The World Media Academy Delhi graduated its first class of students on Saturday, May 26, all of them armed with the skills to become professional multimedia journalists in today’s high-tech, competitive news environment.

"This is your chance to make a difference in your profession," Knight International Journalism Fellow Siddhartha Dubey told students during his commencement speech. "It really is all about the love for journalism and reporting. Your reputation begins right now."

Several of the students already have full-time job offers, and others have offers pending. By graduation day, students had secured positions with media firms including The Associated Press, The New York Times India and France 24. Others were being considered for positions with Discovery Channel, Al Arabiya and Frontline PBS, and one student secured an interview with CNN’s Indian Broadcasting Network, CNN-IBN, on graduation day.

"The rate at which our students are being snatched up by top-notch, prestigious news organizations is a tribute to how well prepared they are to meet the evolving demands of today’s newsrooms,” said Dubey, who is leading the academy. “As more and more newsrooms in India are becoming digitized, our students learn and practice on the same professional equipment used in modern newsrooms today. And they learn an assortment of multimedia skills, from writing and shooting video to reporting, editing, blogging and posting online.”

He added, students coming back from internships and job interviews report the intensity of the WMA program and the variety of relevant skills give them an advantage in newsrooms. Read Dubey’s blog about the graduation event here.

The 2012 WMA class had 16 students from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In addition to those who live in or near the capital city of Delhi, there were students from Nepal, Bhutan, Italy, the United States, and Nagaland, in the rural northeastern part of India.