Volunteer Role: Website Section Editor

You MUST be a paid up member of InQuire to run for this position

Purpose:

To create and manage a section of the website, working in partnership with the newspaper counterpart

In your role, you will:

• Attend committee meetings when required

• Give out regular articles at committee meetings

• Reply to all emails (Approx 1hr per day)

• Help develop new ideas and challenges for your section of the website to ensure continuous development

• Maintain and build positive relationships with all funding partners, staff & community bodies, as well as maintaining links with CSR FM and KTV, InQuire’s student media partners

• Attend proofing sessions to support the newspaper team

• Edit and provide feedback for articles submitted to your section

To help you in your role, InQuire will provide the following training and support:

• InQuire committee induction

• WordPress training

• Handover and shadowing from the outgoing Section Editor

• Support from the Student Media Manager as well as other Committee members, in particular the Website Editor

What will I get out of this role?

• Meeting new people and networking with industry/ Union professionals

• Enhance CV and gaining valuable skillset

• Improve training, communication and motivational skills

• Experience of working within a team

• Learning valuable journalism skills such as InDesign, WordPress, interviewing, proofing, editing and writing quickly to deadlines

Skills required:

• Organisation – you will receive a lot of emails and have to manage several projects at once

• Adequate experience of InQuire and the journalism/newspaper industry (though this will be taught at the induction so is not necessary to take on the position)

• Willingness to learn and adapt as well as teach others

• Basic law knowledge; an idea of what defamation law is and what you can and can’t say in a newspaper, especially for Comment

Expected hours and commitment: Approximately 10-15 hours per week. An additional minimum of an hour a day dealing with emails though this can increase around deadline time as you receive articles from writers and need to edit.

To do this volunteering role, you will need to put in a lot of time and a lot of work. You will need to have a good grasp of time management, as keeping to deadlines is of the utmost importance, and have good communication skills as you will be talking regularly to writers and volunteers of InQuire, offering help when they ask.

It takes time and energy but the rewards are monumental, as you will have gained a real insight into how the media works and what it takes to pursue a career in print journalism.

If you would like more information about this role please contact:

Nina Collins (InQuire Website Editor) website.editor@inquiremedia.co.uk – OR –

Mel Lewis (Student Media Manager) m.e.lewis@kent.ac.uk / 01227 823005