The life story of a south coast journalism college’s former pupil featured in a national newspaper supplement this week.

Roxy Freeman, who studied her preliminary journalism exams at the Brighton Journalist Works, spent her childhood as part of a travelling gypsy community in Ireland.

She didn’t undergo formal education as a child and teenager so as an adult studied for an Open University Degree and then the ten-week course at the Brighton centre.

Within a few weeks of completing the journalism course, Roxy went on placement at the Guardian on their ‘Positive Action Scheme’ which supports journalists from ethnic minorities.

The 29-year-old penned a lengthy feature about her life growing up with her six siblings and three half-sisters which was published in the Guardian’s G2 supplement on Monday.

The college’s MD Paula O’Shea said: “Roxy’s potential shone through at the interview and it was clear she had overcome a number of hurdles to get this far.

“She passed her NCTJ aptitude test and worked hard to complete our fast track journalism sub-editing course. Roxy has a great future ahead of her.”

Roxy’s mentor on the Guardian scheme Aditya Chakrabortty said: “The scheme has been designed for people just like Roxy.

“It’s to help people with talent who don’t normally have the connections to break into national newspapers.

“The article about her gypsy childhood was well written and compellingly told. I am confident she will go on to great things.”

Comments

Onlooker (09/09/2009 09:28:48)
How tediously ‘right on’.

Politically correct and proud of it (09/09/2009 10:23:10)
The narrowing of journalism recruitment to white middle-class graduates could be one reason why newspapers are so boring, and why they don’t report the lives and interests of entire groups of potential readers. And that could be why no one buys these boring, bland papers any more. A bit more right-on recruitment might produce better journalism and higher sales.

Onlooker (09/09/2009 11:18:47)
‘Politically correct and proud of it’ – have you checked the difference in circulation recently between The Guardian and, say, The Sun ? Your thesis is sheer, ‘right on’ poppycock. And, by the way, I was raised on a council estate so I’m not a typical middle class whinger, just someone sick to death of flavour-of-the-month ethnic groups getting pushed to the front of the queue by the likes of The Guardian and similar left-liberal pains in the backside.

JJ (09/09/2009 12:17:47)
Ignoring Onlooker’s tediously dull gripes journalism (and the state of life?), this is an interesting story. Reads well to me

FAST WOMAN (09/09/2009 12:48:14)
Good luck to Roxy. It’s an interesting read. Better that people like her get a chance to enter journalism than a lot of the national Old Boys Network, many of whom wouldn’t answer the door to her if they knew her background.
What’s more she’s clearly resourceful enough to survive on a journalist’s pittance and is unlikely to be attracted to the most suffocating side of PR.
Paula O’Shea is a professional and astute individual and no soft touch. Roxy would only have got on her course on merit.

Hengist Pod (09/09/2009 14:11:15)
Irish travellers are probably one of the most marginalised groups in society, to the point where out and out prejudice is still seen as justified in some quarters. They have never had much of a voice anywhere, so something like this is to be welcomed. I for one would welcome an insight into what is a very closed but fascinating ethnic group.

Onlooker (09/09/2009 14:56:10)
I cannot believe the rose-tinted view being offered up here of Irish travellers and their lifestyle. I’ve covered several stories about them bringing misery to local communities in the UK and met pensioners driven almost to insanity by their yobbish behaviour who can’t afford to move away. Roxy sounds like an intelligent, sensitive person but that shouldn’t blind anyone to the general reality. Traveller camps are a blight on the UK. Hengist Pod, try living next door to one. Believe me, you would soon become less sympathetic towards this ‘marginalised’ group.

FAST WOMAN (09/09/2009 15:42:33)
Yes, Onlooker… what a damn nuisance these Irish travellers are. Why can’t some of them stop wandering round and get a proper job, in journalism perhaps.
Another breed much of the community like to despise.
Seriously, I’m well aware of the problems some traveller groups create when they pitch up, covered them too.
We’ve all had the pix of filthy rubbish piles left in their wake.
It would be interesting to see if Roxy could get the travellers’ honest take on this.
Regardless of that, she has clearly overcome some huge hurdles, that neither of us faced.

J T McTurk (10/09/2009 00:32:40)
Though I applaud anyone with the talent and initiative to overcome obstacles and ‘get on’ in life, I do sympathise to some extent with Onlooker’s ‘tediously right on” remark.
The Guardian, in my opinion, is one of those liberal institutions whose ‘right on’ good intentions are somewhat selective. Would the paper be so interested in Roxy had she been from a working class English family living on, say, a Liverpool council estate. I suspect such a recruit would earn far fewer brownie points among the paper’s elitists than a gipsy traveller. Coming from an ‘oppressed minority’ background, Roxy has excellent PC credentials and is much more of a catch for The Guardian’s head-hunters than Sid Slob from an inner city sink estate whose fate would be considered far less of a designer cause for those on the paper eager to be seen as inclusive.
Bleeding heart liberalism Guardian-style is an odd, some would say unfathomable, philosophy, for its egalitarian posturing rarely translates into actuality in the paper’s newsroom.
One former Guardian veteran told me: “If you’re not public school and Oxbridge, forget about ever becoming editor of The Guardian.” Deeo down, you see, The Guardian has always seen itself as somewhat exclusive, with recruitment directed at clearly defined ‘types’.
To suggest that our esteemed though hopelessly unprofitable bastion of ‘right on’ liberalism is anything other than just one more branch of the old boys network is garbage. The London media reflects all the fundamental injustices of British society, with ‘connections’ counting far more than merit. In fact, its disconnection from ‘real’ Britain is one of the prime factors in its calamitous decline.
Hence, the Roxys of the world – along with a few blacks, the obligatory gays and people with disabilities of one kind or another – will never be anything other than tokens of The Guardian’s bogus compassion.
I wish her a long, successful career in journalism. But if she remains on The Guardian, she would be foolhardy to start hankering after the editor’s chair.

Chris Youett, Esq, (10/09/2009 10:05:48)
Congratulations to Roxy. Speaking as one of the few journalists to come from a working class home, I know how difficult it is to break through the cosy southern, privately-educated glass ceiling. The biggest laugh is that when it comes to discriminating against working class hacks, the Grauniad is the UK’s worst offender! I can’t even get a job there pushing the tea trolley, despite the fact that I have more silverware on my mantlepiece than many of its staff.