FT beyondbrics by Peter Vanham

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Without any exaggeration: everyday when I go home from my internship, I’m sad yet another working day at the FT has passed. I really do like working here a lot.

Why am I so positive about my internship at the FT? It’s because I work in a great team, and get the chance to write about tremendously interesting topics. I write for ‘beyondbrics’, the FT’s emerging markets desk, and can recommend such an internship to any aspiring journalist in this field.

My day start everyday around 8:30 AM – if the underground works properly, that is – when I scan the day’s print newspaper for interesting articles on emerging market events and trends. I also look out for noteworthy articles from elsewhere on the web, and then write a post of ‘Further Reading’ for our blog’s readers.

At around 11AM, I write a second blog post, called ‘New York Headlines’. As the name predicts, post is a wrap-up of all important news events for the New York readers of our sites – for who the day start 5 hours later.

In the afternoon, I either do research for my own pieces for beyondbrics, edit pieces of other contributors, or – most of the times - both.

In just one week at the FT, I published 3 own pieces, about topics as diverse as “virtual working in the Philippines”, “consumer spending in Africa”, and “mobile banking in India”.

It is great to see that I often get to propose my own story ideas, and get quite some credit from the colleagues. My first piece was even mentioned as an “editorial highlight of the week” by the FT’s editor Lionel Barber.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, is the great atmosphere in which I get to work at the FT. My bosses are in the first place my colleagues, and they both guide me and support me in all my initiatives; the staff members have been very welcoming and continuously supportive.

My day usually ends about 6-6:30PM, but I usually stay around longer. Not because I have to – my editor tries to send me home each time – but because I’m really into the work I do here.

That’s what life is like in the day of on FT intern.