interviewed from Madonna to Woody Allen and Leonardo DiCaprio. The interviewers Simon Hattenstone ( feature writer the Guardian), Decca Aitkenhead( weekly interviewer for G2) and Ginny Dougary ( award winning journalist and special feature writer for the Times) shared their own personal experience with such passion I can assure you most viewers wanted to become just like them. It was great to watch such dedicated journalists talked about a field they seemed to love so much, I was truly inspired and it was fun. Things I learnt about this session was when to ask tough questions, how to ask them and also to always be as prepared as you can! Remember, they said, to always keep the interviewee entertained and make the interview as conversational as possible!! Few tips I am glad to share with all of you reading!!

I would like to mention as well the keynote speech from Nick Davies ( special correspondet from the Guardian) was hilarious! He was great giving useful tips and tools of making it into the business. He also said very important information about being a good journalists since "only 12% of national newspapers check their facts" and the single most important thing about a journalist, he said was being honest. Important things to note:

- have selective judgement

- always have an angle

- emphasize on the real world and the effect of people

- objectivity

- journalists can show emotion!

All in all it was a fantastic day out, I was quite tired by the end of it at 6 pm, but certainly look forward to attending next year!