Journalism PgDip/MA: Student achievements

Public affairs student wins Local Government Chronicle work experience

Recent Kingston Journalism MA graduate, Peter Johnstone has been awarded the National Council for the Training of Journalists Local Government Prize for the best paper in the NCTJ Public Affairs (Local Government) examination. He will now have paid work experience at the Local Government Chronicle.

Peter's lecturer, James Morrison said: "I have marked a number of exceptional local government papers in my eight years as a public affairs tutor, but Peter's was by some distance the most impressive I've seen. He displayed a clear and detailed grasp not only of 'the facts' but, crucially, of how they might be used by journalists to generate stories in the public interest."

Kingston newspaper wins student publication of the year at Guardian awards

The River – the University's newspaper – won publication of the year at the 2010 Guardian Student Media Awards.

The judges described The River as a "great tabloid with a punchy mix of features and comment".

The competition has traditionally only been open to student newspapers that were not part of a taught course. The rules changed this year, meaning The River could finally be entered, against stiff competition from universities such as Oxford, York and Manchester.

Lara O'Reilly, one of the graduates who worked as editor on the paper during the year, said: "We were so pleased to get into the final six with such great competition and didn't really expect to win; we were the underdogs. We'd even been practising our gracious losing smiles. When we found out we had won, it was really surreal. It's a great accolade, not just for us and our CVs but also for the University. I'm sure winning this award will inspire more budding journalists to come and study at Kingston. It shows that winning isn't unachievable just because you're up against Oxford or people that have won before. I think this puts Kingston on the map as a centre of excellence for journalism."

Dan Townend, module leader, agreed. "It is an amazing feeling to be told you are better than everyone else. And it's wonderful the coverage that this has got for the course and for Kingston. This award recognises all the students and their work and progression over the last three or four years. It's as much for the people who made the first issues of the year as the ones that made the last."

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was on the panel of judges that also included Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, Panorama investigative journalist Paul Kenyon, and NME editor Krissi Murison.

The awards ceremony took place in Kings Place, central London, where The Guardian is based.