Saturday, June 16, 2007

Importance Of Internships

One of things I always stress to students is the importance of an internship. Internships provide you hands on experience in a real life newsroom. The deadlines are real. The pressure is intense. The learning experience is immense. There is no substitute for the things you will learn in an internship.

On any given semester, we will have 10-15 news interns. They come from colleges and universities all over the state. This semester, we have students from Hampton University who joined us, as well.

They don’t just sit around. They are learning how to write, blog, cultivate contacts, confirm stories, shoot, edit, run teleprompter, produce a show and much much more.

As with anything, it’s what you make of it. The more aggressive, go-getter interns are the ones who inevitably see the most success from the internship programs. Those that don’t show a strong interest, see little success.

The news business requires you to be thick skinned. You have to be willing to take risks and learn from mistakes. I always tell interns, a good judge of your success is by how many know you by name as opposed to…”hey intern”.

Did you want to intern at NBC 17? Drop me an email:
Did you enjoy this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed (or leave a comment).