Deciding what PoRs to take up during the various phases of one’s insti life can be a nightmare, to say the least. The opportunities available are just too many. Based on my two years of working with T5E, I’m going to attempt to explain why you should consider applying to be a part of the T5E team at some point or the other in your insti life in this article.
What is T5E?
Well, if you’re reading this article, you probably know who we are and what we do. But let me say it again in the interest of completeness. The Fifth Estate, or T5E, is IIT-M’s student media body. An online blog that started in 2009, T5E has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. Over the past couple of years, T5E has consistently been coming out with a plethora of articles, news pieces, op-eds and photo series featuring various topics and issues for its reader base spanning students, faculty, alumni, the press and the general public. Over the last one year alone, we reached nearly 1 lakh views on our articles and gathered 4K+ new readers. As of today, T5E has become an established platform to actively raise concern, debate or comment on anything related to the life at IIT-M.
What sort of work do you get to do as a correspondent?
T5E correspondents are the major workforce behind the content produced by T5E. As a correspondent, you’ll get to take interviews, design survey questions, analyze responses, work on data driven pieces (like Placement articles) and maybe even get a chance to work with our amazing media team to produce fun videos. T5E also encourages the correspondents to pitch their ideas for potential articles during ideation discussions.
What are the roles and responsibilities of a T5E Editor?
As a T5E editor, you’ll be part of a core team (Exec-Ed + 3-4 Editors + 3-4 Media Heads) that manages the functioning of the whole T5E team (which, as of last year was over 50 members in strength). Ideating for fresh article ideas, guiding the correspondents through the process of writing their articles (identifying whom to talk to, in case inputs are required; designing surveys or questionnaires; creating a structure to follow and so on), editing articles and publishing on WordPress, handling T5E’s social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) are among the things that a prospective editor would be dealing with on a day-to-day basis. It’s a lot of work, but I can assure you that it feels great when you see the audience appreciate your work or when the articles you put so much fight into engage insti junta in productive discussions about important social issues.
Do I need to have prior experience with writing to be a correspondent?
No, not at all! We don’t need you to be a successful blogger before you even join the team. All we ask for is a lot of enthu to learn and work from your side 😀
However, in case we have too many applicants, we may use your writing skills to filter candidates. We often judge this based on sample articles that you’d have to submit as part of the T5E Correspondent Application. In case you don’t make it through, fret not; you can always reapply when we’re expanding the team or taking fresh recruits. 🙂
Do I need to have prior experience with T5E to be a T5E Editor?
No, we don’t require you to have worked with T5E before to be an editor. If your application and interviews are great, you might just get in! All we ask from editorial candidates is that they make T5E their #1 priority during that year. We also expect our editorial candidates to have a good command of the English language.
What about positions in the media team of T5E?
For all the budding photographers, videographers and designers out there, T5E can serve as an amazing platform for putting your artistic talents to good use for capturing the essence of insti. As T5E’s official media correspondents, your T5E media badge gives you exclusive access to opportunities not available to any other media team on campus, be it covering cool events, making fun videos of the campus (check out the Unicorn Video that our team made for Valentine’s Day :D) or getting the perfect shot of a celeb T5E is interviewing. Not only that, you don’t even need to own a camera to be a part of the T5E media team – all we ask for is your enthu, we’ll give you access to our equipment and you can learn loads about editing videos and pictures, and designing posters from the Media heads of the team!
What are the perks of working for T5E?
Well, the first thing that pops into my head when I think of perks of working for T5E is the team pizza party! Yes, you heard right. Free pizza – possibly twice a semester – alongside a movie night (if you’re lucky :D)!
But that’s not all – working with T5E means writing articles and getting feedback from the editors about your writing. There’s always something to learn, even for those who’ve dabbled around with writing before joining T5E, be it from the other correspondents you’re working with or the editors who review your work before publishing. One year into working for T5E, you might not recognise your own literary works!
We generally release the applications on smail twice a year, and also post links to the application through our facebook page. Look out for our mail, and should you want to talk to anyone for more details, we attach the contact details of the previous year’s core team along with the mail, so feel free to approach us!
