SOPHIE HUSKISSON

By Alice Wade

If you could sum up your experience at City in three words what would they be? Shorthand, headlines, podcasts.

What has been your biggest fail or embarrassing moment in your career?

When I was doing diary reporting at the Daily Mail, I’d go to these celebrity parties with people you might see on TV, and people who do radio or flms, as well as some high society socialites. My job was to chat to them and fnd out what they were up to, and get some gossip. I experienced quite a few embarrassing instances of going up to someone famous and not knowing who they were. There was one girl and I got her to completely spell out her name, I even wrote it in my notes on my phone and when I got home and checked her out, she had like 500,000 followers and I was like, ‘I feel really embarrassed right now’. She’d been on Made in Chelsea

Have you ever experienced racism or microaggressions in your career?

I have been confused with other black female political journalists before; that’s probably quite a standout, unfortunately. You’d think it wouldn’t happen a lot because there’s not that many of us. We just had to take it on the chin – and also fnd it quite hilarious because we look completely different. It was because we were the non-white ones.

Television

Documentary Researcher at Sky News

By Ella Gauci

What’s your best memory from your time on the course at City?

My best memory from the course has to be making the 30-minute documentary for our fnal project. From the initial days brainstorming ideas to the frst weeks of flming, and even to the last, very tense hours of editing, I loved every second of it. It gave me a taste of what was to come, as well as building on everything I had learnt over the previous 10 months.

What do you think is the main challenge to journalism currently?

The vilifcation of journalists, increased access to false news, and the rise of opinion-led TV news. Opinion is not journalism – journalists should equip people with the facts to form their own opinion. There is a question to be asked about why people do increasingly enjoy this type of TV, but I really hope that the future of journalism is not made up of these so-called truth tellers in fashy studios.

What is something you wish someone would have told you about the industry when you frst started out?

I think it would probably be that a career in journalism is actually very fuid. It’s not just starting in news and staying there, only ever working on documentaries, or always being on a newspaper. There is defnitely a pressure when you frst start out to have this perfect idea of exactly what type of journalist you want to be and then working hard day in and day out to achieve that goal.