They are here to get experience, and in return they will contribute to yours and mine. They are interns who have been hired for summer work at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Three earned temporary spots on the staff after competing with about 200 other fledging journalists for the paid positions that will last up to 12 weeks.
“When you get that many applicants, you can be pretty selective,” said Carol Goodhue, who is training and development coordinator for the Union-Tribune newsroom. “The odds are tough.”
Why do newspapers participate in internships? The advantage is not just to interns, Goodhue said. The idea is “to give young journalists good experience and to keep an eye out for people we might want to hire some day.”
Even so, journalists do not go directly from an internship to a full-time position at the Union-Tribune. Christopher Meighan, a Union-Tribune page designer, is one of the rare exceptions who stayed on. In most cases, interns work at smaller newspapers before becoming permanent staff members at a newspaper the size of the Union-Tribune.
In all, the Union-Tribune has six summer interns. The three selected from among 200 or so applicants include Willie J. Allen Jr., Jennifer Larson and H.G. (Greg) Meyer. You may already have seen Allen’s credit line on photos and Larson’s and Meyer’s bylines on stories.
There’s also Chris Berdik, a Harvard College graduate who took his master’s degree at Stanford University and who is at the paper on the Drew Silvern Memorial Internship in honor of the Union-Tribune reporter and Stanford graduate who died in 1997 after chronicling his three-year battle with brain cancer. The internship is open to Stanford students only.
Two other interns are working for academic credits. They are Lindsay Morgan, a May graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University who is assigned to the Union-Tribune library, and Jeremy Lynch, art director of The Daily Aztec at San Diego State University, who is working as a page designer.
Some San Diego residents may already be familiar with Allen, who moved here when he was nine years old, attended Lewis Junior High and graduated from Madison High School. He also attended Grossmont College and San Diego City College before moving on to Idaho State. Now a senior at San Francisco State, Allen is studying photography and is a photo staff intern. Since he has been at the Union-Tribune, Allen has covered everything from police actions to sports.
Even when he’s not on duty, Allen studies photography. On Thursday, his day off, he spent time shooting underwater photos. Learning is what his internship at the Union-Tribune is about, he said. “I’m learning how to shoot better, to be a better photographer. Editors take time and give me feedback and tell me how to improve.”
For Larson, too, the internship presents a great learning opportunity. She just completed a master’s program at the University of Maryland and graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis. Larson has held other internships and worked for the Business Journal in Memphis. Readers have seen Larson’s byline in ComputerLink, the Home section and on Business stories.
“I feel there are so many people here with so many years of experience I want to soak up what they can teach me just by being around them,” Larson said.
“The best way to learn how to really be a good journalist is to learn from people who have been doing it longer than I have,” she said. “People who think they can just graduate from college and get a job are arrogant.”
She’s right. It doesn’t work that way. Experience counts even for internships, Goodhue said. Many applicants have already done internships and have had experience working at other publications before being accepted by the Union-Tribune.
Before taking his master’s in journalism at Stanford, Berdik did an internship at The Atlantic Monthly and then was hired as a research editor, which means he did fact checking. He also worked for a year at Mother Jones magazine as a fact checker. “I’m eager to do more reporting and writing,” Berdik said of his Union-Tribune internship. His assignment will include covering regional stories. His experience in checking facts will serve him well.
Meyer, who taught English and is enrolled in a print journalism and international affairs program at Columbia University, is covering federal and South County courts. He was a researcher for a women’s credit union, worked for a transit advocacy group and identified renewable energy projects in South Asia. A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, he worked at The Jersey Journal in New Jersey before enrolling in Columbia.
Meyer is hoping the professionalism of a big newspaper rubs off on him. He’s also looking forward to collecting clippings that will help him in job hunting.
