Im really interested in this field of work and any help or pointers on how to get into writing testing would be highly appriciated as im lost for help and the careers office and school have been less than useful. Thanks Ross

Go to college and do a journalism course.

Just applied for English lit and lang at 6th form and will be applying at collages too just cant decide which will be better

Placement, placement, placement. Work experience is everything in journalism. University and local papers. Network and expect to work for free or very little. Ask if they accept submissions, and don’t expect to jump straight into your chosen niche.

Get in touch with the NCTJ – National Council for the Training of Journalists. They will be able to help you.

Oh and learn how to spell ‘college’ 😉

Wow!!

That was one well put together sentence, WTF would an entire article read like?

you should apply straight to Dirt magazine!

😉

Geetee ill get straight onto that if only everyone was as useful eh ?

GW I hope that wasnt sarcasm 😉

first line was, second not so much 😉

As Andy_K suggests, you could always contact your local newspaper and start writing pieces for them. Cover local sports if that’s your interest. They can always use reports but are unlikely to pay for them; it will add to your CV though so it has a value.

Whilst you can be lazy in your notes it will probably help when pursuing a career in writing if you can study up on your use of punctuation, lower and higher case letters, etc.. Oh 😉

I’m a normal(ish) journalist, not an MTB one.

Good advice above, NCTJ courses certainly were quite highly regarded and trained people well for the job. That is probably still the case.

I think the NCTJ courses are post A-level or postgraduate, not post GCSE.

As Andy says do lots of work experience (usually for free – because you will be more of a burden than a help), this will get you on the course in the first place as well as teaching you a lot.

One other thing is the internet of course. It’s easy for anyone to self-publish online now. Why not write your own MTB blog? I’m sure I don’t need to add that spelling and punctuation are quite important.

In the pre-interent days I decided I wanted to write for MTB magazines and so started producing a fanzine and sending that to everyone I could think of in the world of cycling magazines. This eventually led to me freelancing on the now departed Cycling Today magazine. Basically you need to prove to the editors you know what you’re talking about and that you can spell and have plenty of fresh ideas for content.

Thanks for all the help everyone spelling shouldn’t be a problem when im writing seriously not just on forums etc but once again thanks for all the pointers