A STUDENT at the Warrington Campus of the University of Chester has achieved his dream of working for a top sports news agency.
Josh Luckhurst is reporting at the sharp end with the Press Association (PA) after beating off stiff competition from hundreds of applicants for one of two trainee multimedia sports journalist roles with PA Sport.
Josh obtained his BA in sports journalism after three years of study at Warrington.
Already, he has seen his work published across a range of national and international titles and channels including the Daily Mail, Independent, Sky Sports.com, MSN and Eurosport.
He is now using a range of skills taught on the programme and, in particular, has recognised the significance of social media and multimedia in digital sports coverage.
The 22-year-old said: “It’s a case of having fingers in many pies.
“One of my responsibilities is running our social media accounts, making sure our stories are going out in the right way, but also using social media to source stories and interact with people.
“I’ve had some really good interaction with sportspeople I’ve written stories about such as David Haye and Tom Daley, who have retweeted my articles.
“Also, people want to see videos and not just articles now. They want to see something happening. Whenever we put a video out that seems to attract more interest.”
Josh is grateful for the tuition he received at the Warrington Campus, where he was taught by professional sports journalists. He says this has equipped him well for life on the sports desk.
“Doing things on the programme such as BBC-style live coverage of events like the Australian Open stood me in good stead for covering Wimbledon for PA recently, although the live coverage at PA hasn’t been as strenuous as those on the programme yet!
“Producing things like on-the-whistle match reports, as I did on the course, will also help when it comes to doing them at PA. Pretty much everything covered on the programme has helped in some way.”
Picture: Josh Luckhurst (far right) joins the press huddle at York Races. Being interviewed is horse trainer Peter Niven.
Josh achieves his sports desk dream
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Hmmmmmmm! I wish Josh all the luck in the world but in my day it was widely said that a sports journalist was a failed journalist. I accept this was unfair because there were, and still are, many fine sports journalists. But the idea of a BA in Sports Journalism would have been regarded as a joke.