My name is Kate Beioley and I work for the Investors Chronicle which is a part
of the Financial Times and I'm the Personal Finance Reporter. My job includes writing
about personal finance issues, so pensions and savings and all those kind of things but
I also write about investments. So the job entails, kind of, meeting contacts, people
in industry talking about the markets with people and what that means for my readers
and then writing that up. So I also do podcasts and kind of video work as well.
I chose Kingston University because I was looking for a course which had both
Masters and the NCTJ which is a national journalism qualification, so I knew I wanted to do both
and there weren't that many places to do it. And I definitely heard people talk about Kingston
so I knew it had a really good reputation, it also wasn't as expensive as some of the
other courses which was important to me. And I knew that a lot of their lecturers, I either
recognised their names or I knew that they came from industry which, again, was an important
factor for me.
I think Kingston is a great location because it is in London which is really important
but, you know, slightly outside, you're on the river so that is very nice, there is a
lot of good pubs, a lot of places to go out and shop, yeah it's good. I mean it's easy
to get into London but it's doesn't have the craziness of being central London. The atmosphere
at Kingston is really friendly actually, it's got a real kind of buzz about it and there
is definitely no ... yeah just everybody gets along and everyone is very willing to help
you out. I remember my undergrad was not quite the same in terms of it's harder to get in
touch with lecturers and they were always very busy, but at Kingston people are willing
to just have a chat with you, you can always knock on their door which actually is really
great when you're doing a masters because you do need a bit more of that kind of one
on one time.
I think the things I really remember from my course are obviously the people and
the lecturers and we used to have a really good time, I remember going to the pub quite
a lot, I mean highlights in terms of the course and we were there a lot, it's hard work. There
were things like the public affairs course where we got to, kind of, go to parliament
and we used to watch PMQs every Wednesday which I think is great and then business journalism,
that was a real highlight too and it's obviously been directly helpful to me in this job.
My first job after graduating from Kingston was, it was a short term one but
at a local paper which I started doing as work experience and then I did that for a
couple of months afterwards and they did offer me a job but then I actually went onto a legal
trade magazine as a news reporter. So I did that for bit over a year and then I came here
in January.
Kingston was fantastic in terms of finding a job, I mean they definitely helped
me get onto the work experience at the local paper, I wouldn't have got it if I hadn't
been at Kingston I don't think. And then I was actually ... my first job, the legal
magazine was kind of suggested to me by one of my lecturers who put me in touch with the
editor, so I think Kingston is directly responsible for my first job, yeah.
I think the most useful skills to me now which I learnt at Kingston are things like shorthand, I couldn't do my
job without shorthand, you just need to be able to write very fast. And so that is great,
but also things like news writing, learning to structure stories and just learning how
to kind of speak to people, how to make contacts, I think those are all skills that have been
really useful to me.
For people thinking about applying to Kingston, I would say it is a really good
option because it does have the NCTJ which is important to employers, particularly if
you're going into news and local news. But it's also a Masters and I actually think doing
both is very important because journalism is an industry which is really changing at
the moment and it's helpful if you can talk around some of those big issues and the Masters
was great for doing that. The lecturers at Kingston were fantastic for kind of making
you think about the wider issues in journalism, but also for giving you really practical,
well a great education on how to be a journalist.