WINOL Showreel:

Confessional Interview:

‘I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of sport.’

With a childhood that will always push him to reach his goals and work hard for what he wants, Charlie Kelly, 24, has already had two professional sporting careers under his belt. He saw his professional football career rise and fall before his eyes, but bounced back for round two, working harder than ever to move up the ranks from an amateur to professional boxer, while still in his teens.

“I didn’t grow up with my parents; my mum wasn’t thought fit enough to look after me and my sister.  She had mental health problems which meant that we had to leave her. My dad wasn’t around then either, he went to prison when I was really young and  so me and my sister were split up. She went to live in Ireland, with some of our family out there and I was put into care; I don’t remember how old I was or too much about being in foster care, but know I didn’t really understand what was happening. I didn’t stay in one place, I was with a family in Blackpool and another in Oxford, and I was also in two foster homes which were different. I don’t really remember too much about the families or the care homes, but everybody was really nice and just took care of me.”

“On my fourth birthday, I remember going to live with my great aunty, in Tottenham. It was really different living with my aunty, there were quite a few of us living in the household and she was quite old fashioned and quite strict, so it was different to what I was used to before then.

I lived with my three cousins and I was bought up with them. The youngest of the three cousins, I didn’t really get on with that well at first. I think he thought I was stealing his time with his family, which must have been difficult, but now we get on really well.

I didn’t really get all the things I really wanted as a child. It must have been hard for my aunt with three children of her own and me on top. All us kids just got it with it really. When I was younger I just thought ‘one day I’ll get it just not right now.’  Now it makes me appreciate things a lot more, now if I buy a pair of trainers they’ll be a nice pair and the things I buy will nice things ‘cause I know I’ve worked hard for it and I appreciate it.

I enjoyed a lot of sport and worked hard to achieve a lot in my teens. One of my older cousins who I grew up with was a professional footballer; he played for a few teams Southend, Hull, Bradford and a few others I can’t remember. He sort of inspired me to play. Watching him growing up, playing football and me sticking out playing footie games with him and his friends had a lot to do with my career in football. I was picked for a few teams when I was young and eventually I got a professional contract with Dagenham Redbridge and then Stevenage for a little while and eventually I had offers to play over in America and I was there for six months.”

“I played for Ohio State while I was out in the US, I also played a few games for Chicago fire. I was very young, I was 16. It was a great experience and it was like a completely different world out there, but it was scary for me as boy so young. I felt really special and I thought I’d never have to work again, but that didn’t come true. I ripped the tendons around my knee and that meant I was on crutches for six months. And when I came back into play I just wasn’t the same. I just lost the passion a little bit and other sports I could take part in took over and that was the end of football for me really. I was really disappointed when I got my injury because there were players around me, who probably wasn’t as good as me and they were given a great chance. There was nothing I could do about it, it was out of my hands.”

“That was when I became interested, more than ever in boxing. I always boxed, it was always in my family – it’s what my dad did before he went into prison. I was eight when I started and I still box now.

The thing that made me stick it out and work really hard at it was that I could box even with my injuries from football. It took over my passion and dream for professional football and I got better and more confident at it. I went all the way - from amateur level to professional.

My current record stands at 56 out of 63 games, so I’ve only ever lost seven games. I’ve won many titles and things, I was lucky enough to be the national champion as a kid. I was also given the title of London champion. I’m proud of them all it just shows how hard I work.

I even got the chance to box for England for two years, not long after my time in America playing football. There was no better feeling than representing your country, I mean, at that point I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of sport!

I’m still licensed as a professional boxer and now I’m coming to the end of the pro game, but I don’t know if I’m going to continue my boxing career. Work commitments are taking over and I don’t know how I’m going to it everything in. I’m finding it really difficult to train and keep that professional level with working. Especially when my new employer isn’t as lenient as previous have been. It’s a hard decision to make when it’s in your own hands.”

“Everything that’s happened in my life, especially growing up, has made me work harder, made want to do really well in life and it’s taught me that the l the harder I work the better the outcome will be – it’s given me a better work ethic which I guess is reflected in my success in sport. I really look forward to having children and bringing them up in a similar way I was with my aunt, with structure and that work ethic, as well as a lot my values and things I love.”

Innovation Article:

Innovation in The Magazine Industry – The Tablet:

We all enjoy picking up and flicking through a magazine if it’s there in front of you, but how often do you buy one? From personal experience, as much as I love fashion magazines, I rarely buy them. I find myself looking at websites and twitter feeds of all the big UK publications. I'm sure I am not the only one to do this; online material is free and takes up less space. But what effect is this having on the magazine industry?

In the last 20 years journalism has changed dramatically, as has the way readers consume print journalism. The development of the internet and its accessibility has meant that online media is more interactive, more convenient and more attractive than the traditional form.

Many more of us are enjoying weekly or monthly magazines, such as Vogue or Q magazine, in their online form rather than their hard copies. There is a significantly greater demand for online versions of print publications, and so print publications have been forced to take on an online presence to remain competitive in the industry.

The advantage of a publication being active online, compared to its traditional form is the contemporaneousness of articles and information. What is featured in magazines is usually dated within a few days. The online versions can be updated as soon as news breaks or a new article is ready. As well as this, a lot of the content that is found in the magazine is also available online and usually free of charge. Although some publications online only give a limited length of an article and encourage you to pay to view the full issue online for a one off or monthly subscription.

A magazine with an online presence requires more than written text. Photos and video are vital to online interactivity, giving greater consumer satisfaction than reading off of a piece of paper. This has changed the work ethic of journalists. Instead of contributing a few articles over the week or month for the next issue of said publication, journalists are now required to be constantly producing content on many different platforms to feed its readership. While an article is being written or the lead up to an interview, the journalist is expected to tweet about it and to post photos on Instagram while its taking place, as well as a short report for the website and a personal blog entry about the piece as a teaser. Once articles are complete, to compliment them, photo galleries and video clips are required to add to the experience.

One of the biggest innovations in the last five years is the emergence of the tablet - the mobile internet device. Tablets such as the iPhone, iPad or the Kindle allow us to download 'apps' so that you can use websites and things you love on the go. This includes newspapers and magazine apps, which have all of the content of their print form available, with some extras, in front of you, at the click of a button. The thing that is unique about these online apps is the ability to personalise them to fit your wants and needs as a reader and their seamless links to other websites and social media (which plays a huge part in online media sharing).

There is the opportunity to comment on articles and share them via social media sites on these online tablet apps and this allows the reader to feel as though they are part of the story, and in way they add to the meaning of a story, creating colour and giving the journalist more to think about or even write something new in response. This reader response element of online journalism makes it more collaborative and more meaningful as part of a democracy.

Online social media plays an important role in the marketing of these online publications. There is a need and demand for all publication to be active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. because they are available on the go and are a current trend. These social media sites are also apps for tablets and are available in the same place as your magazine. They act as a means for instant news sharing and allow the opportunity for users to have easy access to this information and allow the journalist to share things immediately. They encourage reader responses and sometimes create means for competition and amateur journalism.

Most people only read online articles because they have been shared on a social media site by a friend and have caught there interest. Not because of their loyal following of that publication. This highlights how people can personalise their experience of reading a magazine rather than having to read it in its entirety and also highlights how collaborative it can be.

ASOS.com is a UK online fashion brand which retails fashion and beauty products all over the world and aims its product at those in their 20s. Without the development of the internet the ASOS.com brand would not be successful or even exist as it relies on a web-savvy consumer. As an online fashion warehouse there is no limit to what’s on offer for customers to buy, as there would be in a high street store.  ASOS.com is the hub of the brand and gives its users the ability to ‘shop trends’ which are updated daily and follow the ASOS blog.

The ASOS.com magazine is a monthly magazine which is available to all VIP members of their online store.  The ‘VIP’ customer status is available by selecting an option on your online account to receive the magazine and special offers on the products they sell. The printed copy is a generic fashion and celebrity magazine, but also acts as a ‘look-book’ for products sold online.

The iPad and Tablet ASOS Magazine application is a free app and offers all of the features of the print magazine, ad free and with the added bonus of beauty tutorial videos, to show readers how to achieve hairstyles and make-up looks step by step, and in app purchasing, which give readers the freedom to see current fashion trends and buy them at the click of a button. Rather than having to put down a magazine and get to a computer to buy products. This for the company must be more profitable as it doesn’t give readers too much of chance to hesitate when wanting to buy items.

In recent issues of the printed magazine, readers have been left a note to inform them of future changes: because of the innovation of online mobile devices and their popularity the ASOS.com magazine will soon only be available to read on the ASOS magazine app. This reflects the changes the magazine industry as whole is going through and could suggest the future of all printed magazines.

But even though the ASOS.com magazine is a free publication and isn’t as prestigious as, for example, the Vogue brand, it still shows how a successful and profitable brand are aware of which changes have to be made to keep it profitable. Keeping the ASOS magazine in its printed form, with the cost of printing and distribution is not necessary as it’s in demand online and suits its audience and brand well.

Written by Kirsty Warwick-Mcdonagh

Professional Interview:

'How are you a journalist? You exploit every source you've got.'

Jim White has spent the last decade as a feature writer and sport columnist for The Daily Telegraph.

With a career that spans over almost thirty years, Jim was one of the founding members of The Independent back in the 1980s, and spent his year prior to The Daily Telegraph writing for The Guardian.  Alongside his career as a writer, Jim regularly contributes to BBC Radio 4 and Five Live, 'Radio is a different discipline its less formal and less collaborative.'

Jim’s journalism career began at university, writing for the university paper which opened the doors to his first job at a magazine, started by a friend of his. 'I got into journalism through the exercise of good fortune, I was extremely lucky.' Unfortunately, that magazine folded and Jim was made redundant. The journey which lead him to his current role at The Daily Telegraph was well earned; after his time at university and first magazine job, Jim spent time at a local newspaper group until he became a freelance journalist. 'I went freelance and I started doing shifts on fleet street papers, so diary shifts, news shifts that kind of thing. And then, again [I was] very, very lucky. The guy who had been my first editor rang me up and said some friends of his were starting a newspaper and did I want to apply for a job - that was the independent. So I went to the independent when it started, and worked my way up there. I was there for ten years and then I went to the guardian, I was there for seven years and then I came to the telegraph ten years ago.'

As a reporter, Jim enjoys the flexibility of not having to stick to a routine. With points throughout the week where column deadlines need to be met, the only real structure in his week come in the form of a scheduled football match or sporting event. 'Principally you get up in the morning and write something, you find something out and write about it.'

Writing articles and a sports column for a national newspaper comes with a huge pressure to satisfy readers and create a discussion amongst them, Jim does by giving his audience what they want to read about. 'Football is the biggest [sport] by far, I'm a general sport reporter but the football dominates everything. You get little windows, so the Olympics was great cause it was a football free zone and you wrote about other things and in the build up to it you were writing about swimmers, riders, cyclists, but most of the time its football because that’s what people want to read about.'

He believes that working for The Daily Telegraph allows him to be involved in what he believes is the imperative concept of journalism – sharing. 'Journalism gives you platform for dissemination of information and opinion. So being a national newspaper journalist is having a hugely listened to platform for you opinion. It’s a great vehicle.' He also believes that it is vital to be able to deliver on all platforms to get the job and be successful in journalism. 'The idea that you're just a print journalist is absurd!! Print is dying. You've got to know your way around you've got to produce what's required. I don’t think it’s possible that you can’t not exist online now.' Jim continued to discuss the importance of social media for online journalism whether you’re a national or local journalist – ‘Most people now would get to a newspaper website via recommendation whether it be from Facebook or from Twitter. Someone sending 'check this out' or 'this is a very good piece' and them clicking on it, that's how people get to newspaper websites. They don't go to the newspaper website and look at it first. They get to stories that way. You've got embrace that or nobody is going to read what you write.’

His career has developed alongside technology and was able to identify the dramatic changes in journalism and the way the industry has adapted to them. Although there were computers and electronic equipment available, Jim recalls spending his time at The Times working on hand typewriters 'You did everything in triplicate and you put your copy in a little steel tea box in the middle of the table, and whenever they felt like it some printer, bejewelled youth, would  come around grab it.' It’s not only journalistic tools which have changed and developed working practice has too to fit the demand of the advancements in technology, working practice has had to meet this demand also. 'The first time I covered Wimbledon was about 18 years ago, and at Wimbledon they have this wonderful bar for the press, beautiful, exclusively for the press and it overlooks some outside courts. It’s a great place to go, and when I first went that bar was full of journalists drinking, Sunday journalists who during the week are there  getting atmosphere, getting contacts but only have write one piece a week.' Jim continues say, 'If you go to Wimbledon now no one is in that bar. You just haven’t got the opportunity to go to a bar because at the moment Andy Murray wins a match you have to file a report for the website. In the old days you had hours before you had to file anything because it was only going to go in the next paper.' ‘Plus there’s a proliferation of other media, you've got radio people wanting comments, there's TV people wanting comments; you're all feeding off of each other.

In keeping with the demand of online journalism, Jim has written and been the face of various 'gonzo' style video clips on The Telegraph website, which focus on putting himself at the centre of the piece. A recent example saw Jim practising on the ten meter board with Olympic Diver, Tom Daley.

When asked if he enjoyed this this type of journalism, he said 'I quite like not being in the piece. Being an observer not at the centre of it. That's not necessarily my way I prefer watching, as a fly on the wall. One of the good things about being journalist is that you just have a notebook and nobody notices. Their behaviour doesn't change as a result. Sure, if you speak to them they're gonna’ put on an act. But with a camera it slightly, subtly creates an artificial situation where people act a bit.'

Throughout his career, Jim has had the opportunity to interview many high profile people and greatly admired sports personalities, but when asked about his favourite interview, he referred to a feature he had written for Q magazine many years ago. 'I was sent to Los Angeles, to Hollywood to interview David Lee Roth, who was the lead singer of heavy metal band Van Halen. I had no interest in him and no interest in heavy metal at all. But I spent three days with him and found them the most interesting, fascinating, amazing - it was three days of pure pleasure, and a lot of background for a 2000 word piece. But it was great, he was hilarious!'

Despite the dramatic changes in the media over the last 25 years, Jim would still encourage anyone with a passion for journalism to pursue it, even in the competitive climate of today. ‘If you have a passion for an area then that will come through in your journalism and there’s journalism for everything.’ Even though getting a job in journalism is difficult, Jim highlights that ‘The process of getting a job in journalism entails all the skills you need to do the job. If you can get the job, you can do the job fine.'

Written by Kirsty Warwick-McDonagh