Students from Salford City College in Greater Manchester have become the latest wannabe journalists to benefit from News Academy - after two Sun reporters paid them a visit.

Features writer Jenna Sloan and Deputy Northern News Editor Richard Moriarty spent an afternoon with ten students from the college’s journalism BTEC course to help them with their writing.

Each of the students pitched their ideas to Jenna and Richard, who then critiqued their stories and made suggestions about how to make them work.

After the visit on Tuesday, tutor Catherine Davies said: “The BTEC Journalism course’s aim is to give our students as much hands on experience and access to professional journalists as possible.

“Working with The News Academy has been a brilliant opportunity and has allowed us to meet and set up great events like yesterday.

“Having Richard and Jenna come to deliver a masterclass in feature writing was a great experience for our students and it taught them the importance of having ‘everyday people’ and their stories at the centre of their features.

“Richard and Jenna spent time giving each student one-to-one feedback to help develop their ideas.

“This sort of input is not only invaluable to making our students work as professionally as possible but also inspires and motivates them that their journalism dreams are achievable in the future.”

Student Amber Thornton, 17, said: “Meeting Richard and Jenna was such an inspiration.

“It has made me look more closely at the way I write and how I can include more quotes and people in my features to bring the stories to life.

“Having help and advice from professional journalists is amazing and makes me want to pursue a career in news even more.”