From a campus newsletter to the Herald newsroom

In February 2025, Eva Milne put out the first issue of a campus newsletter. 

Dundee's student newspaper Annasach had folded in 1995, and the campus had gone thirty years without one. Milne and a small group of contributors set out to bring one back. The newsletter became The Jute Journal: a masthead, a website, a newsroom of student reporters, and three print issues by April 2026. Its line is Woven in Dundee, Spun by Student Voices. Its stated mission is to hold university power to account.

In May 2026, that work took her to Bath Street in Glasgow, where she was named Student Journalist of the Year at The Herald Student Press Awards. The award was judged from 145 submissions by a panel chaired by Herald editor Catherine Salmond and carries a four-week paid internship in the Herald newsroom. She has since written for the paper, including a piece on why Big Tech has started hiring philosophers. Read Eva’s article in The Herald (there is no paywall).

A month later she graduated with First Class Honours in English and Philosophy, and received the Wimberley Award, the most prestigious award the University gives to an undergraduate. It is presented by the Principal to the student who has made the most distinguished contribution to University life.

The Wimberley was not her only recognition that year. The Jute Journal won the Student Publication Association’s award for Best Publication in Scotland, and Eva was shortlisted at the SPA’s national awards for Best Reporter and for the Billy Dowling-Reid Award for Outstanding Commitment. 

She spent a semester abroad at the University of South Carolina, where an investigative piece she wrote for the student newspaper, The Daily Gamecock, was placed second in the South Carolina Press Associations Collegiate Awards 2023. 

She has spoken on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Reporting Scotland, and STV News about the effect of the University’s financial position on student experience and why she started The Jute Journal and has had work published in The Courier, Evening Telegraph, The National, and The Herald. 

Studying abroad at the University of South Carolina gave Milne a different view of what a student newspaper could mean to campus life. “Studying abroad and seeing how vital the student newspaper was to campus life was eye-opening,” she said. “The work they were doing really mattered, and when I came back to Scotland, I wanted to start something similar in Dundee. I never thought that the weekly newsletter would become so crucial on campus,” Milne said. “But we clearly ignited something, and filled a gap which needed to be filled.”

Dr Dominic Smith, a member of Dundee's Philosophy staff, said it was clear from an early stage that Milne was interested in journalism and had a talent for it. “What was striking about her case was how she would get in touch during office hours to discuss ideas, and how passionate she was about her pieces of coursework,” he said.

She did none of it with a journalism degree.

The English and Philosophy joint honours is a combination that suits the work more precisely than it might look. Philosophy trains you to make arguments, spot assumptions and think clearly. English trains you to read closely and write clearly under pressure. Put together, they produce the two things a reporter needs: the judgement to know which question actually matters and the prose to make the answer land.

It is a route into journalism that Dundee students have taken before, and one that recalls Dundee’s trade in jute, jam and journalism – the last of these being exemplified by the media company DC Thomson, founded and headquartered in the city, which publishes to this day.