Holly Sykes explans what’s involved in the job of being features editor of a thriving and award-winning student newspaper. This article first appeared in the Hull Daily Mail

My weekend consists of hard work and plenty of coffee and chocolate to keep myself awake.

As features editor of Hullfire, the University of Hull’s newspaper, the weekend work begins on Friday evening and doesn’t usually finish until Monday afternoon.

Hullfire is a fortnightly paper and so every other weekend the editorial team is kept under lock and key, allowed only to the bar and back, until the paper is laid up and ready to be sent off to the printers.

The features section is the largest in the paper, with our writers filling six animated and lively pages.

During the week, the writers are given a theme to write on, one of the tamer ones being “Childhood Heroes”, which created a section devoted to the eighties, our heroes as children being Kylie and Jason, Mr T rom the A-Team and the cartoon character Mr Benn.

Other themes have produced side-splitting stories from an audience member of late night Channel 4 show Naked Elvis, a student who discovered himself confessing all his deepest secrets to scouts around a campfire and a passerby who stumbled upon elderly nudists in their garden.

Some of our writers decide not to write on the theme and focus their attentions on more serious issues.

This is where my work as features editor is needed. When an article is light and entertaining, all I need to do is lay it up on the computer and acquire an eye-catching picture to finish it off.

However, if people and their issues are involved in the story I have to treat it as a news article: with fairness and objectivity.

After consulting the news editor for advice, I contact any of the parties mentioned in the feature to double check that the writer has covered every aspect of the story.

These are details that keep us working until Monday, because people are hard to get hold of at the weekend.

Saturday is spent laying out the regular articles such as the spoof “Dear Doctor” column and a “Careers Corner”, which features a different graduate each issue and reports on their route from university to their current professional position.

To relax on Saturday night, the editorial team can be found at Twister, the university disco, bopping the night away.

By noon on Sunday we have all managed to make it into the office, complete with hangovers, and this is generally our state until Monday when we rejoice and go back to our degrees for another fortnight.

We want to here more from student journalists. E-mail us here and now with your articles for publication on HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk.

Back to the top

Back to the training to become a journalist index