Joe Harbert, Sport Journalism MA student, on winning the Best Online News Site award at the 2020 Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) awards.
Joe won the award for his work on grassroots football in Kent while studying on his undergraduate degree at Canterbury Christ Church University.
You can view Joe’s award-winning work on his website.
Sport Journalism MA course leader, Simon Mcennis said: “The journalism course team is extremely pleased for Joe for this tremendous achievement. Joe thoroughly deserved his award for his hard-hitting and investigative work into grassroots football.
“It’s great to see such quality journalism be recognised in this way and Joe’s success sends an encouraging and inspirational message to all our journalism students here at the University of Brighton.”
Joe told us a bit about his work and why he decided to continue his studies at Brighton:
“Regardless of the pandemic, grassroots football is suffering enormously with issues such as a lack of funding and producing professional players to climb the footballing ladder, and nowhere can this be best seen than in Kent – that’s why I decided to investigate the challenges it faced in the county.
“I have a lot of contacts at this level of the game and above as well, so that certainly was pivotal in allowing my website to contain the likes of video, audio, infographics and other multimedia elements like polls.
“I had already wanted to submit other pieces of work previously to the BTJC awards, but some just didn’t fit into certain categories. I was confident my work could match any other submission across the country and that I had a great chance of winning Best Online News Site. Winning the award has given me a great chance to put my name out there even further.
“Given the current climate, it’s no secret that walking straight into the ideal job was always going to be a rarity for the Class of 2020 up and down the country. So with that in mind, and of course wanting to complete an MA at some point in my career anyway, I thought about studying a specific part of the industry in more detail, and came to the conclusion that developing my knowledge in sport at the University of Brighton in Eastbourne would be ideal.
“I decided to study the Sport Journalism MA because I feel that it is the perfect fit for my career currently. I have just completed my undergraduate degree in multimedia journalism and thoroughly blossomed during my time there. I started it three years ago with no real background in media, but continued to develop throughout the course to such an extent that I was picked up by my local news outlet in Kent, and have increasingly grown in confidence and skill ever since.
“Inevitably, most of my focus now though is towards achieving a distinction at Brighton, using every bit of advice and detail to continue improving as a journalist and hopefully becoming a full-time member of a professional newsroom, whether that be in broadcast or in print journalism.”
