Journalism alumni: Where are they now?

We know it’s hard to imagine where you’ll be when you finish your studies but it’s never too early to start thinking about it.

There are so many choices: Postgraduate study, internships, full time work, travel – how do you choose and why should you even think about it before you finish your course?

We’ve been in contact with some of our Journalism alumni to find out what they have been up to since graduating from Winchester. Read more to find out where their degree in Journalism has taken them.

Sophie Hannam

Since finishing my BA in Journalism, I have moved to Bristol and accepted a job as the Editorial and Digital Assistant at Homes & Antiques magazine. It was a huge and daunting challenge, but my degree at the University of Winchester certainly set me on the right path with extensive experience and initiative to fulfill this role to the best of my potential. Since accepting this position, I have sent 16 issues of the magazine to print; interviewed antiques experts and interior designers; and have learnt how to run and manage a website and several social media accounts. Working for Homes & Antiques has taught me what is required to produce a successful magazine for a distinctive target market, alongside honing my ambitious nature and creative drive. After supporting the administrative and editorial needs of the magazine for nearly a year, I have now been promoted to the role of Junior Staff Writer – and I am incredibly excited to undertake any challenges that this vibrant industry throws at me!

Matt Spencer

I’m currently working as an Assistant News Editor, and Digital Editor, at Channel 5 News producing stories from around the world, every day. Alongside this I’m also a Digital Producer with Channel 4 News, on a team of 12 that generates two billion views a year on stories ranging from the rise of Donald Trump to the heart-breaking day to day life inside Aleppo. At the heart of any of the journalism, I work on are real people and real stories – this was something instilled in me from my time studying Journalism at Winchester.

Working on daily news coverage has vastly improved my performance in pub quizzes and more importantly my problem-solving ability. It’s fast-paced being in a newsroom and every day promises to be different. And that’s why I love it.

Claire Lomas

I still remember having the conversation of ‘what shall I be when I am older?’ with my parents when I was about 11-years-old. I’d already gone through the ‘I want to be a librarian, teacher, astronaut’ phase, when my dad and I came to the conclusion that I would be a journalist. In my eyes it was, and still is, because my favourite subject was English at school, it was the thing I was best at throughout all of my education, I loved to write and share my opinions and I’ve always been quite nosey! Obviously back then, to me as an 11-year-old girl, a journalist was a stereotypical newspaper hack who wears a trench coat and has a little notebook and pen permanently attached to their hands.

Now, at the age of 27, I am a form of journalist (I say form because of the mad, multi-media, digital world we now live in) working at a national newspaper website which has about 15 million unique users every day. Who’d have thought it?!

My first job in my desired career of journalism after graduating was Web Content Editor at local newspapers the Watford Observer and St Albans Review. I was brought in, in the fairly new role, to ‘spruce up’ the websites and bring a bit of life to them. I spent a year and a half there editing reporters’ news stories and publishing them on the website, alongside growing both newspapers’ social media presence. After this, I moved on to become a Video Portal Producer at ITN Productions in London. It had always been my dream to work and live in London for a while, and producing news packages every day for such a huge news company was a dream. I got to source, produce, edit and present on-screen videos for another year and a half. I was then ready for a new challenge, and was offered a job as a Video Producer at the Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk). I spent a great nine months there producing news video content and features for the ever-growing website before being poached by the Head of Video at MailOnline – where I have now worked for the past year.

The experience of working at such an incredible, fast-paced and highly successful news website really is second-to-none. If you get the buzz of breaking news and thrive off the speed and constant progression of news stories, the MailOnline is the best place to work. It is hard work, and the night shifts are killing me off slowly don’t get me wrong (!) but for now as a young journalist in London I love what I do, and I thank the three years of had work I completed in Winchester learning and physically ‘doing’ journalism for the success I have had so far.

Joe Lipscombe

Behind every memorable and effective brand is a great story. My role is to discover what that story is, and how and where is best to tell it.

Humans are hard-wired to respond to stories. We’ve used them to shape our view of the world since the beginning of humankind. That makes storytelling one of the most powerful business tools around. Today, the way we consume stories is vastly different, and it’s my team’s task to create content that’s compelling and shareable.

With that in mind, I spend a great deal of my time researching the science behind the influence of storytelling done well. This is then transformed into regional training, essays, workshops, and campaign building for all kinds of brands, from Fortune 500 companies, to start-ups and charities.

To find out more about Winchester’s alumni make sure to follow the UoW Alumni Facebook and Twitter!

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