Entries will go onto the Times Higher Education’s campaign YouTube channel, and the best will be shown at an awards ceremony in London. See here for more details. Send entries to deputy news editor Rebecca Attwood, at rebecca.attwood@tsleducation.com, or by post to Times Higher Education, 26, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4HQ.

He now hopes to come and talk to students in the autumn term.

Patrick was the former Sunderland Echo news editor, and was one of the North East’s most respected journalists. He was only 50.

Patrick won the region’s top award for investigative journalism three times at the North East Press Awards. He taught Investigative Journalism at Sunderland, drawing on all his experience in his hunt for Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer Wearside Jack in his teaching. Patrick was also a film-maker and involved in local politics and supporting grass-roots local community media.

Patrick was a Level 1 tutor and admissions tutor, so nearly all of our journalism students would have come into contact with him at one point or another.

Sunderland Echo Editor Rob Lawson has said: “Pat was one of the most passionate and dedicated journalists I’ve ever worked with. He was also one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met.

“It was comforting and reassuring to know that Pat was training the next generation of journalists at Sunderland University and I know he was thoroughly enjoying his time there.”

Chris Rushton, head of Journalism and PR here at Sunderland, wanted to add these tributes:

“To me it was always his award-winning investigative reporting that stood out as being his career-defining achievement. However, when I spoke to Patrick close to the end, he told me that he got the most pleasure and inspiration from his work with his students. He thrived on their interest and enthusiasm.

“Patrick attracted fierce loyalty from students and he will be sorely missed by them and all his colleagues at Sunderland University’s media department.”

If you want to add your tributes here, or at the Sunderland Echo site, where friends, family members and former students have already added their comments, we’d be really pleased if you did so.

On the afternoon of the conference, Wednesday 17th March, they are holding a Jobs in Digital recruitment fair, which is open to students, graduates and professionals looking to develop their career within the North East Digital Sector.

Companies such as Perfect Image, AYO Media, Big Bang Creative, Eutechnyx and Datawright will be looking to hire talented staff in;

• Software
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Videogames
• Marketing and Design
• IT/Technical Roles

FREE transport is provided from Teesside and Sunderland.  If you have any questions, please contact Jackie Boyd jackie.boyd@codeworks.net.

A spokesman for Premierleagueinsider.com said:

We have a number of journalism students who write regularly for us in order to gain experience and exposure and wondered if you would be willing to make our site known to your students.

All contributors have the option of being mentored by our Editor in Chief, Carl Eldridge – a sports journalist of some 25 years’ standing.

We are also extremely privileged to have on our management team, Ken Jones – former Chief Sportswriter of The Independent and author of a number of books on Football and Boxing.

Carl’s and Ken’s knowledge base and contacts means that anyone writing for us will have exposure to the national papers and the opportunity to interview people within the sport.

If you’re interested, contact carl@premierleagueinsider.com.

The Observer’s mission statement from its inception in 1791 reads: “Unbiased by prejudice – uninfluenced by party. Whole principle is ­independence, whole object is truth, and the dissemination of every species of knowledge that may conduce to the happiness of society.”

The Observer was born during the age of enlightenment, as a new set of values emerged at the core of western societies – freedom, democracy and reason. Rationality replaced dogma, science trumped conjecture, empiricism bested speculation. Even more importantly for the Observer, the idea of liberalism – the ventilation of diverse opinions and a tolerance of same – took root at this time.

The world has changed, as has the Observer, but these beliefs are still at the centre of the paper.

The Observer remains an independent voice and one that is committed to liberal and social democratic values. We’re committed to other issues too. We like fashion and food and football, for instance, but what distinguishes the Observer are its values. These are the philosophical scaffolds holding the paper in place, which help create a ­distinctive (not better, or worse, but different) voice on a Sunday and build on the paper’s legacy and its proud history as the oldest Sunday paper in the world.

And what a history. The Observer supported the Chartist movements for political and social reform in the 19th century. It backed the rise of early trade unionism. It sided with the North against the Confederate slave states in the American civil war. It played a vital role in helping to establish Amnesty International and Index on Censorship and became the principal supporter in the British press of Nelson Mandela.

This is the paper’s legacy and we will be trying to build on it next Sunday, when the Observer will be published as a four-section paper, plus our monthly Observer Food magazine. News, Sport, the Observer Magazine and our New Review section have all undergone significant changes.

The paper’s new incarnation came out of a series of rigorous discussions that looked at the role of a Sunday paper in an age when newspapers have radically changed and in an age of digital revolution. What is the proper role of a Sunday paper in that changed environment?

That was the challenge and we had to emerge with a paper that was distinct from the competition, that played on the Observer’s core strengths and that took account of what we could provide in an age when readers are increasingly at the receiving end of a media tsunami. Amid that chaos there is a role for a Sunday paper that offers increased reflection, discursiveness and analysis. But it also has to offer engagement, passion and a commitment to highlighting issues in line with the founding principles of the paper. The Observer has to stand for something, and to stand out as a result.

The new-look Observer will devote no less journalism to the topics at its very core – politics, arts, science, culture, international affairs, education. Not forgetting food (with the brilliant Nigel Slater), football (with the award-winning Paul Hayward) or the sundry other diversions that we all expect from a Sunday paper. A reformatted and redesigned Observer Magazine continues to offer that diversion.

Arts, literature and cultural affairs will be at the centre of our New Review – with additional pages, improved newsprint and an elegant new design – which will further enhance the Observer’s reputation as the premier Sunday destination for discursive and thoughtful analysis of cultural, philosophical and artistic issues. The New Review will also include a new section devoted to ­science and technology, increased space for critics and the return of seven-day TV listings.

In the news section, we will tilt toward more news analysis and comment. We will continue to be driven by domestic passions such as the need for constitutional and voting reform but will give more prominence to international affairs. We will be internationalist and proudly European.

We won’t just provide news, but a context for news, too. More analysis, more reflection, more debate, and more discursiveness will mark out an Observer that will seek to interpret, analyse and, crucially, to offer different voices and opinions to help the reader make their own sense of the world.

The paper that appears next Sunday will be substantially changed from the first edition of the Observer on 4 December 1791. But we will also have a great deal in common. That first edition set out its blueprint for Sunday journalism as one intended to “apply the strictest attention and care to greater objects of general concern”, but also promised to report on “the fine Arts,­emanations (sic) of Science, the Tragic and the Comic Muse, the National Police, ­fashion and fashionable follies”. It still holds true.

The North East is packed with creative talent. You’ve probably played some of the video games designed here, visited websites built here, and seen the TV ads created here. Now you can meet the brains behind the big ideas.

Created for students, graduates and entrepreneurs looking to embark on a career within the digital sector, this one day conference and recruitment fair could be your first step into the industry.

Come to Thinking Digital: The Next Generation …tickets are FREE, but with limited spaces you’ll need to get your tickets quick.

Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be The Next Generation.