Internship opens doors for media students

29 October 2014

Sport-Internships
Interns Bethan Needs and Antalya Atkinson with ASB's Head of Corporate Content and Social Media, Simone McCallum, and Community & Sponsorship Manager, Mark Walker.

Arts students Bethan Needs and Antalya Atkinson are the inaugural interns for a new sports media internship offered by Media, Film and Television.

Their internship with ASB Collegiate Sport gives the students the opportunity to work with the ASB promotions team and learn more about using social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) for professional promotion.

Bethan and Antalya have met with Mark Walker (Community and Sponsorship Manager) and Simone McCallum (Head of Corporate Content and Social Media) to brainstorm ways to promote College Sports through social media.

Currently, Bethan says, "we are preparing to launch a Facebook page: creating graphics for it, organising a competition to help the launch and designing handouts to promote this competition. So far, we have had the opportunity to work with Simone McCallum, who gave us some very useful tips and advice for running social media for an organisation, as well as helping us develop some of our ideas for the College Sport Facebook page. We are both enjoying working with the College Sport Auckland team and we are excited about the launch of the page in the coming weeks."

Media, Film and Television has strong industry connections, and offers several other well-established internships. These provide wonderful opportunities for students in Sports Media to gain experience and contacts as they study. Bryan Chan, a Media, Film and Television graduate, now works as as a research writer for a TV sports channel in Hong Kong, and credits his sports media internship with Sky Sports for the great start to his career. Graduate Sela Aholelei did a Media, Film and Television internship at Radio Pacific News while studying, which has led to her current fulltime position as a journalist and newsreader with the station.
Associate Dean and longstanding Media, Film and Television academic Margaret Henley says that the internships are important because it allows students to understand the value of the skills they have developed through their Arts degree as they work on real world projects mentored by corporate professionals.