Shine news

Last month I told you about our (actual) roving reporter Liz Hunt’s visit to Strood Academy in Rochester. Many teachers might remember Senior Editor Liz from our teacher forums we hold on Shine Award days every year.

The purpose of Liz’s visit was to help students keen to put together a great Shine entry. We like to be as fair as possible, so Liz has kindly written up her talk into ten invaluable ideas and guidelines to follow to create a better publication. We’re publishing them here for the benefit of everyone keen to get involved in Shine 2024…

This week, we have a report from Liz Hunt, our Shine Awards Committee Member at Large. Liz’s day job is Senior Associate Editor at the Daily Mail and she’s supported Shine as a judge for many years now. This past week, Liz went to Rochester to speak to the students at Strood Academy.

Why was she there? Liz explains all…

The excitement and the storytelling element of the newspaper and magazine industry first sparked my imagination when, as a fifteen-year- old I was taken on a tour of my local newspaper, The Walthamstow Guardian.

I and a small group of boys who worked on our magazine at school, were encouraged by the English teacher to see how a real newspaper is developed.

At this year’s Shine Awards, Alice Audley, the editor-in-chief of Blogosphere magazine (and one of our judges), gave our keynote address.

In addition, Alice generously wrote us an inspiring piece which was published in our Winners Book. We loved what Alice wrote and feel it deserves a wider audience, so we reproduce it here.

London-based writer Paula Erizanu – judge of the Features Category for Shine 2016 – talks about her Shine story and offers some advice for aspiring Shine award-winning journalists.

John Cary, Head of Accreditation at the NCTJ (at the time of this post, he has subsequently left) gave us some feedback on the 2016 Feature Article category.