UCLan students attend the PTC young journalist of the year awards

The PTC Young Journalism awards is one of the most important occasions of the year for emerging talent in the magazine industry, and on Friday 26 UCLan undergraduate and postgraduate magazine journalism students were given the opportunity to travel down to London to attend the awards.

Many other magazine journalism students from around the country attended the awards, which are in their 27^th year, and a masterclass was given by Gill Hudson, editor in chief of Reader’s Digest, and chair of the PTC Editorial Training Consultants Committee and Mike Soutar, CEO of shortlist Media Ltd. After Gill Hudson’s talk on How to have a good idea the students were split into groups and told to think of a feature for their assigned magazine, considering why this? why now? and why this magazine?

Mike Soutar

Gill Hudson

Each group had their own editor to guide their group discussion from an impressive list including Hattie Brett, Senior Features Writer, Grazia, Bauer Media, Tom Hawkins, Communications Manager, PPA, Phil Hilton, Editorial Director, ShortList Media, Gill Hudson, Editor, Reader’s Digest, Barry McIlheney, CEO, PPA, Hugh Sleight, Brand Director, FourFourTwo, Haymarket Consumer Media, and Victoria White, Editor, Company, National Magazine Company.

The features were presented by the groups and then judged by Mike Soutar, CEO of shortlist Media Ltd, who said how impressed he was with all of the ideas. However he chose the group led by Victoria White, Editor of Company, as the overall winners for their feature based around David Cameron’s Happiness Index saying that they had developed the digital side of their feature very well. Finally Mr Soutar gave the students a talk on leadership which UCLan student Polly Glass said was “genuinely inspirational”.

UCLan student at the PTC awards

After the masterclass there was an opportunity for drinks and mingling before everyone sat down for the three course lunch provided for the event and then finally the awards were announced. Alex Harris, Men’s Health, National Magazine Company won the overall award for PTC new journalist of the year and the judges said that he had a “fearless and honest approach” and was “a memorable writer”.

For a full list of all the winners go to http://www.ptcnewjournalist.com/

As an aspiring magazine journalist I found the event a great opportunity to learn from the best in the industry and especially found Mike Soutar’s story of how he got where he is today very interesting. Being in the winning group for the masterclass features exercise was great and I defiantly have been inspired to work as hard as I can over the next year.