Star Weekly cadetship

Michaela Meade was a cadet journalist with the Star Weekly newspaper from February, 2021 to January, 2022.

She was predominantly in charge of the Northern Star Weekly, reporting on the Hume and Whittlesea municipalities.

Michaela also covered other papers under the Star Weekly masthead, including Wyndham Star Weekly, Maribyrnong and Hobsons Bay Star Weekly, Melton and Moorabool Star Weekly, and Brimbank Star Weekly.

Michaela showed great flexibility, adapting to the varied issues faced by each reporting area within a short time frame, and delivering papers to tight deadlines.

In her role, Michaela reported on a wide variety of issues concerning the community.

These issues include; road progress updates on projects such as the long-awaited O'Herns Road freeway interchange, state government updates that impact the local community such as the Mickleham quarantine facility (the Centre for National Resilience, Melbourne), public health updates such as COVID-19 updates, progress reports on local sporting clubs, and fundraising efforts of various community groups.

Michaela also regularly attended council meetings and identified key reports from agendas and meeting discussions.

In working for Star News Group, Michaela displayed flexibility in her writing, publishing hard news stories, picture stories, sports stories, feature stories, and profile pieces.

Michaela also managed social media as part of her cadetship.

She was able to successfully grow the traffic to the Northern Star Weekly Facebook page since beginning her cadetship in February, and used "catches" in her posts to drive more traffic to the Star Weekly website.

During her cadetship, Michaela was able to effectively navigate a transition to a more "digital first" approach to reporting, completing an average of six new stories a day for the website.

Details: starweekly.com.au