Internships News Releases Awards

3 Missouri Students Selected for Paid Dow Jones News Fund Internships

The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Kansas City Star to Benefit from Their Multimedia Skills

Columbia, Mo. (May 13, 2015) — Three Missouri School of Journalism students will be among 92 undergraduate and graduate students joining the Dow Jones News Fund this summer. They will be working as business reporters, digital journalists, and news and sports copy editors in paid internships at 56 of the nation’s leading news organizations.

Madi Alexander
Madi Alexander

The number of students accepted into the Fund’s internship program is up 7 percent from 2014, according to a news release from the Dow Jones News Fund.

Madi Alexander, a journalism graduate student, will spend the summer at The New York Times, after training in digital media editing at Arizona State University. Tracy Cook, a junior print and digital news student, will join the news editing staff at The Philadelphia Inquirer after a news editing “boot camp” training session at Temple University. Joe Guszkowski, a second year master’s student, will be news editing at The Kansas City Star. He will attend boot camp at the University of Missouri, under the direction of Brian Brooks, professor emeritus and former associate dean of undergraduate studies. He has been the director of the Missouri boot camp for more than 40 years.

Tracy Cook
Tracy Cook

“The News Fund has been great for Missouri students for many years,” Brooks said. “It’s given them a great start in the profession. The three students participating this year will have that same advantage.”

Among returning national and regional news media partners with the DJNF are The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Detroit News, Advertising Specialty Institute, Thomson Reuters, the Denver Post, E.W. Scripps Co. and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Joe Guszkowski
Joe Guszkowski

Linda Shockley, managing director, said, “Media need skilled multiplatform journalists more than ever and students need the experience and the added grounding Fund pre-internship training provides. We value our media partners’ investment in the future by participating in our programs.”

Richard J. Levine, president of the Fund, said, “This summer’s strong and dynamic internship program is testimony to the News Fund’s vital role in preparing the next generation of professional journalists for work in the digital age that is reshaping news media.”

The summer internship programs will support eight training sites at leading journalism schools in May and June. The interns will train for one week before reporting to work for 10 weeks at salaries starting at $400 per week. Those returning to college receive $1,000 scholarships. More than 600 applications were reviewed.

In addition to the MU, Arizona and Temple training sites, other in the program are at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, New York University, University of Texas-Austin and Pennsylvania State University.

Cook, currently a teaching assistant at the Columbia Missourian‘s interactive copy editing desk, also was awarded a $1,000 copy editing prize from the American Copy Editors Society. Guszkowski is an assistant city editor at the Missourian. Alexander, who is focusing on data journalism and investigative reporting, currently works in the database library at the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a division of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Updated: September 8, 2020

Related Stories

Expand All Collapse All