Kingston University hosted the yearly event for Newsquest’s Young Reporter winners on Saturday 25 May, at their Penrhyn Road campus.

Students from all over Greater London and Sussex attended the day as part of their prize for winning the Young Reporter scheme.  The day started with the students reading through all the winners’ articles, voting for the top story to grace the front page and learning how to place articles throughout a paper.

Dan Townend, senior lecturer at Kingston University, who organised the day, said: “The students worked incredibly hard and quickly rose to the challenge of working on a real newspaper.”

Katherine Walsh’s story about SMA was selected as the most interesting story and took pride of place on the front page of the London Comet, the yearly newspaper, produced by the winning students.

Walsh from St. Philomena’ Catholic School for Girls, said: “The Young Reporter scheme is an amazing opportunity, allowing us students to voice our own stories. It was incredible to see one of my articles on the front page, especially talking about my illness, which until now, I have never seen any media coverage on.”

James Dowden from Hampton Boys won for the second year running and said that he felt it was an immensely valuable experience to see what it was like to be a journalist for a day and learn a lot in terms of the design and creation of newspapers.

It was a full on day and the students agreed they had learned a lot, but it had been long hours and extremely tiring.

Townend added:  “Welcome to the world of journalism!”