FCA member Esther Blank is a correspondent for German radio, Television and magazines. She is Deutsche Welle's official representative in Australia..

Since the year 2000, German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle has been offering internships to young talented radio journalists from Australia. The interns work for six months at the English Radio Programme of Deutsche Welle in Bonn. Deutsche Welle covers their airfare to Germany and pays them a training salary of around $2,500 a month.

The interns are all volunteers from community radio stations around Australia. At Deutsche Welle they learn to become professionals.

Irene Quaile from Deutsche Welle's English Programme came up with the idea for the internship after attending a media conference in Sydney discussing the image Germany had in Australia and that Australia had in Germany. It quickly became apparent that both countries' images were dominated by outdated clichés.

Kate Hairsine

WE decided to give young Australian journalists a chance to have a first hand look at Germany and the new emerging Europe and make up their own minds about the region, Irene said.

Deutsche Welle set up the internship with the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) as more than 25 of these stations rebroadcast Deutsche Welle programmes. The internships quickly became very popular. Some hopeful applicants even started to learn German to improve their chances.

This year's intern, Kate Hairsine, will be the 10th young Australian broadcaster to go to Germany. She says she is pretty nervous about moving from a small community radio station in Sydney, 2SER, to an international broadcaster with hundreds of employees from all over the world. It is also an unbelievable opportunity said Kate.

She takes over from Niki Karpeles (21) of Hobart, who during her six month stint in Bonn had a radio story on Nazi resistance in Cologne nominated for a prize at an international public radio competition in New York. At DW I met people from more than 60 nations and I did some really important stories from all over Europe. I had a great time, she said.

DW internships have become more and more sought after. This year dozens of hopeful young journalists applied. The standard was extremely high. Quite a number already had a job with public or commercial broadcasters and even newspapers in Australia. But they felt they did not get enough professional training.

Applicants for the DW internship are carefully selected. They have to be committed community radio broadcasters, they have to have a university degree and they have to submit some of their radio work to demonstrate their ability as radio journalists. They also have to show an interest in European and German current affairs and culture. They have to be able to speak and understand German, or to successfully finish a German course at the Goethe Institut before they can leave for Germany. A couple of other languages might also come in handy.

Deutsche Welle intern Niki Karpeles (21) of Hobart at DW studios in Bonn, Germany.

Growing numbers of young Australians study journalism or take communication courses at Australian universities. However, once they have finished their studies, there are not that many places to go to get practical experience as a cadet journalist - especially if they want to work on radio. Both public broadcasters ABC and SBS have severely cut back their training programmes. The commercial stations prefer to hire trained staff.

Community radio stations, run by volunteers, fill the gap. Many of them do a great job, said Barry Melville, general manager of the CBAA. We have a great number of talented, intelligent and enthusiastic volunteers working for our radio stations. And the success of our interns at Deutsche Welle shows that many of our stations offer training of international standard.

The staff at Deutsche Welle's English radio programme agrees. The interns from Down Under are excellent! said Irene Quaile adding, They learn quickly, they work hard and they love reporting from all over Europe. Deutsche Welle in Bonn, Germany, broadcasts radio and TV programmes in 32 languages around the world. In Australia DW programmes are rebroadcast by ABC News Radio, SBS radio and TV and more than 25 community broadcasters.