Journalism Internship: Requirements

Steve Bodnar '08

One of the best things I did before my internship was forget any notion that there were certain types of stories I didn’t want to cover. While I still had my reservations, I forced myself to take every story with an open mind.

You must receive at least a B in English 621 Newswriting and English 622 Advanced Newswriting before doing a reporting internship. English 722 Feature Writing is also strongly recommended. If you want to do an editing internship, you'll need to be doing A work in English 711 Editing. You may apply for the internship while you are taking 622, 722 or 711. You will need published stories to bring to your internship interview. More on that below. And you need a reliable car and a valid driver’s license.

Remember that an internship is a privilege, not a right. Nobody owes you an internship just because you're a journalism student. If you do well in your courses and publish your work, we'll do everything we can to help you. But please be aware that saying, "I can do my internship only at X time and only at X paper" isn't going to work. We try our best to accommodate everyone's needs, but here's a simple fact:

Everyone cannot go during the summer, and everyone cannot commute from Durham. You've known since the moment you arrived at UNH that not many news organizations exist near campus, and you've known since the moment you declared a journalism major that you were going to do an internship. So it should not come as a surprise that you'll need to be flexible. If you choose to go in the spring or fall semesters, you'll have a far greater chance of getting one of your top-choice places than you would during the summer, just because more students are competing in the summer.

When you go out on an internship, you represent UNH. Meeting class deadlines and acting ethically while you’re in school, not to mention getting out of your chair to do reporting and get published, are the ways you convince us that you’ll be a good representative. Most students have no trouble with any of this; we’re proud to send them out. But if you find yourself wanting to argue, "OK, I’m a slacker in school, but I won’t be that way at work . . ." stop and think: What evidence would make anyone believe you?