A Touch of Advice: “Turning work experience into a career”
Touch FM’s news editor Madeline Kent stopped by at Coventry University on Wednesday 6th February, giving a lecture to journalism students’ offering sound advice on work experience and talking of her time as a Media, Culture and Communications student at the university.
Sat in the very room she studied in, having been up since 3AM (current time 1PM), Madeline told of how she successfully completed 2 weeks work experience at the Bear, in Stratford during 2001 – the exact week 9/11 hit the headlines. She said, “We were pulling 24 hour shifts trying to find out how it was affecting people locally, so we had to find people who had family out their.”
Pulling off her work experience with much enthusiasm, she was offered back to work as a freelancer 2 days a week. When asked by lecturer John Mair why they kept her on, she replied, “Once you show your willing to do it, your only the dogs body for a short amount of time, they’ll pick up on it and fast track you through.”
Madeline bigged up commercial radio some what, by stating that it’s a great place to start when graduating because “all Touch FM reporters are straight out of Uni.” Commercial radio isn’t all boring reporting, “its light hearted stuff too,” so much so that ‘Touch’ Stratford journalist Adam Westbrook, recently generated a story about the Worcester and Warwickshire areas becoming popular amongst the celebrities to relocate to, from London with Football sensation Germaine Defoe being amongst the favourites.
Conversing of how her skills learnt at University have benefited her career, Madeline finished off by expressing, “The Media Law still helps me today when I’m covering court cases. Not just that but the advertising too, you can’t sit their and say I’m studying journalism and that’s all I need. You have to be the jack of all trades – it doesn’t just involve that.” Jotting down contact details, students went away from this lecture with a positive outlook for a commercial future.
By: Gemma-Louise Johnson
