A regional daily has barred students at a nearby journalism college from doing work experience at the paper after they started up a special publication aimed at students on its patch.

Johnston Press subsidiary Sussex Newspapers recently launched a free newspaper called Student Life which is staffed by journalism students at City College Brighton and Hove.

The paper circulates in the Brighton area and is aimed at giving students real-life experience of writing for a proper newspaper.

But Brighton daily The Argus has now contacted the college to say that its students will no longer be offered work experience there.

The Student Life project is supported by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, the industry’s premier training body.

“The students have found it very rewarding, while offering them the opportunity of garnering an excellent supply of cuttings, which we all look for when we’re interviewing new recruits,” said one newspaper executive who has been closely involved in it.

Staff at the college confirmed that an email had been received from The Argus making clear that it would no longer be offering work experience placements to its students, but have declined to comment further.

Argus editor Michael Beard has been approached for a comment on the story but has not responded.

Comments

DAVE (17/12/2009 09:45:29)
Mysterious….

Rory (17/12/2009 09:55:05)
Having read the Argus I can see why they wouldn’t want competition.

localhack (17/12/2009 10:20:29)
Hmm. I think a clue to The Argus’s reaction might be found in the ownership of the student paper – local paper monoliths Johnston Press, who also happen to publish a series of rival weekly papers in The Argus’s patch . . .

HoldtheFrontPage (17/12/2009 10:45:40)
We’ve already had to remove a couple of potentially libellous comments here…let’s try and play the ball and not the man, eh folks?

Jp Worker (17/12/2009 11:23:18)
Sorry to be harsh but if it’s a Johnston Press paper I wouldn’t imagine it poses much of a threat given the company’s determined mission to foul up its own papers. Chances are the students will be sent to a hub in Edinburgh to produce copy as part of the firm’s ‘keep it local’ campaign.

Sussex Journalist (17/12/2009 11:23:29)
They are not missing much. Work experience there involved being sat in a corner and ignored…

JERV (17/12/2009 11:26:44)
The Argus? Is it still going?

james (17/12/2009 12:17:19)
“The paper is aimed at given students experienced of working on a proper newspaper”. Why? There won’t be any ‘proper newspapers’ left in five years time and places on the nationals will be at all-time premium. When are people going to accept this industry is shot to pieces?

Zootopian (17/12/2009 12:53:46)
Makes sense to me. Why would a Newsquest paper want staff from a rival publisher to have access to their stories, pictures, contacts etc.?

Argusreader (17/12/2009 13:18:57)
The Argus boasts on its bills “first with the news”. Is that why so many of its stories are follow-ups from JP weeklies or re-hashed press releases.
The now mediocre morning single edition Argus (which don’t forget was once a superb awatd-winning multi-edition evening paper) doesn’t need to take on JP which I hear is doing a fine job of destroying itself.
Two badly struggling former giants grappling over recession scraps.
Undignified, isn’t it?

Sussex Journalist (17/12/2009 14:19:09)
I think Zootopian is missing the point. These are not employed staff. They are college students who contribute the odd story. Hardly likely to go pinching exclusives while on work experience.
Also, Argusreader is right. A lot of the paper is now simply rehashing stories from JP’s weekly titles. Copy and pasting from their websites and passing them off as their own.
The fact it keeps using its own website merely as a signpost to ‘the full story’ in that days Argus is indicative of its rather arrogant approach.

John (17/12/2009 15:40:26)
I can understand it. Smart switched on workies could end up pinching contacts and using them for a rival publication. I can’t trust some workies at the best of times with phone numbers etc.

localhack (17/12/2009 17:40:58)
John – not the kind of work experience students who are happy to sit in a corner being ignored rather than showing their worth by finding stories, of course . . .

Beano Bob (22/12/2009 14:43:45)
I think we can all agree that the Argus is not what it used to be. But then, which local newspaper is?
I once had an uncle who collected miniature porcelain depicting dead popes. He was misunderstood too, just like me.

City College journalism student (08/01/2010 10:54:30)
I am one of the students from City College. We found the Argus to be petty and ridiculous. Although I understand the rivalry between Johnston press and The Argus it still seems bizarre. The student newspaper is only really distributed to our college and in tiny numbers. We write for it part time, perhaps contributing one small story a week. We considered it small fry whilst working on it but perhaps the powers that be are taking it more seriously than we thought!