? As the end of the third week of the intensive Multimedia Journalism course drew nearer, it was inspiring and uplifting to spend a day with John Jenkins on Thursday. John challenged us to get paid for features and told us how and where to earn the £££ for freelance writing. I’ve been writing copy for websites, and submitting reviews for a couple of years and although great on my CV, I’ve been working hard and not reaping the finances. John’s insight and experience provided advice in an interactive and challenging environment. He told us about a student who produced a feature on women’s golf fashion through the years and sold it to a women’s golf magazine in the UK for a generous sum. He taught about rights and fees and then revealed that articles can be sold abroad – looking to markets in the US, Australia, NZ and South Africa. John said you need to identify your target market and about four publications that you can sell to. Then write the feature. We were given a deadline and had to write a travel piece about somewhere we had visited and he gave us a framework to work to...

? Thanks to all the people who have checked out my Storify on top tips for aspiring journalists. I’ve now developed it into a blog post. Top tips in a tweet for journalists An experienced and well-respected journalist told me a journalist never stops learning, so this piece is for everyone; from aspiring students to old-hand hacks. Every journalist knows the importance of a Twitter account. Where fifteen years ago there was the barrier of phone books to trawl through and PRs to persuade, there is now instant access to news, celebrities and journalists at the click of a mouse. For some, the overload of jargon; tweets, trends, hashtags is a bit too much to take in at first, but it’s worth getting your head around. I decided to use Twitter to my advantage and gather some top tips from top journalists, while networking and gaining followers at the same time. “Be agile, creative and interested. Network on and offline.” @egrommet Michael Taggart, former national newspaper hack turned blogger, and Head of Digital and Social at PR Company MRM said: “There are three types of journalist – brilliant, lucky and poor. None start the former and all start the...

? Scarlett Wrench has just won Student Journalist of the Year at the NCTJ Society of Editors Conference today. She is 22, from Burgess Hill and studied at Brighton Journalist Works. I interviewed her about this prestigious award and will publish the article I have written for tomorrow’s Argus on my blog tomorrow. Congratulations Scarlett. How does it feel to win this award? I’m very flattered. My award entries were stories I wrote while on my internship with the Crawley Observer, one of my local papers. I owe a lot to the people I was working with there for trusting me to take on some of the bigger stories – rather than just leaving me to make tea and chase up missing cats. Who was the first person you told when you found out you’d been shortlisted? I was with my Mum when I found out. She’d been eyeing up the letter for a while, clearly having guessed what it might be. I had no idea what the letter was for when I opened it, so there was no dramatic build-up. How will you celebrate? I’ve had a bit too much to celebrate recently – my new job, leaving...