Yesterday

After a frantic couple of days, I was looking forward to a nice, lazy day. But there's no rest for the wicked! Yesterday, myself and the rest of the Wessex Scene gang had a 6am start as we had to get an early train up to London to attend an investigative reporting masterclass held by Nick Davies and David Leigh.

We arrived at City University, London bleary eyed but eager to learn more about investigative journalism from two giants of the trade. The pair had loads of tips to share, and it was invaluable to editors like us who are always looking for new, effective techniques of getting the inside story that you all want to hear.

I can safely say that all of us came away from the series of lectures inspired by the stories Nick and David told us, a lot of which were hilarious. I feel that what we've all learned today can be applied immediately to the Wessex Scene and it was encouraging that both Nick and David said that there was no reason why students cannot empower themselves and yield similar results in student newspapers as they do in national ones.

Interestingly, they also said that a lot of the stories they pursue are a product of reading small local papers and random, specialist journals. For instance, the national papers did not pick up on the fact that there was an article in a British medical journal last year telling of how the NHS was importing blood from the USA that had been contaminated with Hepatitus C.

It was really encouraging to hear their stories and feel that we, as students, can do exactly what they are doing; everything is whithin the realms of possibility.

Like Nick Davies said at the end of the day: never give up.