One of our community reporters has been featured in a campaign to promote local journalism training.
Grace Price, who works for the Monmouthshire Beacon, appears in a video to showcase development opportunities with national training body the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).
Through her training under the NCTJ Community News Project, Grace mixes learning with on the job experience. Grace says in the video: “Being part of the NCTJ Community News Project has really helped me develop my journalism skills.
“It has enabled me to do a lot of different things, so that could be reporting on local news, speaking to residents, attending events, and the most important thing, amplifying the voices of the community.”
Trainee Grace joined in February last year as part of the latest phase of a national project aimed at strengthening local journalism.
She was one of six trainee community reporters to join a cross section of publishers in the latest stage of the Community News Project, an initiative to improve newsroom diversity across the UK. The selection process was highly competitive, with more than 500 applications received for the six available positions.
In the video, Grace explains how as part of her role she goes out to conduct interviews, which have included TV presenter Clare Balding and fashion designer Jimmy Choo.
Local reporting
Grace said: “I get to attend events and I get to report on them, which I really, really enjoy. I started up my local news publication on TikTok so I’ve been posting different news content on there as well.
“Unfortunately my town was badly hit from the aftermath of the flooding from Storm Claudia and it was devastating to see many businesses and homes badly affected. I was one of the reporters who was covering the event and I spoke to residents who were sadly affected.
“If I compare myself to what I was like at the very beginning I feel like my confidence has definitely grown because the skills I am learning through these modules are giving me self-confidence. I’m so glad that I came across the NCTJ Community News Project.”
Through the Community News Project the trainee reporters have been employed by publishers on two-year contracts and are training for their NCTJ Diploma in Journalism while working in their respective communities. They are being mentored by former Community News Project reporters currently working as senior journalists.
Day-release training is being provided by Darlington College and trainees working in England are registered as apprentice journalists.
Publisher News UK opened its apprenticeship levy fund to pay the training costs of small publishers involved in the programme.