Our industry links and alumni mean our trainees get unrivalled journalism work experience opportunities.
Here School of Journalism trainee Adam Wareing tells us about his week at CNN…
“I gained a great insight into the CNN newsroom through a week working alongside their interns in their London bureau.
On my first day I was shown how iNEWS is used to prepare packages, set the autocue and amend running orders for the shows.
Then I saw it in action, sitting in the gallery for CNN International’s prime time show Amanpour.
Trainee Emily using an autocue in front of a green screen in our London office
I worked on the editing desk for part of Tuesday, researching facts and statistics to use as captions, complementing a segment on the Middle East’s fresh focus on ecotourism and nature reserves.
It was clear an advantage of working on an international TV station was the ability to work on stories from a broader range of countries.
Alumni Francesca is now the night news editor at The Daily Telegraph
Visiting the small digital news desk was a good insight into the freedom writers at CNN have to pursue their own story ideas as well as write topical pieces required to hit read-time targets.
It’s easy to forget that non-American journalists have to adapt their writing to include Americanisms, but apparently the shift becomes pretty natural eventually.
Alumni Anna is a news assistant at The New York Times
Learning the art of guest booking on politics and sport helped me understand the best ways to approach possible guests and also how to treat them once they’re in the building before going on set.
My two days on sport taught me how to create graphics on iNEWS, a new experience considering I’d only previously produced them for online content using Adobe Premiere Pro.
I updated fixtures and results tables and made a graphic on Manchester United’s poor form against Arsenal at the time. Being a City fan, I quite enjoyed that!
It was a real buzz to sit in the gallery and see my graphics being used on the World Sport show and for the anchor to be discussing the statistics I’d found with guests.
Alumni Pippa is now a journalist at Telegraph Sport after covering multiple Olympic Games with Sportsbeat
All the interns were happy to answer any questions I had, giving me lots of interview tips too.
I found moving across the newsroom was a great way to make contacts.
The Turner Building stands in a busy section of town, right next to Carnaby Street and surrounded by restaurants and bars, so you do feel like you’re reporting in the heart of London.
“I loved my time in London!”
Although I couldn’t afford to eat out during my stay, it was good to go for a few drinks with the interns on Friday.
They meet up regularly after work, and you get the impression they’re a team even though they work on different desks, which showed me an advantage of being part of a group intake.
Alumni Fran landed a spot on the prestigious ITV graduate scheme
There’s no better way of getting to know a newsroom than being part of it, and the week at CNN helped me understand the broadcaster and their audience better than I would have done through research alone.
I’ll be able to use this experience to my advantage in an interview situation, so now I feel I’m in a better position to apply for their internships and other broadcast positions too.”
To apply for our NCTJ-accredited BA (Hons) Journalism degree in London or Manchester, here are the UCAS codes you need:
Course code: MUJO
Institution code: P63
Campus: Manchester (M) or London (L)
Want to know how to land your dream journalism work experience placement? Click here.
Got a question about how to become a journalist? Email [email protected] and check out our other getting into journalism blogs here.