The Travel Media Awards – in partnership with APL Media , Finn Partners , Intrepid Travel and TTG Media – is pleased to launch Step Up, a new internship programme driving diversity and inclusion in travel media for young people.
The Travel Media Awards recognises the importance of cultivating and uplifting people from different backgrounds to strengthen the industry by better reflecting the diversity within the UK.
The scheme will be advertised across the UK and two candidates will be chosen to join our partner companies in London for paid internship positions in summer 2024. Our Step Up interns will receive a further six months of mentoring and will join us next year at the Travel Media Awards 2024, with promising careers ahead of them in travel media, be that consumer, trade or PR.
The Step Up programme is open to anyone aged 18+ who can demonstrate a passion for travel media and identifies as coming from an underrepresented demographic. Applicants must be UK residents and have the right to work.
Step Up application is now closed.
Travel Media Awards Step Up welcomes interest from travel media companies that may want to participate in the scheme. Please contact: stepup@travelmediaawards.com
The programme has been launched in response to research indicating there is a lack of diversity and inclusion in the travel media industry.*
*Sources
• In journalism, research from Statista shows 12% of the UK workforce belong to a non-white ethnic group, while this group makes up 18% of the population. In PR, it’s 10%; in publishing, 15%.
• A recent study published by Statista shows 59% of journalists are male, compared with the population average of 49%; in PR, there’s a skew in the other direction – 67% of the industry is female, according to the PRCA.
• The outlook is more positive for LGBTQ+ representation, and it’s important to maintain these figures. In the UK, around 10% of the population identify as LGBTQ+. In the publishing industry, Publishers Assocation data shows 13% of staff are LGBTQ+.
• In the UK, around 24% of the population have a disability. In journalism, one data set from the NCTJ shows a comparable 22% having a disability or a work-limiting health problem. Meanwhile, in the publishing industry, just 13% have a disability; in PR, 4%.
• Data from Press Gazette shows 80% of journalists come from households with professional occupations, yet only 33% of the country fall into this demographic, indicating an over-representation of middle- and upper-class voices in UK journalism. The data for the publishing industry is 67%, according to the Publishers Association.
statista.com, pressgazette.co.uk, prca.org.uk, ons.gov.uk, publishers.org.uk, researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk, nctj.com