Journalism Internships

JOU 396 Internship is a three credit-hour course offered every semester and during the full-summer term. Enrollment is limited to journalism majors and minors and must be approved by the faculty intern coordinator, Dr. Michael Turney.

Internships are essentially "on the job training".

In many respects an internship is a short-term apprenticeship in which students become temporary apprentices and learn by doing under the watchful eye of a master practitioner. In this way students have a chance to apply recently learned theories and techniques to "real world" situations in a way that helps them bridge the gap between the classroom and the work-a-day world. It also gives them opportunities to meet, work with, and learn from successful professionals in their chosen fields. In this context internships represent the culmination of their careers as students and the beginning of their professional careers.

Journalism internships integrate what students have read about and learned in their communication coursework with the day-to-day realities of working for a newspaper, magazine, broadcast station, public relations firm, advertising agency, corporate communication department, or other type of communication organization. For this reason internships occur during students' junior or senior years, after they've completed most of their required journalism coursework and have demonstrated their ability to perform near-professional level communication work in class and during a practicum with one or more of the campus media.

Options and opportunities abound.

The range and variety of internships available to NKU journalism students are enormous because of the breadth and scope of communication activities in the Greater Cincinnati area. As a top-30 broadcast market and one of the few cities that still has competing daily newspapers, Greater Cincinnati has a wide array of traditional mass media outlets and anciliary services such as advertising, marketing, public relations, and production agencies. It also has countless small and large corporations with employee publications, public relations, investor relations, advertising, technical writing, and other internal communication units, to say nothing of hundreds of non-profit organizations with similar communication needs.

Dozens of these organizations contact the Communication Department seeking interns each semester, and many have on-going internship opportunities that accept students year after year. The most recent are posted on the bulletin board across from the secretary's desk in Landrum 134. This gives students lots of choices in trying to find a match for their interests. And, if there's no established internship that meets their expectations, students always have the option of trying to initiate an internship where one has never been done before.

All work does not qualify as an internship.

But, students and professional organizations alike need to realize that not every journalism job or communication-based volunteer service qualifies as an internship. Doing communication work and doing a communication internship are not synonymous. Even though being "on-the-job" in a work environment is an important aspect of an internship, it is not the only aspect. Learning and professional development are at least as critical. This requires that an internship be a learning and growth experience, not just a further demonstration of things the student has previously done or already knows how to do. No matter how necessary or how helpful the tasks may be, an intern's primary duties cannot be repetitious performance of previously developed skills. Unless the intern's assigned tasks present the student with an intellectual challenge and an opportunity that encourages learning, the work that's done will not be accorded academic credit as an internship.

Similarly, the qualifications and previous experience of the student's work site supervisor are also factors in determining whether or not a particular work experience is suitable for earning academic credit. Just as a master-apprentice relationship hinges on having a master craftsperson as an instructor/supervisor/mentor, so does an internship rely on having a work-site supervisor who is an experienced communication professional and a manager who is used to working with and coaching entry level employees. An exceptional manager, even a CEO, who is not also a communication professional would not be an acceptable work-site supervisor for a communication intern. Nor would someone who holds a graduate degree in communication but is just starting to work as a practitioner. The ideal work-site supervisor has at least a bachelor's degree in a communication field, five or more years of professional communication experience, and a year or more of supervisory experience.

Internships are not just work experiences.

Despite the emphasis on practical, work experience, there's much more to an internship than working. It's not just a job that "pays" academic credit or grades instead of money. Beyond the work experience, an internship is an academic course with a textbook, assigned readings, and written assignments.