Experience in work experience

So valued readers welcome to my last blog post of the second year.

                    

This week I want to discuss the idea of work experience. As a journalist student it has been stressed to me that value of experience could easily dictate if you get a job or not.

Again I feel this another area of journalism I'm having to in a sense learn to bite my tongue and do as I'm told. As our lecturer Deborah Wilson has explained all the platforms of journalism are criss crossing, for example many print publication are training journalists TV broadcast skills to produce videos for their websites.

Now when I'm looking for work experience it feels like I should not only choose work experience on platforms I'm keen on entering but the ones I'm possibly not so keen on. For example print lecturer Tim Greenfield encourages his students to look for work experience in P/R alongside journalism since the worlds are slowly merging (though maybe this isn't totally a good thing) and to 'see if we like it our not.'

Keeping all of this in mind I've decided that their are six distinctive areas of the industry in which I should look for work experience in:

Print- newspaper

Print- magazine

Online

Radio

TV

P/R

So now I've stated that list I'm going to think sensibly about where I could find these opportunities and how other journalism students could use it:

Print- newspaper- Local newspapers and to an extent nationals if you can provide material they'd be interested in.

Print- magazine- Again local magazines are good source but specialists are good. For example freelancing for magazine of a subject you're interested in. Even children magazines are good for this as were close to the age of the target audience.

Online- In my experience many online websites are keen on recruiting freelancers to write articles.

Radio- Community radio is gold mine of work experience you gain so many skills in terms of your career and socially as learn to interact with people of all walks of life.

TV- Now this one is tough. However ITV do offer various internships in which you can help out on various TV shows on their network.

P/R- So this is a toughie, but I've found that a lot of P/R companies advertise via universities job sites and also it could be a good idea to email a P/R lecturer for their advice.

So far I've had experience in radio via Siren FM and my BBC Lincolnshire placement and online via the Lincolnite. Though this is not at an end as their are still lots of opportunities in those fields and theirs still loads to learn. However realistically I do aim to have at least some competent experience in each sector over the next few years.