Journalism graduate wins industry award

Former journalism student Kimberly Middleton has won the Esso News Report Award and the Newsquest Log Book Award for her National Certificate examination work.

The National Certificate is an industry examination that tests journalists’ legal knowledge, short hand skills, interview techniques and their ability to write a range of stories.

Passing the exam alone is a considerable achievement and over half fail first time. There are four awards in total, which are given out to exceptional candidates. Each comes with £250 prize money.

Kimberly said: “I noticed the awards on the National Council of Training Journalist's website when I was revising and momentarily thought it would be a real achievement to get one, and then forgot about them entirely! The e-mail saying I'd won was a complete shock and the prize money was totally unexpected.”

Kimberly graduated from Bournemouth University’s BA Multimedia Journalism in 2007 with a 2:1 and now works as a reporter for the Cornwall-based newspaper, The West Briton.

Kimberly said: “The Multimedia Journalism course was great. I learnt every discipline a journalist could need - writing for a newspaper, magazine and online as well as radio and TV skills. Being competent at sourcing stories and reporting them across multi-media platforms has definitely benefited me and made me more attractive to potential employers.”

Kimberly applies these skills to her job, covering multimedia projects ranging from recording and editing a video of students visiting Auschwitz, to interviews with famous bands the Macabees and Razorlight.

In the future Kimberly hopes to move to a regional or national paper or into broadcasting. Her dream is to work for Radio 4.