Five students from the College of Communications are among some 60 nationally who have been selected to work at newspapers this summer in the annual Dow Jones Newspaper Editing Intern Program. The students will complete intensive two-week training sessions in mid-May before beginning their internships later that month.
In the past six years, 40 Penn State students have been selected for the program. With five selections this year, the University ranks among national leaders in internship placements through the program.
"Our program emphasizes developing strong editing skills by requiring all of our print majors to complete an editing course," said Marie Hardin, associate professor of communications and associate head of the Department of Journalism. "It is gratifying to see some of our top students pursue editing careers, and many get a good start through the Newspaper Fund."
Penn State students, listed with their hometowns and the papers where they will work this summer, are:
- Marissa Carl, a senior from State College, Pa., Wall Street Journal
- Arianna Davis, a senior from Ellicott City, Md., San Francisco Chronicle;;
- Kathryn Dvorak, a sophomore from Chester, N.J., Naples (Fla.) Daily News;
- David Reinbold, a sophomore from Lebanon, Pa., Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette; and
- Emily Sher, a senior from Livingston, N.J., The New York Times News Service.
Students selected for the program attend free pre-internship seminars on college campuses and earn salaries of at least $350 a week for a minimum of 10 weeks. Interns who return to college as full-time students the following fall receive $1,000 scholarships from the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.
Students qualify for consideration for internships by scoring high on a standard editing test designed by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund staff and administered under controlled conditions on the students’ home campus. Final selections then are made by a panel of editing professors based on the test, an essay written specifically for the competition and on the student’s academic record.
Two of the Penn State students as interns will complete their training sessions on their home campus, because the University serves as the site of one of DJNF’s pre-internship "boot camps."
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund is a nonprofit foundation supported by the Dow Jones Foundation and other newspaper companies.