Internship at The Independent on Sunday

I was totally thrilled when I received my one-month Internship Award at The Independent on Sunday.

The award is run by the paper in conjuction with my journalism training centre – noSWeat Journalism Training. It aims to reward the best trainee journalists, in terms of their work in class, general attitude to journalism training, and to the college in particular.

Only two students, including both full/part timers from the 2009 intake, scooped the award.

From my side, I've been to different newsrooms in this country as an intern for long, and I could have even dubbed myself an internship/work experience professional.

But none of them have been an internship/work placement like this before – it's really a recognition of all the hard work and dedication that I've been throwing into my studies, which I should be really proud of!

On top of that, tutors' full support at the college also helped me a lot to grab this opportunity.

In my opinion, the process of training journalists can sometimes be rather painful and difficult.

Just the Teeline Shorthand alone could scare a dozen, never mind the more complicated tasks such as being expected to understand all the local/central government stuff, or remembering the media law aspect when court reporting.

As far as I am concerned, the pass rate of Teeline Shorthand is only 24% nationwide. And of course, it should mean passing 100 words per minute or above, which is an industry standard.

When a student qualifies as a trainee, recognised by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), he or she is expected to complete at least 18 months' on-the-job training in a local newspaper or any publication that offers a junior reporting role.

The trainee is expected to cover all sorts of stories on the job, ranging from local council meetings, residents group gatherings, fundrasing parties, road accidents, magistrates/crown court reporting, to post offices or banks' closure, and any bits and bobs that concern the local community most.

After successfully completing the 18 months, trainee reporters are then entitled to take the National Certificate Exam (NCE) in a bid to be fully-qualified as a senior reporter, which is the final stage of the whole journalist training process.