Peter Sands, Consultant Editor
Peter Sands was a successful, campaigning editor of The Northern Echo. During that time the Echo was redesigned to win a string of awards, including the National Design Award. He moved on to become development editor of Westminster Press before setting up the Editorial Centre in 1995. An authority on design, colour, graphics and the media industry, Peter is in demand as a designer, trainer, consultant and conference speaker.
Tony Johnston, Head of Press Association Training
Tony is a journalist who has spent the past 15 years specialising in journalism training. Before joining the Press Association he was head of editorial training for Trinity Mirror plc and Thomson Regional Newspapers. He was deputy editor of the Reading Evening Post and Assistant Editor of the Evening Gazette, Teesside, before moving in to staff development. His background is in news journalism and he was a successful news editor, chief reporter and reporter before moving into journalism training. He chaired the Yorkshire and Humber East Lifelong Learning Network and is a member of the training committe of the Society of Editors.
David Banks
David is former Deputy Head of Foundation Course Training and now works as a senior lecturer in Law at Sunderland University. Prior to this he was head of short course training with responsibility for law since 1999. He is the Co-editor of MacNae's Essential Law for Journalists, Examiner NCTJ NCE newspaper practice. He has been the night editor, night news editor, chief reporter, and reporter Daily Post Liverpool. He was the arts editor, business editor and chief reporter North Wales Newspapers. He has LIB (Hons) Liverpool Polytechnic and a Diploma in Journalism Studies Universtity College Cardiff. He does senior law training for PA Training.
Sylvia Bennett
Sylvia Bennett has been teaching shorthand and keyboarding to journalists at Hastings since 1980 with first-class results. She trained at Pitman's College in London and is expert in three systems of shorthand Teeline, Pitman New Era and Pitman 2000 and is a qualified teacher, teacher trainer, NVQ assessor and internal verifier.
Mike Brough
Mike Brough has been involved in graphic design for 20 years. Eight years were spent on The Northern Echo where he helped build an editorial graphics department of four. A winner of the Press Gazette award for use of graphics, he also helped set up a commercial design department. His design consultancy works with the Editorial Centre on newspaper redesigns a partnership which has developed more than 60 titles.
Mike Dodd
Mike Dodd is a journalist and a barrister. For 25 years he was copy editor with The Press Association, dealing with editorial legal issues, as well as helping reporters to challenge reporting restriction orders. Since gaining his law degree and Masters degree, he has written on media law for newspapers, magazines and academic journals. He also teaches media law on journalism courses and at seminars and spent four years as an external examiner for the media law element of a university's postgraduate journalism courses.
Andrew Drinkwater
Andrew Drinkwater has more than 30 years’ media experience. He delivers specialist courses for the Press Association in public relations, web journalism and transferrable media skills such as writing for non-journalists.He’s also worked on longer-term PA projects for the Irish Times in Dublin, Times of Malta, Ria Novosti the Russian National news agency, Saudi newspaper Al Watan, The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. He held senior positions in the regional press and worked for The Sunday Times and Independent, Reuters and Sky Sports, where he was a news editor. He then moved into PR as Communications Director for a leading bookmaker. He continues to work as a PR and communications consultant.
Christina Fox
Christina Fox spent 13 years at the BBC – 11 as a camerawoman. Thanks to the excellent training they offer she had a chance to work on a whole range of programmes including: Lenny Henry's first comedy series; Playschool (she got to zoom through the round window); drama; classical music concerts; and her main claim to fame – covering a whole day’s play from the Pavilion at Lords' cricket ground (the old colonels there were a bit surprised when they realised a woman had infiltrated their men only club – but she did have permission to be there). As part of her initiation into PSC (portable single camera work) she spent six months as a location sound recordist – her most memorable moment being in Tiananmen Square when the student protest started. Christina went on to deliver studio and location camera training at the BBC's training centre at Wood Norton before joining The BBC's Journalist Training department full time. Once there, she devised and delivered a four day course for journalists on how to operate a Hi-8 hand-held camcorder. Today she still runs this course at the BBC in Bristol despite leaving the BBC in 1997 to run her own business.
Dave Foy
Dave Foy is head of a successful web design and search engine marketing agency based in Kingston-upon-Hull and has been working on the web since 1998. A fully qualified teacher, he worked with primary school children for 10 years before leaving to pursue his passion for building and marketing websites. Fully active in developing websites for a broad range of clients worldwide, Dave also regularly trains both web developers and non-technical users across the UK in all aspects of search engine marketing and Search Engine Optimisation.
Paul Francis
Paul Francis is political editor of the Kent Messenger Group. An award-winning journalist, he lectures on local and central government and is a well-known commentator, writer and conference speaker on Freedom of Information and the media. Paul helps run the government course on pre-entry and is also available for senior courses and seminars.
Andrew Glover
Andrew has over 25 years experience in newspapers, TV, radio and online both at the coalface and in management. He's worked for the BBC, ITV, Sky News both in front and behind the camera filling roles including reporter, presenter, producer and director.
Andrew spent 10 years with the BBC running newsrooms; producing the 1830 news programmes in Newcastle and Oxford; managing a local radio station and network news production shifts where he spent many fruitless attempts shouting questions to Prime Ministers and others in high office.
Latterly he was Trinity Mirror's UK Editorial Training manager delivering training in smartphones and editing for the web.
Andrew is now self employed and runs his own company Lush Places Media.
Pat Hagan
Pat Hagan is Deputy Head of Foundation Course at Newcastle and delivers the law element of the course. Previously she has worked at the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford and The Journal in Newcastle as a general reporter, municipal correspondent, feature writer, columnist and proof reader. She was a senior sub-editor/designer with The Journal, where she also mentored trainee reporters and trained sub-editors. She has also managed programmes in production training. Pat has a post-graduate Diploma in Journalism Studies from University College, Cardiff.
Nick Jenkins
Nick Jenkins spent 14 years with the Mirror Group, beginning as a graduate trainee and finishing as chief sub of the Daily Mirror. He spent nine years at the Yorkshire Post as deputy editor before joining The Press Association where he is production editor of the news wire. Nick runs subbing and layout courses.
Paul Jones
Paul has been Head of Foundation Course Training since 1995; he was the former deputy news editor, industrial editor, district chief reporter and general news reporter at the Evening Chronicle, Newcastle, Education reporter/general news reporter, Evening Post and Chronicle Wigan, general news reporter/sub-editor, Burnley Express.
Susan Nixon
Susan started working for Thomson Regional Newspapers training centre in 1984 and was a Pitman writer at 120wpm. She took over shorthand tution in 1987. She has gained the City & Guilds Certificate – Teaching in further education and a Teeline Proficiency Certificate.
Martin Oates
Martin Oates is one of the few executives in the regional Press with a photographic background. Martin spent 14 years as a photographer with the Yorkshire Evening Press before a stream of promotions took him to the picture-editor's position. He then became assistant editor, taking responsibility for the paper in the editor's absence.
Brian Page
After 15 years with The Northern Echo, Liverpool Daily Post and Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough, Brian Page is now the experienced editor of a number of magazines, including Mensa magazine. An award-winning writer and designer Brian has served as deputy editor, assistant editor, sports-editor and features-editor of daily newspapers. His specialist areas include sports-editing and feature-writing.
Martin Stephens
Martin Stephens is Assistant Managing Director at Press Association Images. Martin built up the a host photography service for PR clients and presents to companies on what makes a good picture and how to deal with picture desks and photographers. As picture-editor Martin has worked on major celebrity events, including the Oscars. He heads up the centre's picture-editing course and contributes to other photographic training sessions.
Phil Swift
Phil Swift worked in national newspapers for more than 30 years. His career began at the Daily Mail where he was a news sub-editor. He then spent more than 20 years at the Daily Mirror, first in production roles — sub-editing, chief sub-editing and night editing — before becoming features editor and then deputy editor of the newspaper. He has also worked at The People, The Sunday Mirror and Today. Phil came to the Press Association in 2001 and was previously producing business and financial newspapers and magazines for Andrew Neil before joining the Press Association Training team.
Mike Watson
The Press Association's systems editor, is a product of the Westminster Press training scheme. He began his subbing career in newspapers in west London before moving to the Oxford Mail where he won a national design award. Mike was The Press Association's news wire chief sub until 2001, since then he has developed the agency's new multimedia computer system, the Mediapoint web delivery service. Mike takes a leading role in the subbing diplomas and other training courses.
