Hannah Cockroft of Team Great Britain competes in the Women’s 800m – T34 Final on day 11 of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games When Lauren Lethbridge was winning national honours as a gymnast she had much more than the beam and the uneven bars to contend with.
After withdrawing from gymnastics she completed a degree and a master’s in literature at University College London. She has chosen to go into journalism because she still believes in the news media’s capacity to change society for the better. “There are fascinating conversations happening within academia but they don’t seem to dissipate out,” she says. “I wanted to have a voice that people might actually listen to and really join in with the discourse.”.
Emily Davison, who is severely sight-impaired and was formerly a prolific blogger on social media, is a trainee journalist on the News Shopper, a south London title owned by Newsquest. Jamie Green, who has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user, has won a contract at ITV Meridian. The next batch of 20 disabled journalism students must apply to Ability Today’s academy by Thursday. “When we started we never believed we would have students working at the BBC, ITV, Newsquest… that was just a dream,” says Logan. “Now I only want to bring on students who see this as a pathway to a career in journalism, not a hobby. We want the best candidates possible.