Journalism BA(Hons): Student achievements

Celebrating our students

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.

Kingston undergraduate nominated for Amnesty Media Awards

Outgoing Kingston journalism student Jamal Osman was short-listed in 2009 for a prestigious media award by Amnesty International for a report he produced for Channel 4 News while he was still an undergraduate.

Jamal – who carried out a series of investigations for Channel 4 News and ITN from Africa in between writing essays and his third-year dissertation – was nominated in the Television News category of the Amnesty Media Awards 2009 for a report on the Ethiopean government's alleged downplaying of the scale of the country's drought.

He and two colleagues lost out to another Channel 4 News team, which won the award for its acclaimed report on the Kiwanja Massacre in Congo.

Press Gazette Student Journalism awards

The River, produced by third year students as part of the Journalism degree, was nominated in the Team of the Year category in the 2008 Press Gazette Student Journalism Awards. The paper made it into the top six to be shortlisted in an award that is effectively for best student publication. The rest of the nominees were magazines or websites, making The River the highest-rated student newspaper in the country.

Also nominated for individual awards were third year students Johanna Carr (shortlisted in the Interviewer of the Year and News Reporter of the Year categories) and Ian Paynton (nominated for the Editor of the Year award). A team of second year students was also nominated for its magazine project.

The Press Gazette Student Journalism Awards are highly regarded in the industry, with many winners going on to successful careers in journalism. The Kingston nominations are particularly significant as many of the students' rivals at other universities and colleges were on postgraduate courses or professional training schemes.

Lecturer Dan Townend, who runs The River as part of the practical journalism module, said: "The nominations are due reward for an excellent effort by the students. The paper has been lively, interesting and professionally produced and is a credit to the students and the University."

The River is published eight times a year and its 4,000 copies distributed across the University.