Sarah Jones

Lecturer – Television Journalism

Office Times

Monday 9.30am – 12.30pm

Friday 10.30am – 12.30pm

Biography

Sarah Jones is an award-winning television reporter who joined the University of Salford in September 2010. She began her career at ITV Central in Birmingham as a reporter and newsreader. During this time, she filmed a series of reports on the plight of street children in Romania and led a number of high profile investigations on drug-rape and suicide chatrooms. These investigations won Sarah two national news awards.

Sarah joined the ITV News team in the summer of 2006 covering the terror threat at London airports and subsequent arrests. She then moved to GMTV where she continued to read the news bulletins and travelled to many countries covering breaking news. This included the bird flu outbreak at Bernard Matthews’, size zero models at Paris Fashion Week, Fairtrade farmers in the Caribbean and the floods in the summer of 2007. She also flew with the Beckhams as they moved to LA. 

In the summer of 2007, Sarah began a one year secondment as the New York Correspondent for GMTV. Sarah travelled with the campaign teams for Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton across the United States, reporting on the race to the White House. During this time Sarah also auditioned and won an extra role in the first Sex and the City film for a feature on Entertainment Today. 

Sarah still actively freelances in television and radio and contributes to programmes on the BBC. 

Teaching

My academic interests focus on television news and innovative ways to tell stories. I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate journalism programmes. I also teach celebrity journalism.

I run Quays TV News, which broadcasts weekly from MediaCityUK and involves students across courses and Schools.

Research Interests

My professional background is in television news and the focus for my research interest is on the celebritisation of this and how news reporters are perceived and how they understand themselves. Practice-based research looks to innovation in the news media and changes to telling stories in a broadcast format.

Qualifications and Memberships

BA (hons) Philosophy, University of Warwick

PG Dip Broadcast Journalism, Cardiff Journalism School

PG Cert Higher Education Pratice and Research

Fellow of Higher Education Academy

Commenced PhD July 2011

Publications

“Changing the Face of News; the Reporter as a Celebrity” in “Stardom”, Bronk, K (ed), Interdisciplinary Press, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-84888-137-2

“Anderson Cooper: celebrity or journalist. An analysis of the changing face of television news” Celebrity Studies Journal conference, Routledge, 2012