I am here now <3
Was not planning on starting a Substack bus since the spam PR emailers have found my personal email, might as well get back into it
Who am I, and why have I decided to do this?
Hello, so this is awkward. To be honest, I did not think I would be making myself a Substack, but here we are. So, for those who do not know, I am currently a MSc Politics and Communications student at the London School of Economics. However, before this, I worked as a full-time hack back in Ipswich, for the Ipswich Star and East Anglian Daily Times, where I tended to write about politics. Journalism has been a constant part of adult life, starting from award-winning student journalism at the University of Manchester, followed by internships, work experiences and articles for publications like The Big Issue, as well as a Gold Standard NCTJ grade from News Associates.
However, I haven’t written for a while, partly because I left my Newquest job to come to do a Master’s degree, but also because international students can’t freelance in the UK, so even if I write, there is no one to publish. Hence, here I am starting my own Substack, hopefully getting back into the groove of writing, and also hoping to keep showing my journalistic skills to whoever might want to give me some work.
So what have I done up till now, and what can you expect here?
Well, I gave you a synopsis of my CV above, but personally, I love to do political journalism. I started that with an interview with Andy Burnham back when I was a student journalist, and kept that going to interview PM Keir Starmer as a local news reporter for the East Anglian. I also did my best to cover elections and Suffolk’s devolution deal, along with local government reform in the county. I hope to keep this going, even though I may not have the same kind of access to politicians or an official email to make myself somewhat legitimate. So do not expect groundbreaking, never-before-seen articles, but hopefully something worth reading nonetheless.
I also have experience writing about communities, such as the racism felt in queer spaces, that I wrote for The Big Issue. Hopefully, I can find some stories like that and develop them on here.
I have also been a multimedia journalist, in terms of both video and audio. So I am going to try to show you some proof of that as well:
So, hopefully there is something for you guys to see here, and something for me to keep doing.
Please let me know if you have any ideas of what I could write on here:
And feel free to check out my different social media page!