How To Be the Best Intern This Summer

By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

NOTE: This is from Stacey Woelfel’s Substack column, The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel.

Stacey Woelfel spent 35 years on the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism.

And for 24 years, he was the news director for KOMU, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri.

News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com

How To Be the Best Intern This Summer

It’s just a combination of common sense and putting in more effort than everyone else.

A Mizzou student going into her senior year in the fall landed a terrific internship for her final summer before graduation.

Before she started the internship, she reached out to check in with me on how to make the most of the opportunity—and maybe get offered a job back there when she graduates.

I’ve been giving advice like this for going on 40 years, but I don’t think I’ve ever pulled all my thoughts together and written them down in one place.

Summer is upon us and countless college students will be starting internships in the next couple of weeks, so here goes—my thoughts on how to make an internship really count. This is aimed at journalists, but I think, with one exception, this list works for almost any student going into any internship.

Show up on time

You can see the common sense is already kicking in.

An internship is a job and you need to show up to a job on time. Whether it is a paid internship, one for credit or just someplace you’re volunteering to work, it’s essential to be on time for EVERY shift.

Will you still be able to get all your work done if you show up a few minutes late? Sure, probably so. But being on time shows you take the job seriously and have habits that demonstrate precision and attention to detail.

It might seem no one will notice if you’re a few minutes late from time to time. But trust me, someone will. And that someone will make sure everyone in the organization knows you’re not as serious about the work as the people who show up on time every day.

Stay late

If watching the clock closely to be sure you arrive on time every day matters a lot, it’s just the opposite at the other end of your shift.

You can’t be a clock watcher, counting the seconds until 5 pm (or whenever your shift ends) to race out the door.

Companies don’t often offer internships to work on an assembly line where a whistle blows and you stop work for the day. Whatever your internship entails, it will almost certainly have times when it would be good to put in an extra 30 minutes to get the job done right.

Now, if you’re being paid by the hour, be sure to check before running into any overtime situations. But stay focused on the task at hand and if that means staying a little late some days, so be it. The people with whom you work will notice this every bit as much as they’ll notice if you show up late. You want them to remember you for this.

Dress for the job you want

This is advice that’s been around the professional world for as long as I can remember. There may be some sort of dress code that tells the interns what’s acceptable attire on the job.

Remember that whatever the dress code is that just sets the MINIMUM for what the company will accept. You can always exceed those standards if you like. Say, for instance, you want to get a job there as a reporter after you graduate.

Check out the reporters and see what they’re wearing to work each day.

If the dress code allows jeans but you never see a reporter in jeans, I would suggest never wearing jeans. The same goes for makeup, hair and all the other elements of professional appearance.

Dress and groom yourself in a manner than matches the job you want to eventually have. A few extra minutes picking out the right clothes or applying the proper makeup will move you into a select group that managers will be able to see as future employees.

Volunteer for everything

I’ve had former students tell me about internships that had all the interns hanging out in a room waiting to be told something to do. Many would sit there all day waiting for a task. But the smart ones would leave the room and go ask for something to do.

Limit your idle time only to looking for another work assignment. Offer help to those around the newsroom even if it doesn’t look like they need any help. Each person you ask may have a task for you to do or, at the very least, may be able to suggest someone else who needs help. If you do this from day one, you’ll build a reputation as someone eager to help, eager to learn and eager to succeed and help everyone else succeed, too.

Pitch ideas

This one is pretty newsroom and journalism specific, though there may be some parallels in other lines of work.

Newsrooms hold multiple story meetings a day, working to determine how to best use reporters’ time and what will fill the newscasts that day. It may be the news director, an assignment editor or a producer who runs the meeting, but all will have the same rule—that everyone contributes story ideas for the good of the operation.

Being an intern doesn’t absolve you of that obligation. In fact, it’s really an opportunity to show how seriously you take the internship and how valuable a part of the operation you can be.

Each intern should come to the story meeting with three good ideas. What do I mean by “good?” I mean that they should be a story that can readily be turned in a day, has experts available, affects people who will be willing to be part of the story, has decent visuals and, perhaps most importantly, has not already been done by the station recently.

Interns should spend part of their workday—and maybe their off time—researching ideas they can pitch. Find ideas while out on other stories, by talking to locals in your off hours and by keeping track of the important issues in the area. Make some notes so you don’t get nervous and forget things when called on at the story meeting and then just deliver. Have something ready every day and, once again, people will take notice of what an asset you could be if you worked there permanently.

Get to know people

The interns should never hang out just with the other interns. A good internship means you will get to know a LOT of people. Definitely get to know all the people working the department in which you want to work someday.

Want to be a producer? Get to know all the producers and be sure they know you.

Want to be a reporter? Get to know all the reporters AND get to know all the photographers—they’ll be great references for you when the time comes.

It’s also a good idea to get to know as many managers as possible. You want them to know you and know your work because, after all, they’ll be making the hiring decisions that affect you.

Be curious

The one thing I have always said I cannot teach someone is curiosity. That’s an issue because perhaps the most important trait in our line of work is to have a curious mind. If you’re naturally curious, let it shine every day during your internship.

If you have to work at exhibiting your curiosity, put in the effort to do that. Let everyone around you know that you want to be the first one to know something new and the first one to explain it to everyone else. Find time in your day to exercise your curiosity by learning something new about the operation, learning something new about a story someone’s working on and learning something new about the people with whom you work. When you’re in a group, be the one who’s asking the most questions—and be sure to follow up on your questions with even more questions.

Be the best employee, not the best intern

The cohort of people against whom you want to be judged is not the other interns. You want to be compared against the other permanent employees and judged to be not just an equal, but a superior in any way possible. As an intern, you should be the person in the story meetings who has the best story ideas. As an intern, you should be the person who can dig harder than anyone else to find that elusive fact they need for the next newscast.

And as an intern, you should be the person who gets through to the source the newsroom really needs for a story and talks that person into going on camera. When the grizzled old newsroom veterans are nodding their heads at the work you’ve done, then you’re standing in the right company to be considered for a permanent spot on the team.

Stay in touch

Back to common sense here are I wrap this up. Once the internship is over, the job isn’t over. It just shifts to being an obligation to stay in touch with the people you’ve met and keep yourself top of mind. Of course, you should remain in contact with the managers who do the hiring. But don’t neglect the reporter with whom you meshed the best, the photog who took you under her wing and showed you how to work smarter, not harder or the producer who knows you would always come through for her show.

Once back in school, send them samples of your latest work. Don’t ask for or expect a detailed critique. Just frame it as something to send their way to let them know what you’re doing now.

Trust me, if you’ve made a great impression as an intern, they’ll want to know how things are going for you. And, when the time is right (maybe three months out from graduation), start bringing up the idea of coming back to work for them full-time once you’re done with school. If you’ve managed your internship and post-internship time well, that will be the easiest conversation you’ll ever have.

To all the interns starting work in the coming days, have a great time. You’ll look back on this experience as one of the most valuable and enjoyable of your college years. Make the most of it and it will pay you back in many ways for years to come.

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