'My mentor helped me realise my worth in a competitive industry'
A mentee-turned-mentor of the John Schofield Trust explains how the calming presence of a news veteran helped her find her place in the industry
– 3 min read
Early in her journalism career, Naomi de Souza often found herself full of questions she didn’t feel comfortable asking in a hectic newsroom.
"Everyone’s busy, you don’t know who to ask, and sometimes you worry your questions are silly," she recalled at Newsrewired this week (26 November 2025).
What made the difference for her was having an external mentor – Kathryn Stanczyszyn, a BBC News presenter – who she found through the John Schofield Trust (JST), a leading UK charity that provides mentorship and training for journalists in honour of the journalist who was killed covering the former Yugoslavian War in Croatia in 1995, aged 29.
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Jacob Granger
She recalled how her mentor shared her passion for community reporting and was always available for advice, feedback, or simply a listening ear – and was always just a phone call away in moments of doubt.
"She [Stanczyszyn] was that calm person that helped me realise my worth and my value in an industry where everyone’s comparing themselves with each other."
de Souza has repeated the cycle and is now a mentor on the JST, having risen to become a senior reporter for the Reach plc title Birmingham Live. She also led a four-person team of JST mentees – Sabrina Efrem, Abdullahi Mohammed, Emma Vowles and Mariana Dias – for the Newsrewired liveblog this week (26 November 2025).
Her experience is part of a wider effort by the Trust to make journalism more diverse and resilient, according to director Howard Littler.
"Historically, there’s been an issue with getting working class young people in, people from underrepresented backgrounds," he says. "It means that the media doesn’t represent the audiences that it serves."
Latest NCTJ diversity statistics show that UK journalists are 86 per cent white and 93 per cent university educated, and that 91 per cent have parents in middle or high income jobs. These are all above national workforce average figures.
The Trust has more than 1,000 volunteers but is always looking for more journalists to get involved and pass down their experience.
Littler called on all media organisations to set up their own mentoring schemes, noting that external mentors can offer perspective and support that line managers sometimes cannot.
"Mentoring is a good thing universally across media organisations, or in fact across any organisation,” he concluded.
This article was drafted by an AI assistant before it was edited by a human.
Written by
Jacob Granger is the community editor of JournalismUK
