A Little Bit of Stone - Work Placement Review

A Little Bit of Stone - Placement Review

For my second year at university I was again required to undertake a placement at a professional media organisation of my choosing. After deciding what area I wanted to go into, I managed to secure a work placement with a local online community news organisation, called A Little Bit of Stone. As you may have guessed, they specialise in journalism which is the area I initially wanted to go into for my work placement. It has always been an area of the media I have been eager to explore but I have never really had the chance to thus far in my academic or professional career. Now that the placement has been completed and I have time for reflection, I would definitely say that it has made journalism, and the idea of a career in journalism, much more appealing to me.

This placement has taught me numerous things about both the media industry and journalism in particular. I got the experience of working to deadlines, having to fine touch my work and rewriting press releases (some of which can be seen on my blog). This is obviously essential to the medium of journalism and I find the experience I gained here priceless. Not to mention the help from the people there and my own revisions has only bettered my writing ability.

Also on the placement I managed to do some graphic design, nothing massive just creating a few advertising banners and logos to be published on their website (which should also be on my blog). This was much more of a familiar territory to me as oppose to journalism, but I still feel like I learned something from the experience and overall I had a lot of fun making them. 

Last year I undertook a placement at a different company, Foamy Media, who specialised in website and graphic design (blog for that is on my homepage). As you can see these two organisations are clearly contrasting, which is exactly what I wanted from my placements. Rather than having stuck to one area of the industry, I wanted to explore as much as I can so that when I finish I will be more of a knowledgable and well rounded media scholar. Even though the placements weren't that long in the grand scheme of things, I still feel as though some knowledge is better than no knowledge and that the experience they have given me is second to none. 

In conclusion, although this may be a very brief review of my placement, I still personally found the experience extremely enriching and beneficial to me as a budding media professional. I have a very good relationship with the owners/workers there now and I intend to keep in touch with the team there and hopefully even do some more work for them in the future.