In 2022, James Costa was part of a Citizen reporting team whose story on pollution in Melbourne’s western suburbs was co-published by The Age and later awarded the 2022 Democracy’s Watchdogs prize for student investigative journalism.

Now James, who completed his Master of Journalism in 2023, has earned another coveted prize, joining The Citizen newsroom as the 2024 Schiavon Fund cadet. He takes over from 2023 cadet Gwen Liu, one of two CAJ graduates to be awarded Australian Community Media cadetships this year, taking up a position at The Ballarat Courier.

Since 2016, the Centre for Advancing Journalism has been able to offer a paid one year cadetship in our Citizen newsroom. The position is available only to recent or near graduates from our Master of Journalism and, since it commenced in 2018, our Master of International Journalism programs. This year, as always, the talent and ambition of our graduates made the task of selecting one cadet from a strong field a difficult one.

Over nine years, this opportunity to build experience, networks and a portfolio has kick started careers at The Age (Charlotte Grieve), Cosmos magazine (Petra Stock), The Guardian (Jordyn Beazley), The Warrnambool Standard (Ben Silvester, now Victorian state correspondent with Australian Community Media), in strategic communications (Jack Banister), specialty publications (Anders Furze at MediaXpress) and copywriting (Kate Stanton).

The cadetship is funded through a generous gift from the Schiavon Trust, established in the memory of the late May and Romeo Schiavon.