Late February this year, a Danish journalism student arrived in Bangkok to start his 6-month internship with Bangkok-based Scandinavian news agency Scand-Media Corp., Ltd. Only in his second week in the city of mangoes, he has already covered one of the hottest issues that have been dampening the Thai economic outlook.
Knud Brix, the 23-year-old sophomore from Danish School of Journalism in Aarhus, has earlier visited Thailand twice. This is one of the reasons why he made Thailand the choice for his first session of the required 18-month internship.
“I have been to quite a few places in Thailand during my earlier visits as a backpacker and I like the country,” says Knud Brix. “That’s why the advertisement of Scand-Media’s Gregers Møller for a journalist trainee in the school’s internship handbook attracted me once I had seen it.”
As a journalist-to-be, Knud Brix wants to take the opportunity offered by his school’s internship programme to broaden his journalism view of the world.
“I want to write stories different from those we find in our homeland Denmark and I would like to experience working in an international environment,” he says.
His expectation seems to be met quite early in his ongoing period in Bangkok. In his second week here he has travelled to Buriram to report the impact of the bird flu on Henning Sørensens’ chicken farm there. The story was published in Danish newspaper Bøsen back in Denmark and also in Scand-Media’s ScandAsia.dk magazine as well as in the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce’s Thai-Danish Trade News.
Although his stories will occasionally be published back home, his first priority working at Scand-Media will be writing for ScandAsia as well as publications of the three Scandinavian chambers of commerce in Thailand.
After one month in the job, Knud Brix says he is happy working in Bangkok.
“I have chances to meet and make friends with Danes and Scandinavians living here as well as to get to know many nice Thai people.”
Knud Brix will be covering Thailand and South East Asia until the end of July, after which he will be based in other countries yet to be decided for the remaining 12-month internship requirement.
