Shine news

Everyone’s talking about podcasts. At the Shine School Media Awards this year, they were our fastest growing category. There’s no question: students who master them are building a serious advantage.

Podcasting teaches invaluable skills: research, storytelling, interviewing, editing and as the projects grow, how to build audience engagement. They are unique in today’s media for their immediacy and accessibility. Best of all, they are often cost-neutral. Students can create professional-quality podcasts using just their (or a parent’s) phone and apps like Anchor or GarageBand. At our 2025 awards, most schools shared their student podcasts on Spotify.

We all know that starting any piece of writing, whether it’s an article, report, or even a blog post like this, is often the hardest part. What’s the angle? What’s the structure? Where do you even begin?

At the Shine School Media Awards, we help solve this problem by providing a specific topic each year. This summer, we let students vote on next year’s theme from a carefully curated shortlist.

The results were clear: power dynamics and their impact on young people’s lives struck a chord with teenagers across the board.

Do you have a superstar student? The one who wants to start a podcast, or is always badgering you to join the ranks of your school magazine editorial team? Here’s the chance to give them – and their team – the recognition they deserve.

We’re still basking in the glow of last week’s Shine School Media Awards and the news keeps getting better.

Shine has been featured in The Standard this week, celebrating in particular the London Press Club’s ‘Scoop of the Year’ prize.

Following our judging process, and ahead of the awards day on 30th June, here are the schools shortlisted for the Shine School Media Awards 2025.

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed the last couple of months of newsletters as we’ve showcased our YouTube series ‘Ask the Expert’, for secondary school students who are interested in publishing. It’s been a real privilege to talk to some remarkable people who work at the cutting edge of media in the UK.

Today our episode is a little different. We know many schools are at the tail end of the production process of their school magazine and we’re keen to offer advice on how to complete a project successfully. So I’ve enlisted my right hand lady, Katherine Whitbourn, who works as a sub-editor at The Observer.