Star-studded panels discuss journalism across two University-led conferences

Over a hundred journalists and academics were in attendance on Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 June for the Journalism and the Courts Symposium and the Sports Media Educators Conference.

The symposium, which was run in association with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), saw a range of academics and working journalists present their original research on the theme of court reporting and court’s relationship with the media. The event was organised by Richard Jones, Director of Journalism at the University of Salford and featured a keynote speech from Sian Harrison, a media law expert, accomplished journalist and co-editor of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists.

In her speech, Sian talked about the value of court reporting in 2025 and the responsibility that court reporters have to the people implicated by the cases that they report on. She said that court reporting deserved to be on the same footing as political reporting and recognised with the same level of importance by the media industry.

She also said that the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the journalism industry would not extend to the role of the court reporter being replaced by AI as 'it will never have the ability to replace the human impact of a court reporter, such as speaking to victims, being fully accurate and fair in the reporting of the case and everything that has happened around it.’

Sian also called for court reporters to receive trauma informed therapy as part of their role, given the toll that the job can have on journalists who hear the ‘very worst things about humanity day in, day out.’

She concluded her speech with a rallying call for more investment in court reporters and for trainee journalists to consider the specialist role whilst training.

She said: “I would like to take this opportunity to make a real plea. I think we should have more court reporters, I think we should have people saying ‘I want to be a court reporter when I grow up’ and I think we should take care of them as well. We should really look after the people who sit there, raking through the difficult things and bringing us the stories of life.”

The symposium saw a range of other research topics presented by academics for discussion on the day, including a study from Liverpool John Moores University on the impact of open court reporting on the children of defendants, the ongoing pressures on contempt of court in the social media age from University of Salford lecturer Rachel Howarth and a presentation from the University of Sheffield on how to prepare journalism students for the realities of criminal court reporting.

There were also thoroughly informative panels on the role of regional newspapers in ensuring offenders in their communities are held to account and techniques for teaching media law to University students as well as a roundtable discussion with various industry representatives.

The Sports Journalism Educators Conference was organised by Dr Taylor Umland, Programme Leader for BA Sports Journalism, which welcomes its first students this September.

Taylor gave the keynote speech for the conference in which he outlined the real need to bring academics and working sports journalists together for the first time to ensure that universities were providing their students with the required skill sets and opportunities to break into the vastly competitive sports media world.

The conference was headlined by a star-studded journalist panel that featured Dan Roan, the BBC’s Sport editor, Gabriel Clarke, an award-winning sports documentary filmmaker and journalist, Natalie Pike, a freelance broadcaster and presenter, Craig Chisnall, Development Editor at The Athletic and Jonny Bentley, a multi-platform sports journalist.

The panel, which was introduced by legendary football commentator Clive Tyldesley, discussed a range of topics, such as questions around the values of today’s sports journalists, how we encourage the next generation of students to seek the more traditional sports journalist role over the increasing numbers of sports content creators, identifying the key routes for journalists to break into the industry and how AI will impact the future of sports reporting.

They were followed by a second panel comprising of sports media professionals, Lewis Redmond of Aston Villa FC, Jordan Kligerman of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and Dan Hawkhead of Leeds Rhinos, moderated by Dr James Mahon of the University of the West of Scotland. The panel discussed the fast-changing world of sports media from inside clubs and how those roles are continuing to expand and evolves.

The conference’s final panel brought educators Rafaelle Nicholson of Bournemouth University, Will Cope of Solent University, Seth Bennett of Sheffield Hallam University, Dr James Mahon, and Taylor Umland of the University of Salford, to explore what sports media education is doing well in 2025 and what needs to change in the coming years. The panel was moderated by Sanny Rudravajhala, a freelance broadcast journalist who graduated from Salford with a master’s in Journalism in 2025.