LSJ CLASS OF 2004

The 2004 crop of Maida Vale students did a great job of demonstrating just how varied career paths can be - from the gossip columns of the nationals to the most unlikely trade publications, and from the heart of London to lonely outposts on every continent.

Emily Maddick was one of a number of students to make the nationals in 2004, initially working on the Mail on Sunday diary as well as doing freelance PR work and occasional shifts for Closer magazine. She was a showbusiness reporter with the MoS before moving to Grazia, where she became a senior news reporter and later news editor.

Of the other three-monthers on her course in September, Fergus Bisset became a contributing editor to Golf Monthly magazine, Naomi Cooper became press officer for a Welsh MP, Robin Mackrill became a freelance specialising in financial journalism and Paul McMillan joined Money Marketing, later becoming the paper's online editor and, more recently, news editor.

Laura Mossman specialises in financial publishing, while Natalie Tuck joined the editorial team of a contract publishing house in King's Cross and James Williams worked at Traveller magazine and was assistant editor of The Traveller's Handbook before becoming web editor of Stamfords, the world's largest map and travel bookstore. He also worked as online editor at Wexas Travel before becoming publications manager for Cox & Kings and deputy editor of Compass magazine. 

Of the six-monthers who started at the same time, Benjamin Davies started an internship with the paper Sportsfan and got subbing shifts on the sports desk of the Daily Mail. He freelanced at the Mail before moving on to a full-time sub-editing post with Practical Motorhome, part of the Haymarket group.

Clemence de Cambourg worked for a French magazine in London before returning to France to work for a Paris-based design gallery. She went on to become director assistant of a documentary-making TV company, as well as being in charge of the exhibition section of a French culture website.

Nick Hughes joined the Informa Group working on trade publications before becoming editor of Chocolate and Confectionery International, based in Tunbridge Wells.

Jonathan Landi went to work for a web cuttings bureau while at the same time contributing rugby copy to a variety of titles, from the Enfield Independent and Enfield Gazette to Rugby World, Rugby Times, Everyone's A Winner magazine, the Herts Advertiser and the St Albans Observer.

Margaret Latto became communications manager for Homes for Haringey, producing all internal and external communications for the organisation, which manages Haringey's housing.

Simone Topolski (above, top) worked for Time Out and gained work experience at Wanderlust, Conde Nast and the Intelligent Traveller magazine. After freelancing work for Conde Nast she began contributing to STA travel as a freelance travel editor, while reviewing books for thehotelguru.com. In 2007 she headed to Mexico to review hotels for the website and research features. She freelanced for a variety of magazines and websites, based in London and specialising in travel, before becoming restaurant development manager for the EMEA countries for Hilton Worldwide.

From the same course, Fernando Vasquez joined Red pepper magazine as a researcher/reporter. Of the nine-monthers starting in September, James Arneill returned to Belgium after the course to complete a master's degree in European legal studies, later returning to London as a lawyer in the government legal service.

Charlie Ghagan landed a job as TV features writer for TV Plus magazine, which runs on ITV and Channel 4 teletext, with many of his celebrity stories being picked up by papers like The Sun and Metro. He became a sub-editor on Sunday Mirror sport as well as assistant production editor at What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision (Haymarket Publications) and was appointed production editor of FourFourTwo magazine in 2010.

Anahi Medina is based in Buenos Aires, where she gained work experience at the BBC before working on radio packages for BBC mundo and carrying out research for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Neil Nunes (above, bottom) works for the BBC World Service and Radio 4, while Innes Weir started contributing regular features to the dance music magazine M8, as well as sub-editing for Teletext.

Daniel Storey gained a job as a staff writer for HotDog film magazine before moving to MTV as film/movie researcher for the show Screen. He is now a freelance producer working with companies like MTV and Sky Movies.

Earlier in the year, students on the three-month course were equally industrious. Some moved to radio - Thomas Benson working for 106.2 Heart FM and Pollyanna Whitehouse for The Bear 102FM.

Others headed further afield, including Paul Charles, who became editor of Cayman Net News, a daily paper in the Cayman Islands, and Rakiya Farah, who went to work for the press department of Human Rights Watch. Philip McCormac went to the lifestyle section of Grazia magazine, Susanne Shields to Steel Business Briefing, an online news publication covering the international steel and raw materials industry, Robert Songer became deputy editor of Foodnews for the Agra Informer group and Pete Swabey went on to become a senior writer at Information Age and editor of the website.

Of the three-monthers starting the course in January, John Atkin became a sports journalist for UEFA.com, Robert Greenfield went to work as a feature writer for Golf Punk magazine, Xiaowei Li became a reporter for China Daily and Charmeyne McCollin became a sub-editor for All Out Cricket magazine.

James Neish is a senior broadcast journalist with Gibraltar Broadcasting who has also worked for Sky News, Channel TV and the BBC. Alice Olins went to The Times as a fashion writer and Bobby Pathak, an architect in his former life, started sub-editing for Soap Life magazine before landing regular reporting shifts on The Mirror. Bobby returned to his home town of Edinburgh to cover the festival for the Evening News and Scotland on Sunday before coming back to London working for a small news agency - which in turn led to a big broadcasting break, including a high-profile documentary for Channel 4's Dispatches.

James Peene became a motoring journalist with Classic Car weekly - later being appointed editor of two specialist VW titles for the IPC/Time Warner group - Frances Cherry was a publishing executive with Health Service Journal, Amanda Lennon an editorial assistant for Media Week and Nick de Semlyen a sub-editor with Empire magazine. Ed Harris went to Africa as a correspondent for the BBC, Reuters and IRN.