Mar
27
I’ve already put this out at Wired Journalists and over Twitter (with no responses so far), so I figured I’d go for the trifecta and blog it, too.
I’m doing some deep thinking about work experience for college journalists. We currently require a four-week work experience for our second-year students which is done as part of their spring semester, but I’m not sure this is the most effective way of getting students into newsrooms.
So I’m putting out the question to educators and students: what works for work experiece? Does it work at all? Benefits? Drawbacks? Methods? Basically, I’m looking for comments on anything anyone has to say about work experience for college journalism students.
Thanks.
Tags: education, journalism
Hi Mark, a serious topic for journalism educators.
I think the most valuable time to get students into newsrooms is just before they graduate – that is in their final semester. But if you only do that, it’s not very effective because the students are still green.
Here at AUT in Auckland New Zealand, we send our students out right through their third year. They work on live assignments for a variety of publishers/broadcasters and net news suppliers. They’re expected to have 12 stories at the end of a 12 week semester.
We also have a week-long field trip which I think is fantastic. Students go in small groups with a lecturer to a provincial city to work in the newsroom alongside regular staff. They do a story a day and participate in the life of the newsroom.
And we do internships.
This all works to get them “job ready” and it helps us maintain strong links with industry.
BTW: pls note that i’ve moved ethical martini to wordpress.