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Reading Chronicle reporter Sarah-Jane Russell has won the prize for the best pre-entry student of 1999 at Highbury College, Portsmouth.

She will be presented with the James Arlott Memorial Award and a cash prize at the college on May 25.

Sarah-Jane (24) was signed up by the Chronicle after work experience last Easter and joined the paper on the day after the 20-week NCTJ course ended in July.

“Highbury was hellish at times and I’d never worked so hard in my life,” she says. “But I loved it and the graft was worth it.

“Winning this prize was a very gratifying shock which sticks two proverbial fingers up at the Oxford and Cambridge graduates on the course, whose smugness and deluded superiority nearly drove me insane after 20 long weeks (with the exception of Katy Edwards, who now works at the Cambridge Evening News and is not smug at all).”

We asked Sarah-Jane to tell us a bit about herself.

Why did you want to be a journalist?

“I had my first taste of the newsroom buzz as a child, when I was dragged along to the old Fleet Street offices of the Mirror by my sister, whose husband was the circulation director. I’ve wanted a piece of the action ever since. My first media job was a six-month secondment on the East African Standard in Nairobi. I had been out there visiting my sister, who runs a radio station.”

What’s your best/most interesting/most unusual job to date?

“My favourite, but most frustrating, job so far is investigating an allegedlesbian love triangle at a school.

“The headteacher was accused of promoting her lover, demoting her when she lostinterest and then sparking an affair with another female teacher and creating amanagement job for her!

“Even with written evidence, extensive interviews with a contact andoff-the-record confirmation from former teachers, the story had to buried underallegations of mismanagement for legal reasons. Very News of the World stuff and great fun.

“The governing body suspended her and she later resigned. The Daily Mailfollowed up the story in January.

“Most daunting and challenging was covering the Paddington rail disaster, whenall the attention was on Reading and it was thought up to 50 people from our patch hadbeen killed.”

What’s your ambition?

Tough one…I told my editor I’d be sitting in his seat in five years at myinterview, but I want to see the world first, so it might take me a bit longerthan that.

“I’m not up for anything too ‘sweetie daaaarling’, which means magazines and TVare probably out. But my ideal job would be researching documentaries and hard news programmes or ruling my own internet-based media empire from some tropical island getaway.”

Sarah-Jane – engaged to “long-suffering and anti-media boyfriend Chris” – says she has had plenty to get her teeth into at the Chronicle, where she has earned education and internet correspondent status.

“I love my job, even when I’ve worked a 60-hour week, spent all my wages in thefirst week, been to a mind-dulling parish council meeting where they argued forfive hours over trimming their bushes and the story I’ve been working on for aweek is butchered by heartless subs.”

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