Former student celebrates clean sweep of awards

By UK Journalism

A former Department of Journalism student is celebrating a clean sweep of prestigious awards in the newspaper industry.

Nick Owens, who is the Lancashire Evening Post's Investigative Reporter, was named the Newspaper Society's Young Journalist of the Year at a ceremony in Manchester.

He adds this accolade to Press Gazette's UK Young Reporter of the Year and the BNFL North West News Reporter of the Year award which he won last summer.

Nick was also named the Johnston Press Trainee Reporter of the Year for 2005 in a ceremony in Birmingham earlier this month.

Nick, a former Combined Honours Journalism student and a Postgraduate Newspaper Journalism student, picked up the Newspaper Society award at a black-tie bash at Manchester's Midland Hotel.

Honour

He said: "I celebrated with a Havana cigar and a pint of Boddingtons. It was a brilliant night and a real honour to win the award because it takes in all the local newspapers in Britain. To be named as the best young reporter is a real honour."

Nick was praised for a series of hard-hitting investigations he has written at the Lancashire Evening Post.

He spent a week exposing life inside Preston Prison, a month working as an undercover traffic warden and then lived the life of a tramp in the Evening Post's ground-breaking Down And Out In Preston series.

As a result of the investigation a new £1m homeless shelter is to be built in the city.

Nick said: "To win four awards this year has been unbelievable. But I just think the articles struck a chord in the industry and showed that good old fashioned investigations are still what make local newspapers special. I was particularly proud to be representing the Lancashire Evening Post at the awards because the paper has been incredibly supportive.

To get the investigations into print has needed a real team effort and these awards are as much for our brilliant news team as they are for me."

But Nick, 23, is about to wave goodbye to Preston where he has lived for the past six years and to the Evening Post where he has worked since June 2004.

He will start a new job as a news and investigations reporter at the Sunday Mirror in London at the end of April.

Nick said: "I am really looking forward to the challenge of moving on to a national newspaper. I will leave the LEP with a heavy-heart but it has been a wonderful two years and these awards top it all off really. I have loved every minute of my time at the LEP where I have been able to use the skills I learned at UCLAN during my time there."

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Lancashire Evening Post
Sunday Mirror

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