How to Choose the Best Internship Program for Journalists in the USA

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Written by nelmalumme   
Friday, 19 May 2017 02:50

Right now is an amazing time to become a journalist. There is just so much going on! The thing is, if you don’t want to start out on the ground floor, you need to make sure that you get into a good internship so that you’ve got a shot at something really amazing.

After all, who knows how long it will go on? Wouldn’t it be terrible if just as you managed to climb somewhere where you could report on stuff the flow would dry up? That would be terrible!

For that reason, you want to get the right internship. Here is how

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Know your options

There are a lot of internships out there that you can try for. If you want to get the right one, you have to make sure you know your options. Here, for example, is a list of 81 different internships that you can apply for. Here is another list of 421 on Linkedin.

Of course, those were the first links available on Google. That means that everybody and your grandmother will be able to find these. Journalists need to be able to dig a little deeper. So make sure you do. Search well and search far so that you might find the perfect internship that nobody else knows about.

Don’t stop there, either. Just because an internship isn’t on a website doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Sometimes, if you know how to play your cards right and really impress people you might be able to get an internship specially made for you.

Of course, that will only happen if you can demonstrate that you’re a go-getter. So go get them!

Have something to show

You’ll need something to show them when you do apply for an internship, so make certain you’ve got a bunch of articles to showcase, just in case you get a chance to try your hand at something. Even if nobody looks at them, at least the act of writing them will help make you a better writer. And that is a damned useful skill to have when you join any kind of journalistic team.

The best thing to do is to write for some kind of paper, as a published article is always better than one that has never been read by anybody (plus you’ll get the benefit of an editor). So, write for your school’s paper, write a blog or do something else to get ahead.

If that’s not possible, then write on your own. Just make sure that you find somebody professional to take a look before you give it to anybody that matters. Perhaps use a friend, perhaps use a professional editor at Flash Essay, but make sure that somebody besides you gets to see it.

Read what other people have experienced

Journalists and news organization talk a fair game. That’s their job. Don’t assume that this means that’s what it’s really like, though. Instead, when you think you’ve found a good option, do some digging to find out what other people that went there experienced.

Was it a hell hole? Did they not sleep for days? Were they thrown off the deep end? Was it a match made in heaven? With this kind of knowledge, you can make sure you don’t end up working for a boss the 3rd circle of hell and find somebody who actually respects what you’re capable of and helps your career along.

Last Words

Getting an internship in journalism means showing that you’re better at getting the facts and writing up the story than everybody else. So don’t do a half-assed job looking for an internship. Instead, find something meaningful and interesting that other people haven’t noticed yet.

For just finding the right internship can open doors that you didn’t even know existed. And as you want to be a journalist, you’ll want to find out what’s on the other side of those.

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