London-based commercial speech radio station LBC has established a student internship scheme “to ?nd the radio journalists of tomorrow”, as it marks its 30th anniversary this year.
Chrysalis-owned LBC 97.3FM and LBC News 1152AM is sponsoring two places for students attending the City University post-graduate diploma course in broadcast journalism from this autumn, in what it hopes will become an annual event.
Recent graduates Ben Green and Tom Cheal have been chosen as the LBC inaugural interns. As part of the 12-month internship, the two interns will get to work at the station during vacations, as well as for a six-month stint as trainee producers at the end of the course.
They will work across news, current affairs, talk and phone-in shows with some well-established LBC names including Brian Hayes, Nick Ferrari, John Nicolson, Douglas Cameron, Sandi Toksvig and Jane Moore. The trainees will also work on the rolling news channel LBC News 1152AM.
Phil Longman, LBC 97.3’s news and planning editor, said the scheme would also have a mentoring element whereby younger LBC staff oversee the trainees progress.
“We asked both of them to come up with speci?c programme ideas and they came up with extremely well written items – things you could do on air.”
The winning story ideas were for a topical item for the breakfast show, a phone-in item for weekday morning presenter Nick Ferrari and a political story for Channel 4 News anchor and LBC Sunday midmorning presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s show.
In addition to the six-month work contracts for the interns, LBC will also pay their course fees in full.
By Wale Azeez
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