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George Viner Memorial Fund


How the bursaries for black and minority ethnic students can make dreams come true


ingredient, has won him kudos among exotic drink aficionados. But now he is being nominated for


N


awards in another industry. His video, Te currency of


culture, put him on the shortlist at the Royal Television Society’s awards last month and he is up for Student Journalist of the Year at the Independent Radio News awards, winners will be announced on 15 July. In 2019, his film Legitimising Inequity took first place at the London Student Film Festival. It was thanks to the NUJ’s George Viner Memorial Foundation charity that he was able to start his career in journalism. It provided a bursary towards his Broadcasting Journalism MA which he studied at London’s City University. It came about aſter he atended the NUJ’s event, An Evening with Gary Younge, then with Te Guardian. Gary, now an NUJ Member of Honour and professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, was a hero of Nabil’s for his writing in Te


abil Mehdinejad mixes a mean cocktail. His tequila-based Blood on the Leaves, with its secret beetroot powder


Guardian and books on civil rights and race.


Nabil said: “He said lots of encouraging things to me when I got chating with him aſter he signed his book for me. I then got talking to BBC journalist, Saadeya Shamsuddin, who answered my questions about the George Viner scheme and encouraged me to apply.” Saadeya was a George Viner scholar in 2008 and has been a great supporter of the charity which was set up to broaden the diversity of journalists working in the British and Irish media. Nabil never imagined he would


have ever been a journalist. He said: “I thought you had to be from Cambridge or Oxford universities. I’m also dyslexic and have other learning difficulties but I was always interested in storytelling and even as a young teen I would be in the school library reading the papers and current affairs publications like Te Economist.” Aſter leaving school Nabil


went into the hospitality industry, working for two years


at Te Savoy and in a number of Michelin-star restaurants. He took a part-time job with the Royal Mail so he could complete his undergraduate degree at University of London’s Birkbeck college, but it was the final year module on ‘journalism and conflict’ that interested him most. It hasn’t been ideal taking his journalism masters during the pandemic, but he has had plenty of work experience, shiſts with Sky News and ITN among others, and had “heaps” of interviews. His ambition now is to be a producer in the newsroom, maybe on the foreign desk, and to uncover injustices.


Invite a George Viner scholar to your branch meeting.


Contact GeorgeViner@nuj.org.uk


Make a regular donation to the charity: htps://bit.ly/3hJaIsH


Action• •


•


Encourage young black and minority ethnic would-be journalists to apply to the scheme.


DIVERSITY


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