Q&A with this year's ITV News Central trainee journalist
Applications for the ITV News Traineeship have now opened. 12 applicants will be chosen to train and work in newsrooms across the UK, gaining the skills to become successful and trustworthy journalists for ITV News.
At ITV News Central we decided to sit down with our current trainee, Shanade James and ask her about her experiences so far.
How did you get into journalism? I started out doing the subtitles for ITV regional news - from doing that I was able to see how each regional news programme worked and the different styles. I’d wanted to get into journalism before that but it was tricky. That job made me think, "gosh I want to be on the other side of this in the newsroom and start writing the scripts!”.
That’s what pushed me to start applying.
My university masters also gave me a really good grounding in journalism - I decided to apply for the traineeship after going back to study. By this point I’d organised work experience and I was really familiar with ITV. I wanted to get it but didn’t think I would because it was so competitive. It was a really challenging assessment process but I managed to get through!
How have you found your time on the Traineeship? It’s been fantastic so far - I’ve learned practical skills like how to write for TV, which is quite different from writing for an article, I think people don’t realise that! I’m quite keen on photography so I’m really enjoying thinking about the pictures we’re going to use and trying to get the most exciting pictures that tell the story. I love using the technical skills I'm gaining to stitch everything together so the viewers can understand and engage with the story.
It’s an amazing opportunity - you get to do so much in terms of being a journalist, if that’s what your dream is. It’s a really friendly environment to learn in and the training is second to none. I get to see so much of the UK doing this traineeship - even though I'm based in Birmingham, the specialist training courses can take place in various newsrooms around the country
It really is open to anyone who has a passion for telling stories and communicating with people, you don’t have to have formal training.
What's it like being at ITV News Central?Having grown up with Bob Warman on telly my whole life, it’s still amazes me that I can now consider him a colleague. When I had my interview here he came over and introduced himself - and I was totally awestruck and said I’d been watching him since I was a kid - he laughed and we chatted about it. The job has just been incredible, getting to do what I want to do in terms of producing bulletins, helping out finding stories and I’ve got to go out and shadow reporters which has been really interesting.
It’s a really varied patch, you can be covering anything from a murder to overweights cats - it’s really good that every single day you don’t know what you’re going to be covering. I think there’s a lot going on in terms of health and education-related stories here, which I think is quite important for the Midlands and Brexit is making politics a lively issue.
You've lived in a few different places, Japan and London to name a couple. How was it moving back to the Midlands? I've been in Birmingham since October and it’s been really good to be close to my family in Wolverhampton and to remember my roots. There are opportunities to do the traineeship in 10 other regions of the UK so I felt lucky to get this placement, as many of my colleagues have gone further afield. I’ve always known Birmingham a bit being from so close by - I used to come into town to go to the Oasis market as it used to be then - so it’s been great to live here and get to know Birmingham! It’s changed a lot - more restaurants, shops and construction, so it’ll be exciting to see what developments happen over the next few years.
I feel like Wolverhampton went through some difficult years around the recession, but it’s getting back on its feet, it’s got a good energy and I will always appreciate just how friendly people are. I always feel like I come home when I’m in the Midlands because people are so welcoming, you can just get chatting to someone on the bus and you’ll end up knowing loads about them!
What do you want to do in the future? I'm the only one in my family that's in the media so I think they're expecting to see me on TV, but I’m leaning towards being a producer so they might have a while to wait! But we’ll see...
You can apply for the ITV News Traineeship and find out further information here.
CLICK HERE: Applications are open for the ITV News traineeship