Christian media Internship – The overview

Since graduating from the University of Lincoln last summer and gaining a 2:1 in Journalism I’ve landed myself an internship in Christian media with respected Christian Journalist and Broadcaster, Mike Rimmer, In Birmingham. Previously in the blog I wrote about my experiences three months into the Internship. The start of the New Year marks 6 months since I started the Internship and a lot has changed in the last three months, which incidentally why I have been very quiet on the blogging front.

I now have a permanent part time job in a supermarket which gives me enough money to comfortably support myself in my Internship. It has also meant that I’m not spending three days a week on my internships and three days working elsewhere. Many people don’t understand what I do, or even, what Mike does for that matter, so here’s a quick insight.

Admin

There’s hundreds of CD’s that come into the CMBC production office every month and a lot of my time is spent helping Mike sift through new CD’s finding new music that is worth playing on the radio and whether it be on Rimmerama or Independents day if they are an independent artist.

I then have to keep up to date with filing the CD’s in the CD library each week which has at least three thousand CD’s made up of Jesus Music, Worship, Pop/Rock, Gospel and Hip Hop.

Production

Becoming a radio producer has been the main focus of my internship and what I love best. It includes editing the programme Profile Special which is broadcast on Cross Rhythms on Saturdays. It’s an hour long interview programme with American artists; these are done when Mike visits Nashville each year and involves picking from a back catalogue of interviews and editing the hour long programmes together with music from their latest album

The other pre recorded programme which I edit and produce is Independents day broadcast on Cross Rhythms on Sunday afternoons; this is where Mike plays an hour of music from Independent artists and tells you how to get hold of them. This involves creating a playlist of Independent artists once we have identified which tracks we want to play from each artist’s album, and then writing scripts for the show and editing it together.

Since November I have been producing a podcast for Mike’s main show Rimmerama. For this half hour long production I scan through 9 hours of Rimmerama programmes from the previous week and pick out the best bits including Interviews, live sessions and entertaining pieces. I’ll then write the scripts for Mike to record edit the show together complete with Jingles and beds and then send them off to Cross Rhythms who send it off to Itunes.

All this production generally fills a day’s work each week.

Presentation

I’m professional sidekick (Ok! I don’t know what that really means but it sounds good) to Mike Rimmer on Rimmerama, two out of the three shows he presents each week. Which involves, what would be seen in the BBC as basic BA duties, answering the phone, talking to listeners in the stations chatroom, which is where we make most contact with our listeners, researching ideas whilst on air via the internet and sending out competition prizes.

Writing

Mike writes extensively for the Cross Rhythms website www.crossrhythms.co.uk including music features and reviews. I have written a number of reviews for the website over the last year and am gradually writing more extensive features for the main website.

The year ahead

In the year ahead, I’m looking forward to taking on a bigger role as an Intern / PA / Producer including, taking on production work for Rimmerama, Learning how to voice track and operate a BBC style sound desk and take on new projects which may come up,