Our speaker on 2nd July, Richard Garner, gave us a delightful talk on the media from his perspective as a journalist in the field of education for 30 years, covering the ethics and financial pressures in journalism. He started by telling us how 40 or so years ago, would be journalists started their career on a local paper covering the whole range of things that interest a local community. He is now the Education Editor for The Independent, previously working for local papers, The Daily Mirror and The Times Educational Supplement. He decided quite early on in his career that he did not want to write about anything and everything, but wanted to specialize in educational journalism, which he has done for the last 30 years. He was bombarded with questions ranging from the specific on educational matters to his opinion on the outcome of the Leveson enquiry.
