National award for sports reporter Sean
Final year Journalism student Sean Walsh’s skill as a sports writer has brought him a top national award.
The 20-year-old today (Friday February 2) picked up the 2016–17 Premier League Prize for the best performance in the National Council for the Training of Journalists Sports Journalism exam.
Examiners gave Tottenham fan Sean a mark of 82% — one of five A grades achieved by the University of Portsmouth Journalism students in an excellent set of results in last summer’s exam.
Sean was presented with his award and a cash prize of £250 at a ceremony at the BBC Academy in Birmingham.
Here, he talks about his pride in winning the prize.
I’m absolutely and thoroughly delighted to have won the NCTJ’s award for Sports Journalism. To have come top out of everyone else in the country is an indescribable feeling that’s kept me buzzing since I first found out I’d won.
The road here has been bumpy to say the least, and I can’t thank everyone who’s helped me enough for getting me to this stage of my life.
Truth be told I wasn’t too confident of my mark after sitting the exam. I was sure that I’d probably omitted some minor details on the match report. Two late goals to swing our match from Kilmarnock to Aberdeen really scuffed mine and everyone else’s stories I’m sure. Having written match reports for half a decade, I was determined not only to pass, but with a high mark.
The second half of the exam was a complete unknown. Football is my speciality, and I rarely dabble outside of it. I would not have pictured getting the mark I did at any point prior to finding out.
Since then, I’ve had work placements with The Independent, ESPN and Crystal Palace. I’ve managed to cover my beloved Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley Stadium and have appeared on BBC Radio 5Live campaigning for LGBT rights. All have helped shape me as a young journalist, and I look forward to finding out what doors this award can open for me.
Currently I’ve been doing social media work with Portsmouth FC along with Alex Boyd and Ollie Marsh, who could quite as easily have won this award, and their commitment and abilities deserve recognition too. We’re working on a video series with an injured player at the moment, and we’re proud of what we’ve produced so far.
I think the nature of our course has gotten me to this stage. There are so many talented people all vying for a shot in this industry, you push yourself just to keep up with the standards. It’s why I think the single honours did so well in shorthand last year.
I’m not the only one that’s been working on enjoyable and fruitful placements. It’s unfair to really class one above another — as long as we’re happy with what we’re doing, that’s all that should matter.
