I ran a piece on Journalism.co.uk a couple of weeks ago about the launch of yourCardiff — a news and views website for Cardiff — which is being overseen by journalist Ed Walker or, as some might know him, the founder of Blog Preston.
A year to the day after setting up his own news and community website for Preston, Ed landed his new job with news group Media Wales to head up the launch of yourCardiff. And it was setting up and running his own website that were big selling points in his application but, as Ed told me, the digital skills he started learning while studying journalism at the University of Central Lancashire weren't always top of employers' agendas when he graduated in 2007:
We all graduated and no one [local news organisations] wanted us, because no one had done their digital strategies in 2007. They still wanted 100-words-a-minute shorthand. It made us start to think that no one was going to want those skills in the future and how they could be applied to other areas apart from journalism.
It's now taken me until 2009 to get the journalism job I'd wanted. Perhaps you almost have to do journalism as a hobby first. If you make something happen, someone, somewhere will notice and you will get something out of it. For journalism students it means you can go to an interview and show that your are producing something off your own back.
It's taken time and a lot of hard work but it's good to hear a positive during tough times for graduates.
What's more Ed's not given up on Blog Preston but is instead handing over day-to-day running of the site to a new editor — someone who he plans to tutor in digital and online journalism skills and pass the baton on.
