What makes a successful journalist?

Eight times award-winning Guardian journalist Paul Lewis, most famous for breaking the Ian Tomlinson story, spoke about what it takes to be a journalist and said he felt sorry for the family of Ian Tomlinson, who was  killed during the 2009 G-20 Protest.

He explained that the story was more important than winning awards, "Award ceremonies are tedious events, it’s all a bit of a lottery and people turn up with silly black ties, they’re not that enjoyable as evenings go, it’s the stories that matter the most."

Paul won Best Use of Citizen Journalism award in 2010 and his latest award was for Best Twitter Feed during the riots last year. His outstanding work has been recognised almost every year and he won Journalist of the Year Award in 2011.

His view on journalism as a career is:

"It can be fun, bad, entertaining and it can also be boring, so all of those. It depends what your job in journalism is and who you are working for. Journalism has got worse, less entertaining, boring and less fun. People have less time to work on news stories. Thankfully, I don’t fall into this category.

"The Guardian doesn’t do too much of this but often lots of journalists find themselves very quickly turning around stories because we have less money in the industry and therefore we spend less time working on stories. Therefore people find themselves stuck behind a desk rewriting stories and press releases."

Paul’s great journalistic career started when he applied for a traineeship for young journalists seven years ago at The Guardian. He is now the special projects editor for The Guardian.

Paul lectures across Europe about the use of social media in journalism and teaches a master class in investigative reporting; in 2009 he received Bevin’s Prize for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.

Paul realised he wanted to become a journalist in his early twenties, he studied social and political science, and sociology at Cambridge university. After finishing university he decided to pursue a career in journalism. He was born and raised in Byfleet, Surrey.

Paul’s advice to a young journalist or someone who wants to pursue a career in journalism is "to get out there and freelance, we live in an era where people can easily get hold of a computer so self publishing is a good way to start as well".

The full audio interview with Paul Lewis will be featured at the FREEDOM exhibition, from 9 to 30 August 2012 at the Art Against Knives gallery in BOXPARK, Shoreditch.

The Guardian Newspaper: Behind The Scenes

We arrived at The Guardian at 2:56pm.

Once everyone was introduced to each other, Margaret, a journalist at The Guardian, took us into the workshop room.

The workshop started with Margaret giving a few minutes introduction about herself. She took us through the timeline of the Guardian Newspaper; from the early stage of its birth till how it became London's most popular newspaper today. The selling statistics for The Guardian newspaper is 270,000 to 300,000 a day and 3.4 millions readers online per day.

I found the history behind the making of The Guardian interesting, there was a lot to say and the fact that Margaret had done ninety-one years of history in less than half an hour was astonishing in my opinion.

Margaret spoke about the work that goes behind making The Guardian a success, the work that the journalists and reporters conduct on a daily basis, she spoke about how each types of news had its own division for example there was one set of journalists and reporters who are working on sports, business, money, culture and travel etc.

She began to ask us questions about the newspaper, to see if we got them right and then correct us, trying to refresh our minds. We also heard from Shiv Malik who is a print journalist at The Guardian and a broadcast journalist who has worked extensively for the BBC and Channel 4. Malik co-wrote a book with Ed Howker 'Jilted Generation' in 2010, the book highlights the affect of youths in today's economy. 

He told us about his journey to journalism, how to be a good journalist, the rules and the fun of being a journalist. After Shiv finished, we had a question and answer session with him and then the day was over. Overall I enjoyed the trip, it was once in a lifetime opportunity and it drove my passion even harder to make my dreams of being a Journalist come true.

The Guardian Newspaper is a British national daily newspaper and the world's leading liberal voice.

The Guardian Newspaper Work For Us
If you want to break into journalism, then The Guardian Newspaper offers work experince and paid internships for students and young adults.