The academic year may not be quite over, but La Trobe Bachelor of  Journalism student Rania Spooner is already packing her bags to head to Western Australian, where she’s been offered a cadetship with the Kalgoorlie Miner.

The Kalgoorlie Miner is the daily newspaper owned by West Australian Newspapers who also own the West Australian. Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a large mining town in Goldfields, WA.

 Rania completed a two-week internship with the Miner in the middle of 2009, which, she says, “provided her with an opportunity to get my face known to the editorial staff and display my abilities in journalism”.

“Going regional had been something I had thought about, and when I interned at the Miner and found a talented and dedicated team of young journos from all over the country who were cutting their teeth in print I was sold on the idea.”

Kalgoorlie Miner journalist Natasha Boddy has just been shortlisted for a Walkley award for her coverage of an Aboriginal elder who died in custody under horrific circumstances. Natasha pushed this issue onto the national news agenda.

Rania has also developed her journalism skills while studying, and was the news editor for La Trobe University’s student newspaper Rabelais during 2009.

She says she urges her peers “to get out there an push for work experience and stop listening to anyone who tells you the industry is dying and nobody is hiring new jounrnalists”.