Sarah Britton: BA Hons Media Practices with Journalism

Sarah Britton

BA Hons Media Practices with Journalism, 2003

“I am an editorial assistant at William Reed Publishing.”

Sarah is currently working as an editorial assistant on the magazine Food Manufacture for William Reed Publishing. Sarah said: “There are only three people in the editorial team so there is always plenty to do. My colleagues are great and even though they are busy, will always take time to talk me through features and give advice.”

The magazine has just won Best Business and Professional Monthly 2005 at the Periodical Publishers Association Awards for publishing and editorial excellence. “These awards are widely regarded as the magazine equivalent of the Oscars, so the team were overjoyed when the results were announced”, said Sarah

Although she has only been at the magazine for a couple of months Sarah is already attending seminars across the UK so she can report on the latest industry news.

Sarah graduated from the University of Luton in 2003 with a BA (Hons) in Media Practices with Journalism. She chose Luton because of its excellent reputation for media studies and because of the flexibility of the courses. As a result Sarah was able to study different aspects of media but by the second year she had decided that she definitely wanted to become a journalist so based her module choice around writing and editing.

Sarah said: “The School of Media, Art and Design has a modern lecture theatre and my two main lecturers were both former journalists so were able to give me plenty of advice. We had access to Indesign which was great. For my final project I designed and published a magazine and was delighted to get a 2:1 with honours.”

Sarah has lots of great memories of her time at Luton including her graduation, karaoke at the Dog and Donut, and Wednesday nights at the Student Union. She said: “The town is geared towards students and every bar has their own themed events! The Arndale Shopping Centre also caters for all your day-to-day needs.”

While she was studying Sarah worked part-time at Iceland frozen foods to earn some extra money. She said: “There are plenty of part-time jobs available in Luton and employers are generally flexible to fit in with your timetable.”

In addition to her course work, Sarah also gained experience by writing articles for Streaker, the University of Luton student union magazine. She said: “It was fantastic to see my name in print and interviewers saw it as an early sign of my commitment to journalism.”

The day after her graduation ceremony Sarah flew to Australia! She travelled around the east and south coast where she went scuba-diving, climbed Sydney Harbour Bridge and visited Ramsey Street! She then backpacked around New Zealand, where she tried her hand at sky-diving, jet-boating and cave-tubing, before flying back to Sydney. Sarah then backpacked around Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China before flying home. She said: “It was absolutely amazing and I would recommend travelling to anyone.”

During her time away Sarah applied for work placements via email. When she returned to England she split her time between work experience at various publishers and working at HSBC bank as a cashier. During this time Sarah worked for free at IPC’s Chat and Pick Me Up magazines, Emap’s New magazine and Kingfisher publishing. She said: “It was frustrating to have to work for nothing, but I knew that no-one would employ me without experience.”

Sarah saw her current job advertised on the internet and knew that it would be a great place to start her writing career. She was offered other editorial assistant roles, some even offered to pay more, but Food Manufacture was the only publication that offered to train Sarah as a journalist. She said: “Now I’m fortunate enough to be writing articles every day, but it’s not all office work, there are different events to attend every week and next month I’m covering a story in Paris!”

In the future Sarah hopes to develop her news and feature writing skills so that she can move up to the next level and become a feature writer. “When I have more experience I’d like to write about a different subject, but at the moment I am very happy at Food Manufacture and still have plenty to learn.”

“The best advice I can offer students is to get as much work experience as possible, preferably before you finish university, and never sell yourself short.”

Interview took place in 2005.