Interns

An on-line discussion tool for current interns: The jouinterns mailserv Created for students at Northern Kentucky University, jouinterns serves journalism interns' immediate need to interact with one another and with the faculty intern coordinator and also helps them develop long-term Internet skills. Students who are not currently registered as journalism interns are welcome to subscribe and "listen in" on the discussions, but they may be administratively unsubscribed if the faculty coordinator determines that their participation is detrimental to the academic progress of the interns. Return to interns home page

Mailservs do automatic "bulk e-mailings."

A "mailserv" is an e-mail-based system that automatically makes and distributes copies of e-mail messages to everyone subscribed to the service. It is essentially the same as a ListServ or a "use group", the different terms simply reflect the different brands of software that drive them. A more general term for these programs is "e-mail-based groups".

Operationally, if you're a member of an e-mail-based group, all of the messages that anyone sends to the group are delivered directly to your e-mail address and it's up to you to save or delete them. If you save them, you can refer back to them any time you want but they take up space on your hard drive or floppy disks. If you delete them, they're gone and there's usually no way to get another copy of them. This is in contrast to "news groups" and "bulletin boards", which are also popular for sharing group. The difference is that members of a news group or bulletin board have to connect to a central location and sort through all of the messages that have been "posted on the bulletin board" each time they want to see if there are new messages.

Why have a jouinterns mailserv?

The mailserv for journalism interns, called jouinterns, was created to disseminate information about assignments and let us conduct asynchronous "discussions" without having to schedule additional meetings throughout the semester. It should help you get the most out of your internship experience and, if you haven't used one before, it will introduce you to an Internet tool that is becoming increasing prevalent in the professional world.

Once all of this semester's interns have subscribed to jouinterns, you'll be able to send an e-mail message to the entire group by sending it to jouinterns. The mailserv software will then route a copy to each subscriber at whatever e-mail address(es) he/she listed when subscribing.

Subscribing is easy and free.

You should immediately see a web page telling you your subscription was successfully processed. Soon after that -- perhaps only a matter of seconds, or maybe a few hours later -- you'll get an e-mail message confirming your subscription and providing additional information about how to use jouinterns and how to unsubscribe. If you do not receive both of these responses within a reasonable time (3-5 minutes for the first notification; 24 hours for the e-mail confirmation), something went wrong while you were subscribing and you'll need to try again.

If you want to receive jouinterns messages at more than one e-mail address, simply repeat the subscription process for each additional e-mail address.

Use jouinterns thoughtfully.

Remember that jouinterns is a public forum. Anything you send via jouinterns gets sent to everyone who is subscribed to it whether you're originating a brand new message or replying to a jouinterns message sent by someone else. Even though the messages that come to you through jouinterns will show the e-mail address of the person who sent it to jouinterns, if you click on the "reply" button on your e-mail program, your reply will go to everyone subscribed to jouinterns, not just to the person who sent the original message.

So, think twice before you fire off a smart-alecky or nasty response to someone else's message and use discretion before saying anything that could be considered confidential or potentially embarrassing to another person. You never know who might be reading these postings. Be careful not to embarrass youself or do unintended damage to someone else.

There are two ways to send messages.

Clicking on this icon any place it appears on internship-related Web pages will open an e-mail form pre-addressed to jouinterns so you can quickly and easily send a message.

You can also send messages by starting your e-mail program in the usual way and addressing a message TO: jouinterns@nku.edu.

Although it's not required, including "396:," the internship course number, at the beginning of the subject line alerts recipients that the message has come to them through jouinterns regardless of whose name or address is listed in the FROM: box. This lets recipients know the message isn't simply junk mail from an unknown sender. You should, however, still include a specific subject in addition to the 396:.