Jeremy Lewis Interview: Starting Out as a Journalist
Title
Jeremy Lewis Interview: Starting Out as a Journalist
Date
9 August 2017
Description
Oral history interview with local journalist and theatre reviewer, Jeremy Lewis.
What's the story?
Having trained and started his journalistic career in the South East, Jeremy Lewis moved to Nottingham in 1981 to work for the Evening Post.
Following the retirement of eminent local critic Emrys Bryson, Jeremy eventually became the regular theatre reviewer for Nottingham from the mid 1990s, attending many opening nights at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Jeremy discusses his journalist training, involving an apprenticeship at a weekly newspaper at Ashford in Kent and learning 100 words per minute shorthand.
I came here for a job. I was a newspaper journalist in the South East, where I worked for several papers and I had an opportunity to work at the Nottingham Post, or the Evening Post, as it then was, which was one of the most successful regional daily papers in the country. And I joined the staff here in 1981. I was apprenticed to a weekly paper at Ashford in Kent. That’s a three year period of indentures during which I had to do some block release training at college in Harlow. And that required me to hit certain standards in knowledge of the Law, Local Government, National Government. You had to acquire 100 words a minute shorthand and as a result of those studies and my experience on that first weekly paper, I achieved the only qualification at the time in Newspaper Journalism and that was the Certificate issued by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. Things are a lot more complicated now. Everybody’s been on Media Studies courses and has got degrees on so on. I got involved in reviewing the minute I became a journalist, because one of the areas you have to get stuck into is expressing your opinion on things like works of art, including theatre productions. The first review I ever did was at Dungeness B Power Station Social Club and it was a Drawing Room comedy and I can’t remember what it was.
Following the retirement of eminent local critic Emrys Bryson, Jeremy eventually became the regular theatre reviewer for Nottingham from the mid 1990s, attending many opening nights at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Jeremy discusses his journalist training, involving an apprenticeship at a weekly newspaper at Ashford in Kent and learning 100 words per minute shorthand.
I came here for a job. I was a newspaper journalist in the South East, where I worked for several papers and I had an opportunity to work at the Nottingham Post, or the Evening Post, as it then was, which was one of the most successful regional daily papers in the country. And I joined the staff here in 1981. I was apprenticed to a weekly paper at Ashford in Kent. That’s a three year period of indentures during which I had to do some block release training at college in Harlow. And that required me to hit certain standards in knowledge of the Law, Local Government, National Government. You had to acquire 100 words a minute shorthand and as a result of those studies and my experience on that first weekly paper, I achieved the only qualification at the time in Newspaper Journalism and that was the Certificate issued by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. Things are a lot more complicated now. Everybody’s been on Media Studies courses and has got degrees on so on. I got involved in reviewing the minute I became a journalist, because one of the areas you have to get stuck into is expressing your opinion on things like works of art, including theatre productions. The first review I ever did was at Dungeness B Power Station Social Club and it was a Drawing Room comedy and I can’t remember what it was.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham.
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham.
Contributor
Interviewers: Valerie Rogers & Sally Smith
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
