The Student

‘The Student’ is Ben Whitelaw, a 21-year-old who has wanted to be a journalist ever since he realised The Sun was not just a source of light in the sky.

He has done a range of work experience at The Guardian, The Sunday Times and numerous local papers as well as updating his own blog, Pope and Swift, which professes to provide ‘distinctly readable sports commentary since 2008’, although this has never been verified by anyone other than his mother.

Ben will be studying an MA in Newspaper Journalism at City University London from September 2010 whilst blogging about his experiences of the postgraduate route into journalism on Wannnabe Hacks.

Prior to that, Ben studied English Literature at the University of Birmingham, where he was heavily involved in Redbrick, the campus’ weekly student newspaper.

In his final year, as co-editor of the sport section, he was awarded prizes for ‘Best Section’ and ‘Most Outstanding Contribution to Sport’ by UBSport, the university’s sporting arm, for their university sport supplement.

In an ideal world and in five years time he would be writing comment and features on a range of sports for a national paper and replicating the success of his favourite twitcher and Times columnist, Simon Barnes.