Student newsroom internships

Project

This project involved Open Democracy setting up and delivering a pilot project for a new student internship scheme. Open Democracy collaborated with Check Global in 2019 to launch a call targeting students at the Lebanese University, and the wider cohort of MA students studying journalism at the Lebanese University’s Faculty of Information and Communication (2019-2020), to apply for an internship program at Open Democracy. Open Democracy hen hosted and trained (February 2020) three students for a period of three months as part of this internship program. They participated in virtual trainings once a week, learning about media ethics, digital security, investigative journalism, and open-source investigations, in the lead-up to preparing their own piece. Each student will be expected to publish at least one investigative piece by the end of their internship. This internship has allowed participating students to be mentored by and work with a renowned media company thus gaining an understanding of the newsroom atmosphere as well as practical journalistic skills. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has however forced these interns to go into self-quarantine in March 2020 while on their internship, as mandated by the Lebanese government. These safety precautions have put a damper on the students’ ability to work on their reports, prompting openDemocracy to extend their internship till June 2020 instead of May 2020.