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.