Mary Nightingale spoke passionately about her career as a newsreader and journalist in our most recent Career Conversation on Thursday 23rd April. She began her career in the City where she worked for many years before moving to work for TV Tokyo, reading the business bulletin. She returned to the UK to work on ‘London Tonight’ and later moved to ITV, working as a newsreader on the ITN News from 2000.
In her engaging talk, Ms Nightingale highlighted the realities, enjoyable aspects and challenges of working in a news studio. She underlined the important of solid academic training. As a journalist she writes her own scripts and may be called to ad-lib with factual information during a TV presentation of a special historical or political event. Ms Nightingale, who read English at university, encouraged girls to develop an “armoury of skills” and to be involved in journalism from a young age. Having an academic focus could also enable students to become news specialists (correspondents and editors) on a network. Ms Nightingale also delivered a fascinating lesson on the current political situation and the upcoming general elections.
The girls received a wonderful insight to life in the newsroom, and to the skills required to be a good journalist. Mary Nightingale mentioned that the job had to be more important than simply wanting to be on television. She added that the girls had to “eat and sleep news” if they were interested in this field and had to be determined, hardworking and eager to learn, if they wanted to be there “when history was being made”.
