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Congratulations to BA Journalism graduate Boglarka Kosztolanyi, who last night won the prestigious National Council for the Training of Journalists Award for Student Project of the Year.

Centre for Journalism staff were out in force at the ceremony at Hampton Court Palace to support Boglarka, who had been nominated for her superb third-year project Echoes of Horror - a multimedia investigation into the rise of the far right in eastern Europe and the fears of those who survived the concentration camps of World War 2 that history might be repeating itself.

Sky News political correspondent Sophie Ridge presented the awards, and Boglarka's project was praised by a judging panel of senior journalists for its  investigative rigour and use of immersive multimedia storytelling techniques.

The latest opportunity to do work  experience at the Jeremy Vine is up for grabs: http://careerssearch.bbc.co.uk/jobs/job/workexperience/25102  Successful applicants will be given 2 weeks of work experience on the show which now has the biggest audience for a current affairs programme on BBC Radio. It has 7.5 million listeners, slightly more than R4's Today Programme. The experience will take place at some point in the New Year. The application window closes on the 29^th November.

Some random thoughts on Zim coverage so far:

Well done Radio 4's Today - amazing mangling of Mnangagwa. Try to get it right, he might be the next President. Still why bother with these silly African names. Poor Journalism and why give  a London-based, uninformed  ZANU-PF stooge so much uninterrupted airtime? It;'s a shame they didn't get a proper expert on Zimbabwe instead of some writer (and former Cameron speechwriter) who has just been to Zimbabwe. Plenty of real specialists easily available in UK. Very simplistic and uninformative about what is really going on - the exercise of combined military and political power for control of the ruling party.  Not so much as coup as militarised politics within ZANU-PF.  Context and history is everything in this story

Year 2s and MAs - please don't forget that we will be doing a test in this Friday's NCTJ Law classes.  Just  a few short hours of revision time left.......... 

What do you want from your experience at Kent?  If you are a 2nd or 3rd year undergraduate student, please come to a focus group discussion to tell us!

Discussions for students from the Centre for Journalism will be held at: Wednesday, 22 November, 2017, 13:30, Gillingham Building Room 4-12. 

Also you get FREE LUNCH!!! Find out more and sign up under: 

https://studentexperienceproject.weebly.com

Paul Francis will be running revision sessions for all those (mainly Year 2s) taking or retaking their NCTJ Public Affairs exams. The sessions are on Wednesday 1 November at 2.15, and on Wednesday 8 November at 2.15. Both sesssions will be in the small newsroom.

Following the year 3 project pitches, we have now allocated supervisors for each student, as shown in the table below.

Remember it is your responsibility to make contact with your supervisor. Do it soon.

Wagwan, fam.

I just wrote that to attract attention, I don't know what it actually means.

I was recently passed down the ashes of what was formerly known as 'The Medwire', the independent student magazine for the Medway campus, and wasn't entirely sure what to do.

I know there are some second years interested in relaunching and rebranding as a news website (perhaps with a online video component too?), as this is cheaper and more manageable (no stressful monthly deadlines), and I spoke to the first years this morning.

Quite recently the issue of national identity was raised in my class.

Now as someone who takes a great deal of pride in my British nationality, my beliefs tend to cause a bit of a stir whenever I voice them (for reasons I will soon get into) and as a result I’m no stranger to the usual myriad of offense taking and name-calling that usually goes on in these kinds of discussions.

In late August I was in Natchez, Mississippi, an overnight stop between Memphis and New Orleans, at the end of a three week road trip across some of the Southern US states. My family and I returned from dinner to a mostly vacant hotel, entering through the bar, where a large group of African-American people celebrating some occasion sat around a table enjoying their evening. Tired from a day of driving, I went straight up to bed. However, my 70-year-old grandfather, a fan of the three Ws (whisky, Westerns and Willie Nelson) and on his first real overseas holiday stayed at the bar to indulge in a nightcap.