The Roving Reporters experience

Nosipho Mngoma on assignment in the iSimangaliso World Heritage Site in 2012. Photo: Fred Kockott

Exceptional opportunities

Roving Reporters has helped launch the careers of a growing number of young journalists, many of whom landed their first by-lines in mainstream media titles through working on Roving Reporters assignments.

Click here to read blogs and profiles students who have taken part in Roving Reporters assignments.

Launching careers

The exceptional opportunities that Roving Reporters provides to aspirant journalists in taking part in real-stuff-of-life assignments is widely recognised.  In running a Roving Reporters writing workshop in 2011, author Denis Beckett told a group of students: “You’re cadet journalists, barely a published word to your names, jointly or individually, but what you’re working on has potential to be a global hit.” On the outcomes of this body of work, The Tale of Two Hijackers, Matthew Hattingh, then news editor of Daily News, wrote: “Powerful stuff. The last journalism I read that was this compelling was in the New Yorker.” Matthew now works as Roving Reporters online editor and writing mentor.

Exceptional outcomes

Roving Reporters continues to produce good publishing outcomes on almost every story it tackles.

 

The Roving Reporters experience

Landing one’s first by-line in print is often a memorable and exhilarating experience, particularly after a lot of painstaking effort has gone into interviews, fieldwork and associated research.

 

International internship programme

Click here to read:  What Roving Reporters can do for an international journalism student

 

Current internships

Click here to read: Scoop! How junior journo Bukeka earned her spurs

TACKLING THE REAL STUFF OF LIFE

 

Click here to read Devarshini Musami’s first published story

Elephant in the room: how film-makers pricked a rookie reporter’s conscience

 

Thabiso Goya

Click here to read Thabiso Goya’s opening coverage of a High Court bid to close down a coal mine

Judge in quandary over coal mine

Photo: Rob Symons

Read more about Thabiso Goya

 

Roving Reporters in action

Nomfundo Xolo on assignment in 2012 documenting resistance to the Xolobeni heavy mineral sands project. Photo: Fred Kockott, 2012

 

Out in the Tewate wilderness area, Makotikoti Zikhali, left, shows Roving Reporters cadets how to distinguish between fresh rhino and hippo dung. From left to right: Nompilo Kunene,, Lelo Dlamuka, Sabelo Dladla and Melusi Mntungwa. Photo: Fred Kockott, June 2015

 

Within the first few days of her Roving Reporters internship in 2015, NANA ZUKE found herself deep in the wilderness, peeing behind a thorn tree, unaware of hyenas lurking nearby.

 

This page is being updated . . .