The Financial Times has relaunched is graduate trainee scheme and named it in honour of a former trainee who died last year.
Paul McClean was killed aged 24 in a suspected crocodile attack while on holiday in Sri Lanka in September.
McClean was a London-based reporter for the Financial Times, spending two years on the paper after joining through its graduate scheme, now renamed the Paul McClean Graduate Trainee Programme.
Financial Times editor Lionel Barber said: “Paul was an incredibly gifted journalist who produced groundbreaking work during his time at the FT.
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“Renaming this scheme is a lasting tribute to Paul, who embodied everything we look for in a graduate trainee.”
Shortly after McClean’s death, managing editor James Lamont described the young reporter as “a talented, energetic and dedicated young journalist” in an FT report.
In a tribute to McClean, Brussels bureau chief Alex Barker wrote: “There have been touching tributes to Paul’s exceptional character. He was smart, supremely generous and infectiously funny. We could go on.”
Barker went on to praise McClean for producing “clear, lucid stories that grabbed people’s attention” and were picked up across the globe, including by the US show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
The Paul McClean graduate trainee scheme is geared towards entry-level journalists. The scheme offers six weeks of training followed by six-month placements across the FT’s newsdesks.
FT graduate trainees begin on a one-year contract that can be extended to a second year.
Trainees are paid a salary of £28,000 per year which increases to £35,000 if they are offered a staff position in the third year.
Apply to the FT’s Paul McClean graduate scheme here. Applications close on 28 February 2018.
Picture: FT
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