SINGAPORE – Four Beatty Secondary School students got to experience a day in the life of a photojournalist and see how editors and journalists work at The Straits Times during a two-week stint in the newsroom.
Between Nov 20 and Dec 1, Faahirah Faizur Rahman, Wong Guan Ting, Alshaheem Noor Mohamed and Matthew Nathaniel Kijono Utomo met editors from the ST Now team, which covers breaking news and trending stories, among others. They also met the foreign, opinion, podcast, video, interactive and social media desks.
The 15-year-olds accompanied sports reporters Kimberly Kwek and Melvyn Teoh to a Women’s World Floorball Championships 2023 media event at SPH Media News Centre in Toa Payoh North, where they got the chance to learn about the sport from Singapore’s national athletes.
They also trailed executive photojournalist Lim Yaohui and served as his assistants at a photoshoot at the pet-friendly Nowafter Cafe in Somerset.
The job-shadowing stint was part of ST’s community outreach programme to give students a taste of what it is like to work in a newsroom.
As part of their school’s work exposure programme during the school holidays, the students chose from options such as working in a law firm, human resources and research work.
At the ST Schools department, the students learnt the art of interviewing from journalists, and worked on articles targeted at young audiences, such as one on Christmas craft activity for children.
Faahirah said: “I found out ST produces interactives, such as the one on penguins and the one on solar panels in Singapore, and learnt how drones were used to shoot photos of the solar panels.”
The Secondary 3 student, who is interested in pursuing the humanities, said of journalism: “I had initially thought it was simply about reporting, but I’ve found out it’s more than that.
“It involves various desks in the newsroom coming together to produce a news piece. For instance, the journalist conducts the interviews, while the art desk produces illustrations, graphics and comics.
“I would consider journalism as a career, because in the future I would like to work in a job where I can go out and not just sit in the office all day.”
