DCU Students Delighted as Irish Tech News Partnership Continues

Andrew Conway, Jonathan Finlay, and Ria McGuire are all in their final year of study at DCU and will spend the next two months working with Irish Tech News as part of the institution’s INTRA placement agreement with the popular technology news outlet that is entering its 5th running year.

Chairperson of the students’ course in DCU, Declan Fahy, mentioned how happy he is to see students continue to gain valuable work experience through the university’s INTRA programme.

Fahy: “The programme has been a core part of the undergraduate degree for decades. It connects final-year students with employers, offering students the valuable opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills in a real newsroom”.

Students’ Opinion

With opportunities in the world of journalism appearing scarce now due to the pandemic, the three students are relishing the chance to prove themselves and look to expand their knowledge and reporting skills. “I am really looking forward to working with Irish Tech News, they are a very reputable newspaper in the tech world, and I am excited to learn more about different areas of tech and reporting on it”, said Andrew Conway.

Conway: “I am particularly interested in niche and entertainment tech related news such as PC hardware, virtual and augmented reality, etc. but I would also like to look into more niche areas, for example the rising popularity of the cryptocurrency dogecoin being fuelled by the internet”.

“I’m looking forward to working on topics outside my comfort zone”, said Jonathan Finlay, who will also take part in the internship.

Finlay: “For most of my course, the topics I’ve worked on have been mostly ones I am comfortable with and know a lot about, like sport and music. Learning about technology will be a breath of fresh air for me and will certainly help me in my career going forward”.

Already, chief editor of Irish Tech News, Simon Cocking has conveyed a wide-ranging list of focus topics for the students taking part in the internship. Along with the students having the ability to pitch story ideas at their own discretion, they have already been sent multiple available stories to work on in the opening week of the internship.

Along with textual stories, Irish Tech News have offered the opportunity to students of taking part in their popular podcast, which is currently ranked at number 2 in the current iTunes tech podcasts chart. This is something that Ria McGuire is looking forward to immersing herself in, saying “I feel Irish Tech News will be a giant learning curve for me as a journalist”.

McGuire: “I can’t wait to use my podcast editing skills to the best of my ability and potentially add to what is already an excellent podcast. In everything I do, I seek to improve it, and I believe I can do the same with this podcast. I am also really looking forward to meet new people”.

This will be the students’ first taste of working in the real media world, and they are hungry to achieve the goal at hand: earn valuable experience to take with them into their prospective careers as journalists. For the next eight weeks, it is important that they take the theory they have absorbed over three years of study and use it practically and effectively to make their time with Irish Tech News as constructive as possible.