Students have many opportunities to take up traditional media industry work placements in print and broadcasting but also have the opportunity to work and gain skills, knowledge and experience throughout their course with:
BBC Radio 3 [external link, opens in a new window] -
We have worked with BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival since they came to the North East in 2009 and our students have worked as runners during the festival in the Sage, Gateshead, and carried the 'roving mics' for all the programmes being recorded. One student who took part in the festival in 2010 started work with the BBC on her graduation in 2011.
In 2011, our MA students were given the additional opportunity during the first week of their course to pitch to the BBC ideas for films on the festival’s theme: Change. Six films were commissioned by the BBC [view all six films] and screened to the public at Free Thinking. This was very successful in giving the students an opportunity to work with one of the world’s biggest media organisations on an internationally-renowned event and meet, learn from (and impress) senior BBC executives at the event. It also gave them an invaluable entry on their CV.
Jesmond Local [external link, opens in a new window] - a hyper-local, multi-media news website run by former Guardian section editor Ian Wylie, who is a regular freelancer on the FT, Economist and business magazines in the US. Undergraduate and postgraduate students are able to work with JL throughout their course, producing multi-media reports and features on the Jesmond area of Newcastle and organising events such as local hustings when council elections take place. The experience our students gain in this real-world environment leaves them capable of reporting on people issues and events, sport, crime, politics and business in any context.
In 2011, when the internationally renowned Turner Prize for modern art moved from London to BALTIC in Gateshead our students worked with Ian Wylie to produce TURNAROUND, a 24-page tabloid magazine which was written and produced in a single weekend and distributed to the public and visitors.
In 2012, they will be staging 'Journalism Boot-camps' in the community, working with ordinary people, sharing their skills and knowledge of multimedia reporting, to tell untold stories. The project is funded by the Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust and Newcastle University as part of a programme exploring the potential for journalism to support community sustainability.
KYEO TV [external link, opens in a new window] - a multi-media online regional news site serving an 18-30 demographic with an interest in arts and culture, music, film, books, food, society and more. The project was established by two journalism graduates who became disillusioned with working for others and decided to set up their own venture as a Community Interest Company. The organisation is growing, is successful and developing many new strands of activity which is exploring new, exciting ways to do journalism - and new exciting ways to make a living from doing journalism.
Bdaily [external link, opens in a new window] - a regional multimedia B2B regional news site service the business community. Bdaily is a digital-native as a publisher. It has always been online and delivered multimedia content. It is a successful, expanding enterprise which is going nationwide in 2012. Our students have undertaken placements with bdaily for many years and one is now the news editor, in charge of a team of reporters.
NE1FM [external link, opens in a new window] - A community radio station serving Newcastle and Gateshead. Students are mentored and given training by a former BBC Radio 4 journalist.
SpiceFM [external link, opens in a new window] - A community radio station serving the predominantly South Asian, but also the Chinese, Turkish and various African and Arabic communities of Newcastle.
Both these stations are licensed and regulated by Ofcom (The Office of Communications) and volunteers are given Ofcom-approved training before they go on air.
Radio is a successful, growing, sector in the media and it offers many varied career opportunities. Our relationship with NE1FM and SpiceFM gives our students opportunities to work throughout their time with us with experienced broadcasters. They are able to broadcast live from the studio, to record programmes for later airing and to record their own documentaries on campus and on location and deliver them for later broadcast, gaining in the process and valued set of skills which are in demand all over the world.