After leaving Ballyclare High School with both O ’Levels & A ‘Levels I was very keen to go straight into journalism.I started my career in 1981 as a reporter with the Ballymena and Antrim Guardian where I learned ‘the nuts and bolts’ of being a reporter on a busy provincial newspaper.Between 1988 and 1990 I was employed as a reporter in the Carrick Times. I was the sole reporter in the Carrick Times office but through sheer grit and determination I managed to double the news gathering product in that period.In 1990 I made the move from weekly papers to daily papers and joined the Belfast Telegraph as a senior news reporter, covering many major Troubles-related hard hitting news stories and major court cases.In 1993 I was promoted to Security Correspondent and was in that role at the time of the IRA ceasefire in 1994. I later held the position of Education Correspondent before being promoted to the Belfast Telegraph news desk as assistant news editor.I was in this role for seven years, during which time I agreed to take on the huge task of being the first news editor of the Belfast Telegraph whilst it transitioned from being an evening to a morning paper. The Belfast Telegraph editor at the time referred to it as the biggest change that had happened to the newspaper since it was established in 1870.I later took up a new role to head up the Belfast Telegraph’s new video journalism wing - which at that time was a revolutionary departure from mainstream print journalism. I broke new ground as the first video-journalist working for a national newspaper in Belfast.