Huge congratulations to Dean Kilpatrick who will join Kent on Sunday as a trainee reporter on May 23 and also to Sara Malm who has started working shifts at Mail Online, probably the world's most successful newspaper website. It is becoming something of a pattern in the Centre for Journalism that our most determined students secure jobs in journalism before they have graduated. I hope everyone will join me in celebrating Dean's and Sara's achievements in continuing a fine tradition. Dean will be covering the whole of Kent and he tells me that he hopes the opportunity will help him to expand skills he has learned in the Centre and to supply a regular stream of exclusive stories for his paper. He adds: "The course has obviously pushed me in the right direction as the NCTJ preliminary certificates proved essential in getting the job. I think it also benefited my application that I was able to suggest multimedia ideas and had carried out previous work experience." Sara's byline has already appeared on a string of stories for Mail Online. She also tells me that her multimedia skills are proving particularly useful.   

The postgrads recently conducted an on-campus survey, to discover whether students think their courses are good value for money. Their findings clearly have huge implications for University course providers in the light of proposed rises in tuition fees. They came back with fascinating findings, and a useful lesson in reporting: statistics and surveys don't necesarily paint the full picture and can be highly subjective depending on who you ask.

The Centre for Journalism today welcomes an accreditation panel from the Broadcast Journalism Training Council. Steve Harris from the BJTC, Robin Elias, managing editor of ITV News, and Nick Myers, editorial training manager of ITV News, will spend the day talking to students and staff at the centre, examining the facilities and looking at students' work.

Whilst Britons are enjoying days off frolicking in the snow, our Australian counterparts are suffering in the oppressive heat. Although the weather down under has eased off in the past couple of days, the country has seen its longest heat wave since records began. Areas such as Melbourne in the South-East, normally known for their rapidly changing cooler weather, have been particularly badly hit with temperatures of over forty degrees centigrade during the last week.

With the administrators now sorting out the books, and the fear that this Christmas may be its last, Mylo Willkin conjures up fond memories of Woolworths.

Christmas isn’t going to be easy this year. The shoppers may still be thronging the High Street, but their presence belies a tightening of belts taking place across the country.

The first frosts of winter are beginning to bite in the dockside towns of Gillingham and Chatham – and so is the looming recession. Figures out last week confirmed that the UK economy experienced its first quarter of negative economic growth for 16 years. But even closer to home, unemployment has risen to nearly 4,000 in the Medway area and shoppers are beginning to feel the pinch in the run up to Christmas.

Lewis Hamilton has responded to criticism about his driving style by saying: "I'm only human and every now and then people make mistakes."

A very British look at the weather on the anniversary of the Great Storm of 1987

By Students at the Centre for Journalism

‘It was one of the busiest police nights of the decade,' recalls Nigel Newbury, police sergeant working in Land's End on the night of the Great Storm. ‘The phone didn't stop ringing all night.' Nigel Newbury, now retired, says the most memorable part of the night was, ‘when a telegraph pole came down and set fire to a manor house that had been converted into flats.'

A survey conducted by Journalism students at the Medway Campus yesterday shows that more than half of the students interviewed are worried about their financial situation.

Quick guide to using this site's content management system.

Watch a slideshow of the how the Centre for Journalism newsroom took shape.