The Cape Times

Position: Journalist
Number of available positions: 1
Duration of internship: 10-20 weeks


Work as an intern at one of Cape Town's most widely circulated papers. Gain exposure to international journalism and compare South Africa's journalistic procedures to that of your home nation. This is an internship best suited for students studying news editorial journalism. During the application process, candidates for this internship position will be asked to prepare three examples of their best writing.

About the Cape Times: "In 1876 the first edition of the Cape Times was published under the editorship of Frederick York St Leger. It grew under a succession of remarkable editors into a commercial success, but was best known for its fearless commitment to fighting for the ordinary man and against human rights abuses. It has become as much a part of Cape Town as the south easterly wind (and sometimes as irritating to the politicians or powerful people whose foibles it exposes.

But time, politics, the city and the media world have changed vastly through those years. Right now the Cape Times stands at the beginning of the 21st Century peering into a future which some would have us believe is going to see the demise of traditional newspapers or, at least, the amalgamation of titles. There is no doubting that the electronic media and, most recently, the internet have presented newspapers with new challenges. In South Africa we have also had our own unique challenges, the most striking being the post-1994 drop in circulation as traditional readers apparently chose to bury their heads in the sand rather than confront the change that was upon them and being reflected on the news pages. We have responded to these in the traditional ways of business leaner organisations, keen monitoring of costs and so forth. But the real challenge for newspapers is to be both compelling and useful. This means taking a very serious look at our editorial content." -Tyrone August, Editor of the Cape Times.