We offer each of our trainees a summer bursary of up to £1,000 every summer of their degree to spend on journalism work experience or a journalism project, giving them the unique opportunity to travel and explore the areas of journalism they are passionate about.
School of Journalism trainee Halima Abdi shared how she used her bursary doing work experience at PA Media.
Over the summer, I completed four days of work experience at PA Media.
It was jam-packed with shadowing, filming, editing and creating packages.
As someone with a background in film and tv, I am drawn to the video aspect of journalism.
These few days at PA Media were great for getting experience in the sort of journalism i am interested in.
PA Media is based in Paddington, London and I used my bursary for travel and food.
Day 1
- I struggled to get around Paddington Station, as it’s extremely confusing, especially for someone who hasn’t been but figured it out in time.
- I arrived at the office, and the Head of Video directed me to where I will be working for the next three days.
- I was given the task of looking at the type of content in the PA media release.
Day 2
- I traveled to south London to follow up on a story about the Post Office scandal.
- I was given a press card to let me into the venue, and I was directly taken to the film crew area where I saw BBC, Sky News and ITV News journalists which was very surreal.
- I was shadowing the senior producer at PA and we also had a reporter with us to interview those affected by the scandal.
- I was helping out with the sound recordings, which meant I was boom operating, where I used skill learnt from my time at the London Screen Academy.
- We managed to edit using Premiere Pro at the venue, which was very helpful so the packages could be posted quickly.
Day 3
- I met the news editor of the video team at PA Media and she directed me to the story I was working on that day.
- I did lots of background research.
- I was given a contact to shadow who was covering the story of the infected blood victims.
- I headed over to the place the inquiry was taking place, and then I went into a press briefing and managed to watch the inquiry take place.
- The camera operator and I shadowed the reporter who managed to get three interviews.
- It was difficult to find interviewees, film and edit all in s hort space of time but we got it done.
Day 4
- This was my favourite day of my work experience.
- I worked with another early-career video journalist who is freelancing with PA, and they gave me lots of advice about how to get into the industry.
- I then joined the video journalist at Kemi Badenoch’s speech at the Centre for Social Justice
- The venue was very busy so I met a lot of photojournalists, camera operators and reporters.
- The video journalist and I had a small amount of space to operate the camera which was a challenge.
- We went live on the PA Media website and we managed to get different shots of the interview.
- After the speech, we went back to the office to edit the footage we took, and we put it in small packages.
You can read more of our summer bursary blogs here.
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