Discovering Catch22: where it started for me.

Late February this year whilst I attended the 4Talent Open Day I came across a group called and Catch22, a journalism academy for people just like me needing that extra foot in the door. I was told the academy teaches a group of 15 young budding journalists the skills needed to be a journalist, from
court reporting, feature meetings, transcribing, writing news stories to getting a feature published in Catch22 Magazine which is distributed all over schools and universities in London.

I was really excited, this is what I wanted, I really didn't want to splash out thousands on a full time course at university to learn the same skills I would learn at Catch22 within the space of 3 months.

I'm now half way through the course and looking forward to graduating in May and
going on to do a placement through Catch22 at one of their fifteen media partners.

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED SO FAR?

• Court reporting - Wood Green Crown Court
• Feature meetings every morning
• Vox pops
• Finding news stories in and around the borough
• Proposing news stories to editors
• Conducting interviews
• Writing a feature for Catch22 Magazine
• Much, much more...
  

There is a really good base to Catch22, firstly, it gets straight to the point of what it takes to be a journalist, giving you the right skills - through first hand experience in what it takes to do the day to day task of a reporter, writer or an editor.

I don't think this was possible if I had not battled the numerous rejections and countless applications I had to write up, not forgetting the hundreds of emails I sent of. There are opportunities out there which can be uncovered if you go out there and search for them, attend every event you can, send off as many emails as you can and take rejections as a norm.

Success = Hard work - Principle of journalism (video below).