01 Jul 08 Making the most of your internship

10,000 Words.Net has a great post about making the most of your journalism internship. With the volatile landscape of the journalism world these days it may be nerve-wracking for students and those just out of school to deal with an internship. Truth be told, if I were interning at a paper right now and saw the things happening around me, I’d be terrified.

All is not lost however. The best thing you can do at an internship is learn from everything that is happening around you, both good and bad. 10,000 Words offers these tips, but be sure to read the full post for the detailed descriptions of each tip.

1. Get paid
2. Speak up
3. Ask questions
4. Jump into multimedia
5. Fraternize with the staff
6. Get business cards
7. Make yourself indispensable

Obviously I couldn’t agree more with the tip regarding multimedia. Right now there is a big initiative to cross-train the journalists in the newsrooms and hey, if you can get some of that training for free then why not?

The Washington Post just made a big showing of how they recently finished training over 200 of their journalists on doing video for their stories. I know of several newsrooms (*wink wink*) that were doing this over six months ago. Imagine walking in the door for an interview and already having those skills. You are instantly a more viable candidate than the other guy, who doesn’t have those skills and the paper will have to spend time and money training, by taking the necessary steps.

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Tags: journalism, journalism education

23 Jun 08 Columbia, CUNY get cash for new media programs

From SPJ’s Classrooms & Newsrooms:

The graduate journalism schools at Columbia University and the City University of New York will improve their new-media programs with a total of $8-million in grants from the Tow Foundation, the charity announced today.

Columbia will receive $5-million, and CUNY $3-million. Under the terms of the grants, Columbia must garner an additional $10-million in donations within 18 months, and CUNY must raise enough to double its grant. Leonard Tow, a co-founder of the foundation, said the grants were a response to his “serious concerns about what is happening in the world of journalism.”

While I think it is great that programs like those at Columbia and CUNY (home of Jeff Jarvis) are receiving donor funds for new media programs, I am also disheartened that it is only these elite programs that seem to receive these influxes of cash (if I’m wrong someone show me some links). Not everyone can afford to go to Columbia, NYU or CUNY.

Furthermore, why only graduate programs? Aren’t undergrad journalism programs just as deserving of money toward teaching new media as grad programs? To that one might say that undergrad programs teach the fundamentals and grad programs are where you learn more advanced journalism skills. Well, that’s debatable. Looking at the course descriptions at both Columbia and CUNY for their M.A. programs, many of the courses are basics (reporting I, editing I, ethics, law).

While I understand that many people who go to a graduate-level J-school have undergrad degrees in other disciplines, what about us folks that want to continue our journalism education but already have a B.A. in journalism? Why force us to repeat and basically negate what we spent four years earning?

OK, sorry for the journalism education rant. My point is that funding for new media and new media education should not be exclusive for graduate programs, especially the elite graduate programs. Some of the best journalists in history, and some great ones I know personally, went to smaller and less well-known schools. I imagine this is an issue across many majors and not relegated strictly to journalism but hey, I’m speaking to what I know about.

Point blank: More money for journalism schools! Eh, in a perfect world right?

[/END JOURNALISM RANT]

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Tags: journalism, journalism education