The weekly newspaper and the college have linked up for the Bury Mercury Challenge.
College students are being offered real-life work experience on a newspaper, mentoring opportunities and the ultimate prize, a paid internship later in the year.
Archant Suffolk is putting forward editorial staff, photographers and advertising sales staff for mentoring sessions with the students in February.
Mercury series editor, Russell Cook, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for students to get a real life taste of the newspaper industry as well as finding out how we operate our websites and the way we tap into social media.
“It’s also a superb way for us to link up with the college and offer the chance for a student to have the year’s internship with us.
“I’m really looking forward to working with the students when they come into our office to work with us for the week in April.”
Striking “Step Further” branding for the project has been developed from an initial concept created by students in a Mercury Challenge competition during Enterprise Week at the college, in November.
Yasmin Jeffery, public relations manager at West Suffolk College, said: “We are very proud of the project brand, a theme based on the idea of the future success of our students.”
Kevin Smith, team leader for the sales team in the Bury office, in Woolhall Street, and Mark Waymouth, Archant Anglia digital sales manager, have worked closely with Yasmin and college digital marketing co-ordinator Erica Dupuy on helping bring this vision to life.
Yasmin said: “We have been working together to develop the students’ initial idea – it’s like an acorn has grown into an oak tree and the final design execution is fantastic.”
Teams of students from across the college will now be taking the project forward and moving it on from the initial concept. They have been asked to develop a marketing plan with fresh ideas about about how best to promote the college.
Erica said: “We hope the students will come up with interesting and innovative ideas, not just in terms of print media but across all of Archant’s platforms, in terms of newspapers, digital content or social media.”
The student teams have been given a free hand to reinvent the branding and do what they like.
Yasmin added: “Involving these teams of young people – students on the ground who are having the college experience themselves - will help to engage with people in their age group who are considering their options in education.
“They are on the same wavelength and they can draw on their own experiences of all that is good about West Suffolk College.
“The other is that we are being offered a wonderful opportunity by Archant to give students real-life work experience in an area where some of them have career ambitions.”
The winning team will be given the chance run the paper for a week in April, and one successful student will be offered a paid internship during the summer.
