Earlier this year, JHR announced a new program, Enhanced Access to Opportunity for BIPOC Youth in Canadian Mediawhich offers paid internships at leading Canadian newsrooms to BIPOC high school/university students and graduates who are interested in a career in journalism. Through this program, Christian Collingon (pictured here) was selected to intern at The Canadian Press, where he looks forward to gaining newsroom experience. We talk to Mzwandile about what he hopes to take away from this new opportunity.

Christian Collington is the 2002 JHR Fellow at The Canadian Press.


Congratulations on being selected as The Canadian Press’s 2022 JHR Fellow! During your internship, what are you most looking forward to? 

During my fellowship I am most looking forward to meeting reporters and editors as I feel that learning different approaches to reporting and editing would allow me to transfer the insight to my own writing and look at the craft through a different lens than my own. The one thing I hope to take away from this experience is the nuances of a busy newsroom like The Canadian Press. I think that would allow me to navigate a similar atmosphere in other newsrooms moving forward.

In your experience, what are some of the biggest challenges for BIPOC youth embarking on a journalism career in Canada? How do opportunities like this internship help mitigate those challenges? 

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges for BIPOC youth embarking on a journalism career in Canada is diversity in newsrooms. For me, I found it daunting the fact that I could be in a room full of people who don’t share the same background or lived experience as myself. It makes it hard to voice my opinion and pitch because that pitch could easily be rejected because of different life experiences or perceptions. Opportunities like this internship mitigate that challenge by showing that the support for BIPOC youths to be in newsrooms is there, and it’s growing.