Kelsey Maxwell
Kelsey Maxwell is chief reporter at the St Helens Star, covering local news with a consistent focus on positive, people-centred stories across education, community life and charity. She has reported for the paper since 2016 and moved into her current senior role in 2021, combining day-to-day reporting with wider responsibility for coverage and presentation. Her work sits at the point where local institutions, families and individual readers meet, turning small community developments into clear, accessible stories.
Education and early years coverage
Education runs through her community reporting, particularly around early years and local childcare. Her coverage includes stories such as a nursery celebrating being named one of the North West’s best, framed through staff pride and the impact on families and children rather than league tables or policy detail.
She treats schools and nurseries as local anchors, focusing on how recognition, improvements or initiatives are experienced by parents, pupils and staff rather than abstract performance metrics.
Human-interest and charity reporting
Human-interest pieces are a major strand of Maxwell’s output, often built around individual resilience and community support.
A front-page story highlighted a mother of twin boys born prematurely who undertook a skydive to raise funds for the special care baby unit that treated them, with the narrative centred on gratitude, courage and the hospital’s role in family life. She uses straightforward news copy to bring out the emotional stakes of these stories, keeping the focus on ordinary residents, their motivations and the local services they depend on.
Her professional profile emphasises an interest in highlighting “all that is positive in the region” and telling “the real stories of real people”, which matches the tone of her charity and welfare reporting. Whether the setting is a hospital fundraiser, a school initiative or a community campaign, she tends to frame pieces around the people involved and the practical outcomes for the area, rather than institutional messaging or abstract advocacy. This makes her coverage particularly suited to stories where a clear, lived impact on residents can be shown.
Business, work and everyday life
Maxwell also covers local business and workplace stories, treating them as part of the social fabric rather than purely commercial news. One reported piece follows the long-serving manager of a local shoe shop retiring after more than three decades, using the milestone to explore loyalty, customer relationships and the changing face of the high street. Similar coverage of small businesses and workplaces tends to emphasise longevity, service to the community and the people behind the shopfronts, with quotes and detail used to give readers a sense of familiarity.
Across these stories she maintains a plain, direct style, favouring clear timelines, straightforward explanation and concise description over commentary. Business and employment angles are handled at street level – who works where, how long they have been there, what their departure or success means for regular customers – rather than through financial analysis or corporate strategy.
This keeps everyday readers at the centre of the narrative, reinforcing the idea of the paper as a record of local lives.
Awards, events and newsroom leadership
In her senior role Maxwell helps organise and coordinate coverage of major local events, including award ceremonies and large community runs. She is involved in the Pride of St Helens Awards and the St Helens 10k, not only reporting on outcomes but also helping to shape how nominees, winners and participants are presented to readers.
Her reporting on these events focuses on recognition for ordinary residents, volunteers, teachers, carers and local organisations, giving weight to achievements that might otherwise be overlooked.
Her remit extends beyond a single patch to include ongoing reporting for other Newsquest titles such as the Leigh Journal, where she contributes breaking news, court, crime, entertainment, lifestyle, business and charity stories. This breadth of coverage informs her work at the St Helens Star, allowing her to handle hard news, softer features and event-led pieces with the same stripped-back, accessible tone.
Combined with her role representing the paper at local events and presenting awards on its behalf, she sits at the junction of reporting and community engagement, using the paper’s platform to amplify local stories that are grounded in clear facts and lived experience.
4 more education journalists.
Ajit Niranjan
Ajit Niranjan links climate science, policy and hard numbers to how extreme weather and environmental damage disrupt daily life, public services and industry. He is European environment correspondent at the Guardian. His beat includes violent heat, pollution, wildfires, air quality, EU green policy, corporate responsibility, energy transition, clean home heating, public health and long-term risks to landscapes and ecosystems. He examines how lobbying, supply chains and regulation shape environmental harm, from data centres and fish farms to fossil fuel industries. His reporting covers schools, hospitals, transport, homes and infrastructure as climate stress points. He previously reported on climate for DW News. He combines data, scientific research, eyewitness accounts and on-the-ground reporting. He also produces explainers, dossiers, factsheets and Q&As that translate complex technical debates into clear, precise language.
Albert Tait
Albert Tait is Education Editor at The Telegraph, leading coverage of schools and universities as institutions whose decisions have direct consequences for staff and students. He focuses on how regulators, senior leaders and governing bodies respond when safety, standards or integrity are under scrutiny, and how those responses affect classrooms and lecture halls. His work links school inspections and teacher safety to regulatory frameworks and conditions on the ground, and he reports on incidents such as knife attacks and “Code Red” alerts with attention to immediate impact and emergency protocols. He produces multi-part investigations into university governance, including extensive reporting on Cambridge’s handling of Jason Arday’s appointment and resignation. He also covers curriculum debates such as changes in how scientists view evolution and inheritance. He began at The Telegraph as a news reporter and previously covered community news at a local paper.
Beth Kennedy
Beth Kennedy is editor at The PIE News and stands out for reporting on how UK policy, institutional strategy and new delivery models reshape international education. Her beat covers UK study visa rules, international student flows, Home Office and UCAS data, alternative study pathways, language schools, and mergers and acquisitions across the sector. She reports on the practical effects of visa changes, scholarship schemes, online and transnational education, school closures, job losses and sector consolidation. Her work is direct and data-led, with clear explanations of complex systems and a focus on what policy and market shifts mean for universities, language schools and private training organisations. She has over a decade in specialist media, including years reporting for primary healthcare professionals before joining The PIE in 2024.
Callum Clark
Callum Clark is a multimedia journalist at STV News who covers education through the lens of university finances, restructuring and their impact on students, staff and local services. He focuses on stories where cost‑saving plans, job losses and service closures reshape community life, such as Dundee University’s nursery and botanic garden closures, and sets those decisions within wider restructuring efforts. His reporting is direct and fact driven, built on official documents, statements and precise figures that show both the scale of savings targets and monthly losses, and the number of posts at risk. Clark’s background in local news and public service coverage, including mental health service reforms and redundancy schemes, shapes a methodical style that tracks formal processes while keeping the lived experience of workers, families and service users in view.