Alumnus Lands Two Media Jobs in Colombia

Sergio Held, who received his Master of Journalism degree this year, has secured two jobs in Bogotá, the capitol city of his native Colombia.

Sergio Held at Radio Super

Held has been made Deutsche Welle‘s correspondent for its new Spanish-language TV news channel. He will also co-present a radio programme called “La Hora de la Verdad” (The Hour of Truth) on the Bogatá station Radio Super,  alongside Fernando Londoño, a former minister of the interior.

Held’s radio shift will run from 5am to 11am. He will then devote the rest of the day to TV production for Deutsche Welle.

Held, now 27, first received a law degree, and then entered politics, being elected a councilman for one of the 20 boroughs of Bogotá. He remained in office for three years before he decided that he wanted to become a journalist, and applied to the MJ programme at HKU.

While studying for his master’s degree, he worked as a correspondent for Radio Super. He also did an internship with CNN en Español, where he met JMSC alumnus Diego Laje (MJ 2009).

Laje proved to be instrumental in getting Held the job with Deutsche Welle, connecting him with a former colleague who now works for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin.  Held stopped in Berlin on the way back to Colombia, and was given the job.

The radio show then slotted into place. “Once they knew I was moving back to Colombia, they asked me to co-host the news talk show,” he said.

Held says his MJ degree has enabled him to find these two positions.

“The JMSC gave me the opportunity to become a real journalist,” he said. “Not only the networking and the opportunity of adding CNN to my CV, but also the great professors who taught me how to face all the challenges of being a real journalist.”

“From Rob McBride who taught TV News Production, who showed us how to be a correspondent with just a backpack and shared his experience of working for Al-Jazeera, to Matt Walsh who taught How to Write for TV, who told us about his work for CNN, to Thomas Abraham who taught us how to produce and deliver international news with his great experience in this field. All of them gave me the knowledge that I now require for these new challenges.”