How to Hunt for a Newspaper Internship

You’ve probably heard that internships – even more than college journalism classes – are the gateway to your first job at a newspaper, whether you aspire to work as a reporter, copy editor, page designer or photographer. But how do you go about getting the internship that really prepares you for life in the newsroom?

These pointers from Dana Eagles, recruitment and staff development editor for the Orlando Sentinel, will help you develop your strategy and apply for an internship.

Start Early
Don’t wait until your junior or senior year to start getting professional newsroom experience. By then, you’ll be competing with ambitious peers who have accumulated one or two internships along with campus newspaper work. Ideally, you should intern every summer during college, starting with the one that follows your freshman year.

First-time applicants often are surprised about how early newspapers choose their summer interns. Most have deadlines in November and December. If you wait until spring break to think about interning for the summer, you may wind up back at that lifeguard job you had in high school. Start getting organized as soon as you return to campus in the fall.

Start Small
Your first internship probably won’t be at a major metropolitan paper. Many larger newspapers (including the Orlando Sentinel) consider only students with previous internships for their paid internships. The size of the paper doesn’t matter as much as what it has to teach. At a smaller daily, interns do a little of everything and get plenty of fundamental experience. Just make sure the paper has editors and mentors who can give you the coaching you’ll need.

The best place to start is often your hometown paper (unless, of course, your “hometown paper” is a giant metro daily such as the Los Angeles Times). You probably have housing available in your home town, and your knowledge of the community can be an asset to the editors. Arrange a visit to see the internship coordinator when you’re home for a visit. 

Use Your Network
Relatives, family friends and professors can sometimes offer the connections you need to get your internship application noticed. It’s OK for them to pave the way with a call or e-mail, but you’ll still have to prove your worth to get the internship.

Consider Working for Credit
A paid internship is always ideal, but an internship for class credit can provide just as much learning – and may be easier to come by if you have little experience. Check with your college to see if it has an interning relationship with a newspaper – especially one in a place where you have free or inexpensive housing available.

Check National Placement Programs
A handful of national programs place students at participating newspapers using a central application and testing process. The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, for example, offers internships in copy editing and business reporting (the latter for minority students only). The Kaiser Family Foundation offers internships to young minority journalists in urban health reporting. The Chips Quinn Scholars program places minority students at newspapers nationwide. If you meet the qualifications, these programs can be a good route to an internship, and they offer a bonus: Most offer formal training at the start of the internship.

Be Willing to Move
Students who are too picky about location often wind up with nothing. To get an internship, you have to go where the job is and be willing to do whatever it takes to find affordable housing there. That may mean a smaller town than you’re used to, or an unfamiliar part of the country. Think of the new experience as part of your growth as a journalist.

Get a Car
If you’re hoping for a reporting or photo internship, you’ll  probably need a car to get to interviews, government meetings and the sites of breaking news. Only the largest papers have much mass transit available in their cities. If you don’t own a car and can’t buy one, start thinking about how you might be able to borrow one for the summer.

Find a List of Internships
The best place to learn about internships is the directory maintained by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. You can narrow your search by state, type of internship and various other criteria. If the newspaper where you’d like to intern isn’t listed, call the paper’s main newsroom number (usually available at its Web site) and get the name, phone number and e-mail address of the internship coordinator. If the newspaper is too small to have one of those, ask for the managing editor’s assistant. That person usually will be able to direct you.

Many journalism schools also keep files of internship fliers and brochures or post them at a central place.

Apply Widely
The competition for internships is tougher than you might expect. So, in addition to applying to the 5 or 10 papers where you’d really love to work, apply to the 20, 30 or 40 that aren’t ideal but might be more realistic targets for someone with your experience. It’s not unusual for students to apply to scores of newspapers in the hope of getting one offer. But be sure you have a system to keep everything straight, so that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn’t receive the letter you prepared for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Be Careful
Application requirements for internships vary widely. Some newspapers require essays and ask for a certain number of clips; some have a formal application. Almost all will ask for a cover letter, resume, references and clips.

With each piece, accuracy, correct spelling and grammatical precision are essential. Misspellings, gaps in grammar and factual errors will indicate to editors that you don’t have the skills – or are just too careless – to be worth a second look. So have a trusted friend or professor proofread your work.

Let’s take the basic parts of the application one by one:

Your Cover Letter
It’s hard to come up with a cover-letter gimmick that an internship coordinator hasn’t seen a dozen times, so instead focus on writing a straightforward, well-constructed letter explaining why you want the internship and what qualities you would bring to the newsroom. Avoid the tale of how you got interested in journalism – it’s the grand cliché of the internship cover letter.

Do demonstrate your familiarity with the newspaper to which you’re applying, and if you’ve had campus newspaper experience or an earlier internship, you might tell the story behind a significant story in which you were involved.

Your Resume
 There’s no one acceptable format for a journalism resume (its content is much more important than its style), but here are a few guidelines:

• Make it brief (one page should be plenty), informative, accurate, consistent in structure, and simple. It’s true that gaudy resumes with bright paper, photos and outlandish fonts do attract attention – but for all the wrong reasons. 
• Include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address at the top, followed by a section that lays out your college and professional journalism experience in reverse chronological order, including dates (high school journalism experience usually is not relevant after your freshman year of college); other work experience; education, including the name of your college, major, minors and expected graduation date; and references.
• If you speak a foreign language at least conversationally, list it as a skill. Editors are keenly interested in your ability to interview in other languages – especially Spanish.
• It’s usually unnecessary to state an objective at the top, but if you do, don’t indicate that you’re interested in public relations as well as in journalism. That sort of uncertainty about your commitment to journalism may land you on the discard pile. 
• Include your cell phone number if you have one – you’ll want to be as accessible as possible to editors who are considering your application.
• If you’re using a goofy e-mail address that seemed cool when you created it in the 8th grade, it might be time for a new one that’s more straightforward.  Similarly, make sure that voicemail and answering-machine greetings sound mature and professional. Don’t give editors reason to doubt whether you’re ready for their newsroom.

Your Clips
Select a variety of your best stories (breaking news, issue pieces, features, profiles), mount them on letter-size paper with publication date and make copies on plain white paper (one side only).  Don’t shrink the type (editors might have a hard time reading it), don’t send your originals and don’t send oversize work that’s difficult to copy or file. It’s a good idea to staple the pages of a story together so that they don’t get mixed up.

Copy editing candidates should check the internship’s requirements to see what kind of clips to send. Photography and design candidates also should check application requirements, but many papers will allow a portfolio on CD.

Your References
Provide complete contact information for three working journalists or professors who know your work well, are willing to recommend you (check with them in advance) and will call back when an editor inquires. If you can’t fit this information at the bottom of your resume, enclose a separate sheet. Don’t say “References available upon request” – just go ahead and list them. This saves time for everyone.
 
Apply by Mail
Yes, it seems antique in the digital age, but sending paper through the mail is still the way the internship game is played. An e-mailed application places the burden on the internship coordinator to print out your resume and clips. Chances are, he won’t – and shouldn’t have to.

In general, avoid binders, report covers and other fancy packaging. Many internship coordinators throw these away so that they can copy your materials for a screening committee. Just paper-clip your materials together and mail them unfolded in a manila envelope.

Meet the Deadline
Get your application in the mail in plenty of time to meet the deadline. Don’t assume that your application will be considered if it’s postmarked by the deadline given in the internship posting. By the time your application reaches an internship coordinator a week or 10 days later, he may already have made a selection. Internship listings aren’t always clear on this point, so it’s best to assume that your application has to be received by the published deadline.

Good Luck!

E-mail Dana Eagles at deagles@orlandosentinel.com