Missouri School of Journalism Students Hone Skills at Top Media Institutions

Phousavanh Sengsavanh Career Services Staff

Links

Billboard Magazine Dallas Morning News ESPN Good Morning America inPortland Magazine KBIA KOMU Missouri Journalism Student Internships The Oregonian

Columbia, Mo. (Sept. 26, 2007) -- For 12 weeks this past summer, going to work meant going to a baseball game for Carolyn Rauen, a senior radio-television journalism major at the Missouri School of Journalism.

As a studio production intern for ESPN, she arrived early and stayed late to transcribe play-by-play action and organize highlight reels for Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter, two of ESPN's most popular programs.

Senior Carolyn Rauen (left) worked behind the scenes at Baseball Tonight on ESPN to provide the anchors (standing) with on-air materials.

"All sports all the time was a lot of fun," said Rauen, a devoted athlete who runs for the Mizzou track and cross-country teams. "Not many people can say they've been paid to watch baseball games."

Rauen was one of dozens of Missouri Journalism students who spent the academic off-season this past summer involved in prestigious internships across the country. The work students do off campus at respected media institutions is a key element of the "Missouri Method," a proven style of instruction that emphasizes learning through hands-on experience.

"It's very important that a student has at least one internship before they graduate," said Phousavanh Sengsavanh, assistant director of career services at the School. "Having additional industry experience, plus what the journalism program provides, only makes students more adept."

Most internships are paid positions that last either eight or 10 weeks.

Senior magazine journalism major Taylor Grimes spent his summer in New York City, enjoying a position with Billboard Magazine. Within only a few days of arriving, he penned his first news piece, an article about pop phenomenon Justin Timerberlake signing a new artist to his label.

Derek Kravitz

And that was only the beginning. Grimes met and interviewed numerous musicians, put together several Q&As for the magazine and wrote reviews about music singles every week. Of course, he also received perks such as free concert tickets and CDs, as well as the opportunity to meet the artists he admires.

The tangible perks of the internship, however, were not as important as the experience and the connections. Grimes said he currently is writing freelance concert reviews for Billboard, and he's planning to write a piece on the upcoming Arcade Fire concert in Kansas City.

"What I took away most is that I'm really happy with the career path I've chosen," Grimes said. "After graduation, I hope to move to New York and hopefully use the wonderful connections I've made to land a job at a music magazine."

Jacqwi Campbell, BJ '07, (center) poses with other interns near a framed display of one of The Oregonian's Pulitzer Prizes. Although titled an intern, Campbell said she was treated as a staff writer at The Oregonian, responsible for at least two stories a week.

While Grimes was meeting all the right people on the East Coast, Jacqwi Campbell, BJ '07, was on the West Coast working her way onto The Oregonian's front page. She said she averaged about two stories per week, in addition to a cover story of her own design about dreadlocked hair and racial issues for inPortland Magazine.

"Don't think because you're an intern you won't be doing anything," Campbell said. "They expect a lot from you, and they treat you just like a staff reporter."

Indeed, Campbell took on her first story for The Oregonian just a few hours after first arriving there. Subsequent stories took her all over the city, including a front page feature she wrote about a deer running loose downtown.

Senior newspaper journalism major Derek Kravitz also spent the summer at a major news organization. For his fourth internship, Kravitz worked as a state and regional correspondent for The Dallas Morning News. The highlight, he said, was the newspaper's coverage of damaging floods in north Texas.

"The paper put a lot of resources into covering that story," Kravitz said. "I was pretty much stuck in a gnarly hotel for about a week."

Nicknamed "Tater" by his colleagues at the Morning News, Kravitz said he wrote more than 30 stories this past summer, 13 of which landed on the front page.

As the first Charles Gibson Fellow at Good Morning America, master's student Melissa Chee was involved in the day-to-day production aspects of GMA.

"They give you a lot of opportunity there," he said. "The Morning News treats its interns like full-time staff."

Prestigious internships aren't limited to journalism undergraduates such as Kravitz, though. Many graduate students also seize the opportunity to make connections and learn additional hands-on techniques. Radio-television journalism master's student Melissa Chee, for example, spent 10 weeks this summer as the first Charles Gibson Fellow at Good Morning America.

"The biggest highlight for me was to be there in the control room, getting to see the show put together," said Chee, who has worked at KOMU-TV and KBIA radio. "It was being able to see the difference between a local news operation and being able to see what a network news operation is like - different scale, different challenges and different roles."

Set to graduate in 2008, Chee said she is more focused than ever on attaining her goal of being a broadcast reporter or a network producer.

Learn more about the prestigious internships students have completed at the Missouri Journalism Student Internships page.

Related

April 2, 2007: Missouri Journalism Senior Wins National American Advertising Federation Internship Senior Katie Roehrick, a strategic communication major from Kansas City, Mo., received a 2007 Vance and Betty Lee Stickell Internship in advertising. Roehrick will spend 10 weeks working in the advertising department of The Los Angeles Times. In addition, she will receive $1,500 in May to help cover moving and living expenses and a $4,000 salary over the course of the internship. [More]

Nov. 13, 2006: Summer Internship Contest Recognizes Thirteen for Outstanding Journalism Work Thirteen students in the magazine journalism and newspaper journalism emphasis areas at the Missouri School of Journalism were recognized for outstanding work produced while working at summer internships. Sponsored by the newspaper journalism emphasis area, the contest was open to all journalism students. Entries could be submitted in one of six categories: profiles, features, in-depth reporting, breaking news, editorials/opinion and sports. [More]

Oct. 30, 2006: Career Fair Attracts Prospective Employers from Coast to Coast Missouri Journalism students had the opportunity to rub shoulders, visit and interview with recruiters from 16 media organizations from across the United States during the Missouri School of Journalism's sixth-annual Fall Media Career and Internship Fair, which took place Oct. 18-19. [More]

June 30, 2006: Salvo Named 2006 RTNDA Fellow, Wins National Internship at CBS Radio News Hayley Salvo, a senior radio-television journalism major at the Missouri School of Journalism, was named the 2006 Rob Sunde Fellow at the recent Radio and Television News Directors Association's annual conference. She will graduate magna cum laude in Aug., and was inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, a national journalism honor society that accepts the top ten percent of each graduating class in May. [More]

Feb. 17, 2006: Ad Fair Helps Advertising and Public Relations Companies Meet, Recruit Top Applicants Missouri School of Journalism students had the opportunity to meet, interview and make formal contacts with recruiters in the advertising and public relations fields at the fifth annual Ad Fair. [More]

Sept. 12, 2005: Coleman Benefits from Prestigious Internship at NPR Yolanda Coleman, a senior magazine major at the Missouri School of Journalism, recently spent the summer in Washington, D.C. interning for National Public Radio (NPR). Coleman was selected out of more than 1,000 applicants to be a part of NPR's summer internship where she served as the publicity and events intern in the communications department. [More]

April 4, 2005: Junior Magazine Student Chosen for ASME Internship Program Kate Schweitzer, a junior in the magazine sequence, has been selected for the summer 2005 American Society of Magazine Editors Internship Program at Reader's Digest in New York City. The internship is a ten-week program for college juniors who are placed with magazines in either New York or Washington, D.C. Last year, interns who won slots in this nationally-competitive program were placed at magazines such as National Geographic, Glamour, Business Week, People, Newsweek, Ladies Home Journal, Seventeen, In Style and Real Simple. [More]

Feb. 22, 2005: Journalism School Hosts Strategic Communications Career Fair Journalism students had the opportunity to meet, interview and make formal contacts with recruiters at the fourth annual advertising and public relations career fair on Feb. 10. The career fair also involved a reception the evening before which gave the recruiters and students a chance to meet on a more personal level. Faculty members of the Journalism School stopped by to visit with the recruiters, some of whom are recent Mizzou graduates. [More]

Dec. 15, 2004: Twelve Missouri Journalism Students Win Dow Jones Editing Internships Twelve Missouri Journalism students have been selected for the prestigious 2005 Dow Jones Newspaper Fund summer internships in business reporting, newspaper copy editing and sports copy editing. The students were among the approximately 35 picked from an applicant pool of more than 500. Each will receive pre-internship training and a weekly minimum salary of $350 for 10 weeks. Interns who return to college full-time the following fall will receive $1,000 scholarships from the Fund. [More]