When we told you how Up To Speed Journalist James Bass had moved on from our fast-track journalism course into a job as a motor sports reporter, the people from Red Bull got in touch.
James had already worked on assignments with the Red Bull Reporter before he joined the NCTJ course at Up To Speed in Bournemouth to gain professional qualifications.
He now works for Motor Sports News covering rallies and races all over the country.
Beth Wallach, on behalf of Red Bull, explains how the scheme works and how graduates and undergraduates can follow in James’ footsteps:
“Red Bull Reporter started in March 2009 and is designed to give media accreditation opportunities to aspiring writers, photographers, filmmakers and presenters so they can head to events all over the UK and occasionally internationally to report from behind the scenes, often including interviews with talent. Their work is showcased on the website afterwards and for some of the bigger assignments we also offer content partnerships so their report could be showcased on a respected website within that field. For example the report from Formula 1 in Silverstone was showcased on Crash.net afterwards, giving the reporter added exposure.
The assignments span the music, arts, culture and sports events that Red Bull either own or have a presence at, and can vary from one off reports from one discipline or occasionally we recruit reporter teams – writers and photographers or filmmakers and presenters – to provide the content as a pair.
One of our bigger recent assignments was for Red Bull X-Fighters, where we recruited two sets of teams to cover four preliminary “Jams” events and the best were selected to cover the final at Battersea Power Station on Aug 14th.
You can check out the reporters, submissions, assignments and everything else at www.redbullreporter.com.”
Those valuable work experience and writing opportunities will help you to land places on Up To Speed’s courses where students take professional external exams in Reporting, Public Affairs, Media Law and Shorthand and then select courses on magazine, news or sports journalism.
Tags: Battersea Power Station, Beth Wallach, Bournemouth journalism, Crash.net, Formula 1, James Bass, journalism course, journalism courses, media accreditation opportunities, motor sports reporter, National Council for the Training of Journalists, NCTJ courses, Red Bull, Red Bull Reporter, Reporter