Student journalists join forces to provide election night coverage
Journalism students across the UK are joining together as part of a network overnight General Election results programme on radio, online and social media.
The Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) and the UK Community Radio Network have joined forced to offer the national programme.
More than 100 students studying to be journalists will be at constituency counts reporting live or in the studio for the Vote 2024 programme, which is being offered to all community and student radio stations, live streamed on the web and social platforms.
The collaboration between 22 Universities is being overseen by the BJTC – the industry body which accredits multiplatform Journalism courses in the UK supported by the BBC, Global, Bauer Media, ITV, Sky News, Channel 4, ITN, Associated Press, Reuters and the NUJ.
Working through the night, the students will be gathering interviews and results from election counts throughout the UK for the eight-hour BJTC programme and filing count results for industry partners Sky News, ITN and the BBC.
The programme will be hosted and co-ordinated by students from the University of Northampton and broadcast from radio station NLive Radio. Any radio station wanting to take the feed on the night please can contact hello@ukcrn.radio for details.
Programme Executive Producer and BJTC Deputy Chair Kate Ironside said: “We are creating something very special – a nationwide broadcast news operation of a real, live, breaking story of critical importance in a way that perfectly matches the news operation of professional broadcasters.”
BJTC Chief Executive Jon Godel added: “The ethos of BJTC journalism training is students experience real industry practice as part of acquiring the digital skills needed by employers. This is a perfect opportunity to do just that.”
Martin Steers, Director of the UK Community Radio Network, said: “It’s important for community radio to be involved in election coverage. We welcome the chance to work with the next generation of journalists at the start of their career.”
The programme can be heard from 10pm on July 4th and will be broadcast from NLive radio studios.