On the 21st March I had a very exciting uni trip to London. Although we stayed in very close quarters in a hostel it was such an exciting few days.
On the first day, Tuesday, we went to visit John Brown Media, who own magazines such as Waitrose Food magazine and John Lewis magazine, Edition. We had some really valuable talks about the magazine industry and this was my first time ever experiencing a magazine room in action. Unbelievably exciting.
On Wednesday morning, we had the absolute pleasure of visiting Immediate Media, we were spoken to by various people who work for Radio Times (including Ben Preston, oooh), some of the people that work on loads of children's titles, such as Lego titles, Cbeebies ones, Octonauts and so many others.
In the afternoon we headed over to Hearst to speak to the Good Housekeeping team, Hearst also own other titles such as Prima and Cosmopolitan (honestly not a big deal at all....)
Now unfortunately, it has to be mentioned, when we were in this meeting we found out about the terrorist attack outside parliament, where a lot of our course were trapped inside. All were safe so this isn't any detailed post, you can find so much information across the internet about that.
My input is, that no matter what the media says, London didn't stop, Soho was buzzing as you'd expect on any other Wednesday afternoon, people had pints in hands, absolutely no strangers spoke to me, our meeting went on as planned and it was as informative as you'd expect. We kept in contact with the others, knowing they were safe. Just don't be fooled into thinking that London came to a halt, that's just not the capitals way.
In true London fashion, we treated the next morning as a brand new day, we headed over to Dennis Publishing, Publishers of The Week magazine among others.
Not one of these experiences wasn't valuable, and as intimidating as the whole thing was I am absolutely spurred on to complete my Masters degree and get into one of those newsrooms as soon as I can (if any important people read this, please can I have a job?)
In a last minute dash, we went into Kings Cross Station to visit the good old platform 9 3/4 (which is neither on platforms 9 or 10, but just against a wall, my upset is now your upset too), super cool to actually see it!
If you ever get the chance, make sure you experience a magazine room in action, it's not crazy and shouty but a creative, hardworking atmosphere and I'm so excited to one day call one my place of work.
Thanks for reading,
Rachel xx
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