While newspapers struggle to gain young readers, a new summer internship programme at The Royal Gazette has bridged the generational divide.

This newspaper introduced four interns to journalism, giving them some measure of creative freedom, which has led to a new podcast series aimed at content for the under-30 crowd.

Today, the fourth instalment of The Startup Generation podcast drops, highlighting a young Bermudian with a designer clothing business.

The interns have introduced themselves as the RG Next Gen — young people, aged 17 to 23, brainstorming story ideas and interviewing young entrepreneurs by video.

Intern Nkenge Boyles, 23, said the way that Gen Z and millennials consume information, differs from previous generations.

“We are the first generations to be digital natives,” Ms Boyles said. “We have grown up with technology. That is what The Royal Gazette wanted us to explore.

“We have been highlighting people under 30 who are doing different things, and showing the paths that are available to young Bermudians.”

For Ms Boyles, the work was about telling stories in a different way: “Media, journalism and communications are constantly changing.”

As a group, the interns explored creative fields. Some of them felt that in high school they were force-fed tourism and international business as the only real career options.

“There are so many other things that Bermudians can do, and things that Bermudians are doing,” Ms Boyles said. “We wanted to use this platform to show what other people are doing and hopefully inspire other people to know that there are possibilities outside of the mainstream career paths.”

The group created five podcast episodes covering different industries such as skincare, jewellery, clothing design and photography.

“We were given the opportunity to do whatever we wanted in terms of creating content, within reason,” Ms Boyles said. “We were allowed to create podcasts on topics that were interesting and accessible to people in Gen Z. It was really fun.”

The internship gave the interns an inside look at the world of journalism.

“I was surprised at how fast-paced everything was,” she said. “I knew that going into it, but seeing it in action still surprised me. The turnover of everything is so quick.”

Because the interns had such a different viewpoint to the more traditional RG approach, the newspaper created a special brand, RG NextGen.

Michael Grier, commercial director of Bermuda Press Holdings, said: “That allows the product to be more of their own thing, even though we authorised it and recognise its legitimacy.”

The Start-up Generation podcasts, which are short and to the point, have been relatively successful.

“We average 2,800 uploads of any podcast that we have on The Royal Gazette website,” Mr Grier said. “The Start-up Generation is very close to those averages. So far, the qualitative metrics, which look at whether listeners are going through the whole podcast, are fantastic.”

He said any company with an internship programme wants to help young people, adding: “We got extremely lucky. We had people come in with the ability to create content right away, and understand it.”