Make Plans Now for Business Journalism Interns

By Chris Roush
July 24, 2006

I'm often amazed at how little the business journalism profession does to try to promote the field. One of the best things that it can do is offer internships, yet few pros understand that the summer is too late to be making such decisions.

For example, in late June I was approached by an editor of a major news service and asked about possible interns. Earlier in the month, I was approached by another business journalist looking for an unpaid intern for the summer for her shop.

I’m sorry, but June is a little late in the game to be trying to find interns for the summer, and if you want an intern these days, you need to pay them something.

Maybe the disconnect here, however, is the fault of the academics teaching business journalism. Have the professors not done enough to communicate to the biz reporting profession about the internship process?

Here is how the intern game works:

Most of the best undergraduate and graduate journalism students start thinking about internships as soon as fall semester starts. So, in other words, they’ll be gearing up for Summer 2007 internships in September.

Many of the top regional newspapers in the country accept internship applications during this time period, and recruiting editors will visit the top college campuses during this time as well. If you want an intern who’s interested in business journalism, then you need to think along this time frame.

The best business journalism internship candidates in the country will have clips and resumes that look as impressive as many professionals, so they’ll also have multiple offers to choose from. If you want to get the best interns, you need to make the earliest offers.

American City Business Journals typically makes its offers in October and November. I have a student interning at Reuters in New York this summer who locked up her internship in August 2005. Another picked the Wall Street Journal over offers from the Boston Globe and one other top paper.

Then there’s pay. The no-pay interns only exist in the world of fashion magazines. If you want a top intern who will produce copy for your publication throughout the summer and often act as a regular beat reporter, then you need to pay them. The range can vary from $200 per week to nearly $1,000, depending on location and the publication.

If you wait until the last minute to go finding an intern, then you’ll most likely end up with the students who are not at the top of the class in terms of business journalism.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism