Variety of internships provide students with challenges, professional experience

By Jennifer Reed
J-School Web Reporter

It’s a journalist’s job to expose the truth, so here’s the truth: All J-school students are required to do an internship.

Completion of a school-approved internship before graduation is intended to give students professional experience in their chosen field of study. Last summer, 43 journalism students worked as interns, doing everything from copy editing at the Los Angeles Times to traveling through and writing about Afghanistan for the Open Media Fund.

Though students are on their own when it comes to hunting down and landing an internship, the process has recently become a bit easier, thanks to an addition to the professional program’s mandatory courses.

Journalism majors in the professional program now must take a one-credit course called “Preparing for an Internship” at the start of their junior year before placing calls to prospective employers. The class began last year, providing help with résumés and cover letters, advice from seniors with successful internship experiences and tips from recruiters.

Sharon Barrett, a print professor who taught both sections of the class last year, said the idea was for students to get the internships on their own but also get as much help as possible in doing so.

This fall, Barrett split her duties — and her print students —with Denny McAuliffe, another print journalism professor. Keith Graham, a photo and design professor, is taking on a third section of the course for photojournalism students.

The J-school also provides students assistance by posting information on available internship opportunities online on the School of Journalism web page and on the bulletin board outside the library.

Another truth? It’s going to be hard.

Sarah Swan, a graduating senior, told print students exactly that as she recounted her experience last summer at the Boulder Monitor. Swan spoke highly of her internship but confessed that she didn’t actually get it until April of her junior year, after receiving rejection letters from papers in Arizona, Washington and Colorado.

“Even though I don’t live at the same place I do now, they call and tell me I got another one,” she said.

While Pat Duganz, another senior studying journalism, didn’t have much trouble getting his internship at the Montana Standard in Butte (he wrote in his cover letter that four years ago he got drunk in a hot tub and decided on a career in journalism, and his future boss loved the story), he soon learned about the difficulties of reporting on controversial issues.

Duganz said he would get calls all night long about hot stories, and his e-mail would be filled with “hate letters.”

“The feedback is so quick,” he said. “People don’t write you because you did good.”

Perhaps the biggest truth of internships is that they are worth it, despite the hurdles.

Swan, a sports reporter for the Montana Kaimin, gained experience in just about everything during her stint at the Monitor. She covered city council, wrote feature stories and a column, designed pages, took photos, wrote headlines and edited stories, all for a $3,000 summer stipend.

Barrett said that while “a number of students interned all over Montana,” several were able to travel for their internships. She said she had students intern in Nevada, Texas, Wyoming, Washington, North Dakota, Indiana and New York.

Not to mention the one Barrett claimed “the most exotic:” print senior Jacob Baynham’s internship experience in Afghanistan. Baynham’s stories from those travels, titled “Letters from Afghanistan,” are available via http://afghanletters.blogspot.com or at the Montana Kaimin webpage.

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