Forum provides students with internship tips

By Carolina Astrain

Published March 2, 2007

Some call it summer help, others call it the key to a career.

The Society of Professional Journalists organized an event called "How to be a Super Intern," where a panel of three journalism professionals gave tips and answered questions about how to avoid becoming a coffee-fetching intern.

"At first we had called it 'How to Land the Internship of Your Dreams,' but then it changed a couple of times because what we really wanted to focus on was succeeding during the internship," SPJ President Ryan Wallace said.

Senior Leslie Parker began the discussion by describing her history of internships.

"Junior year I interned at MLB.com as an associate reporter," Parker said. "While I spent a large majority of my time covering the White Sox, I also covered other visiting teams and wrote other stories that appeared on the MLB.com Web site."

Parker said she had her share of grunt work, usually transcribing interviews and filing, but said she gained friendships with journalists from other media sources.

"You need to do what your future references ask of you," Parker said.

Parker said that swallowing your ego is helpful and is something that is often hard for a proud college student to do.

"Some of the people you will be working with have 20 or more years experience," KOMU/Channel 8 Executive Producer Holly Edgell said. "They may not have finished college, so boasting about going to Mizzou isn't going to go over well. It's not cute."

Parker also said a proactive mindset is critical.

Columbia Missourian Executive Editor of Innovation Tom Warhover, , said it's important to study the town map, read into the Chamber of Commerce's history and get lost in the city before starting an internship.

When the floor opened for questions, a student asked if it is true that you need to have an internship to get an internship. The panelists all agreed that this is true, but also indicated that at the School of Journalism, Newspaper Reporting is an internship in itself.

"You'd be nuts not to put the Missourian on your résumé," said Charles Davis, associate professor and editorial department chairman.

Davis said almost every newsroom in the country has at least one Missouri graduate.

"They are every dang where," Davis said.

The discussion ended with tips about how to go about preparing portfolios and the difference between recruiting done by a newspaper versus a broadcast station.

Warhover ended the discussion with his own "little secret" about years to come.

"The hottest job out there is going to be the position as a programmer journalist," Warhover said.