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BA Journalism graduate Ellie Gifford won Best Radio News Item for a radio package about the impact of social media that she produced for her final year major project.

“It felt amazing to win the award, I was in absolute shock”, said Ellie.

“When I was first nominated I thought it was a spam email, I had to read it three times! I did shed a little tear when I won because I couldn’t believe my work had been noticed in this way. Just proves hard work truly does pay off!”

Ellie won for her radio package about the detrimental effect of editing apps and social media.

“As teenager I felt extremely insecure due to the images I was seeing 24:7 and I wanted to shed a light on this,” she added.

Currently Ellie is working in PR for online fashion retailer Oh Polly but says she’ll “always have a passion for radio”.

2020-21 third year students also won the best Virtual News Day for radio and TV news programmes they produced from home on 17 December 2020.

“With the uncertainty around Christmas 2020 many of our students had to travel home during what would've been normal teaching weeks,” said Lecturer Paul Duckworth who oversees the news days.

“We wanted to give them the best news day experience possible, so, mirroring journalists across the country and using software from industry as well as online teaching platforms, we held our remote news days. Students were presenting from home in Ireland, while others did live reports from ��������, and still others reported, presented, produced, and edited remotely from around the country.”

It was very much a team effort, with academics and support staff offering guidance to students to deliver a timeless news day.

“Most notably, and the reason for the award success, was the commitment and enthusiasm of the students who took what must be the most difficult and disrupted academic year in their stride to produce outstanding work,” he added.

The BJTC is the accrediting body for our BA (Hons) Journalism: Broadcast and BA (Hons) Journalism: Multimedia programmes. Its annual awards are open to students from its 40+ accredited courses.

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