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On Tuesday 10 February  a group year 11 and sixth form Media students were invited to the London News Academy conference.

Opening remarks and greeting were made by Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Tristram Hunt MP. This was followed by a debate on citizen journalism, which was paneled by The Sun’s Derek Brown and Stig Abell, Emma Tucker, The Times Deputy Editor, and finally Jackie Annesley, editor of the Sunday Times Style Magazine. The topic was how the digital age has transformed the way we consume news today, and how do we navigate our way around the information and decide which facts and claims are reliable. The opportunity was given for students to ask these key people in media how this new digital age is shaping both ours their lives as journalist.

The Sun’s Derek Brown and Stig Abell, Emma Tucker, The Times Deputy Editor, and Jackie Annesley

Although the debate was more like an ice breaker, it was informative was quickly followed by a Break-Out session. Here all the students were divided in five groups; each group was visited by a journalist who spoke with the group for 15 minutes. During this time each journalist spoke about their day-to-day jobs and how they got to where they are.  Students were then invited to quiz the journalist, especially on questions such as ‘what grades do we need?’ and ‘do I need to go to university to study journalism?’

To round the afternoon off, the final session was a Mock Press Conference. Here an actor played the part of a DCI, who was leading an investigation into a major incident. The chosen scenario was that a child had gone missing and possibly abducted by the father. The students were then to play the parts of journalist attending the conference and they were given 20 minutes to get as much information as possible from the DCI. The students then had another 20 minutes to write 300 words for the Cover Story of their newspaper and come up with a headline, which they tweeted from their phones. Their choices of headline were then shown live on the screen and the winner was to receive a Nexus 7 tablet.