I probably had the longest internship ever. I joined The Oregonian as a summer intern just days after graduating from college, and I’m still here more than 40 years later.
The Oregonian/OregonLive is proud to offer paid internships to aspiring journalists, typically college students in their sophomore through senior years. Most study journalism or related topics.
If you have such students around you, my advice is to plan ahead. Many media outlets, including us, have already started applying for him in the summer of 2024.
I call this the intern arms race. Major news organizations such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are speeding up their intern selection processes, and others are following suit.
If you start looking for summer internships in April or May, many opportunities will pass you by.
The deadline to apply is October 22nd (visit oregonlive.com/editors for more information). I’m writing this as the last intern of 2023 finishes his 10-week stint in the newsroom.
Kayla Nguyen, a University of Oregon graduate whose internship ended on Friday, continued her internship like a tenacious reporter chasing a story. “I applied to five or six internships a day,” she said. “At one point, I was being interviewed every day.”
Her first internship was at the Albany Democrat-Herald. Many interns start out at small newspapers before taking internships in larger metropolitan areas. We strongly encourage you to apply to a variety of news organizations.
This summer, Nguyen interned in business reporting at The Oregonian/OregonLive. You may have seen last Sunday’s front page story about churches stepping in to fill the gap in affordable housing. She also gained experience on the breaking news team.
We are proud to welcome interns to our learning newsroom. They immediately go to work just like regular staff. Editors provide the necessary support, but most journalism students find themselves ready to report, write, take photos, or create social media content.
This year, we placed interns in four departments. Usually it has only a slight impact on what they do during the summer. Nguyen wrote about highway underpasses for frogs, and Life & Culture intern Chiara Profena wrote about the impact of business consolidation on food and beverage manufacturers in Oregon.
“The best thing an early-career journalist can do is seek out a variety of experiences, and we do our best to provide that,” said Elliott Nuse, the newsroom’s internship coordinator. .
When I came as an intern, our selection system was a little more sloppy. In some cases, they relied on journalism school professors who knew who to call at the newspaper. That’s how I was selected to intern at the copy desk. A copy editing professor at the University of Oregon called then-news editor John Harvey, and I got involved.
In other cases, senior executives selected descendants of family members and friends as summer interns. We can see how systems like this (if you can call it that) perpetuate the status quo.
A few years ago, one of our managers made me realize how modern internship programs can exclude students from diverse backgrounds. We didn’t intend to do that, but we were creating a program that would create a barrier for students whose families could not afford to travel to Portland and pay for rent.
Therefore, we tended to attract interns primarily from middle- to upper-class families. Without a newsroom with diverse perspectives, we miss out on news.
Therefore, we now offer need-based scholarships for interns’ travel and housing costs. This is an example of a social barrier, a hurdle that people from marginalized communities often face.
In addition to intern applicants who come directly to us, the newsroom partners with the Charles Snowden Excellence in Journalism Program through the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. The program places interns in newsrooms in Oregon and covers a portion of their employment costs.
We’re also the host newsroom for the Portland chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, which also supports internships around Oregon by providing a portion of their expenses each summer.
After my internship ended in the fall of 1983, I was fortunate enough to be hired as a full-time staff member. Years later, I can’t remember why I ordered a copy of my transcript. Maybe he was thinking about going to graduate school.
When I received my transcript, I noticed that my internship grade was an “I” (incomplete). Some 40 years later, it seems I’m still learning.
