Internship programs from start to finish

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 15, 1997 by Erica Ramus

Interns bring a lot to your magazine: energy, optimism--and an extra pair of hands. Set up your program so they get as much as they give.

Its a familiar complaint: there is more and more work to be done, but not enough staff to do it. The obvious solution is to hire more employees, right? But it's rarely that simple. Downsizing and budget constraints often mean fewer people must do more work. The deluge may be temporary--perhaps upper management dumped a new project on your department without warning, or what seemed like an easy job on the drawing board has turned into a time-consuming nightmare. You need more help, but have a tight budget, or maybe no budget at all, for extra employees. Is there away out of this all too common dilemma?

One solution is to develop an intern program. Here's how we did it and what we learned at Reptile & Amphibian Magazine.

Work through local universities. We contacted the English Departments at a few local universities to see which ones were interested in providing students. With little effort, we found a nearby university with a journalism track that was willing to work with us. We then printed a flier advertising R & A's need for editorial interns and sent it to several journalism instructors at the university with the request that they refer interested students to us.

Make it a real job. The key to a successful intern program is to treat the position as a legitimate job and the intern as a genuine employee--not just a glorified gofer. Students interested in applying for our internship were asked to send a resume and cover letter, and to go through an interview process with our staff.

Although we do not pay interns for the first semester they work here, they do earn three or six credits--and of course there is the real-life experience they could not get on a college campus. (Interns who stay for a second semester or longer are treated as part-time employees and promoted to paid positions.) All editorial interns, paid and unpaid, have their names added to the masthead for the issues to which they have contributed.

Give them a special project At the start of each internship, we give the intern his or her own special project that he or she must see through from start to finish (and which must be completed before the internship ends). One intern coordinated a massive survey of advertisers and subscribers. She mailed the surveys and processed the results. From this, she wrote a summary of our demographics and a "guide to the R & A reader" that we now use in our media kit. It would have taken our regular staff months to do this, since we would have had to squeeze it in and around our regular work schedule. But because the intern concentrated on it as her major project, this task was completed in only a few weeks. And her "guide to the R & A reader" is one of the best elements in our media kit, clearly differentiating our magazine from the rest of the pack.

Because we are working with journalism majors, we try to give them as many editorial tasks as possible. All interns are required to write at least one feature story for the magazine during the semester. Even though the piece is invariably published a few months after the internship is over (because of our lead time), the students get to see their articles edited, typeset and laid out during their time here. When the articles finally make it into print, they have a magazine story to add to their portfolios.

Other projects our interns have undertaken range from writing press releases and putting together a direct-mail campaign, to sending out statements and renewal notices.

Because we are a small company, interns are assigned a wide variety of other tasks, in addition to their main project, and are expected to fill gaps in the staff wherever they open up--whether it's in the advertising, circulation or editorial department. This means they get to see a magazine put together from many view points and through all its stages--from reading query letters and accepting/rejecting manuscripts to helping create a mock-up and proofing bluelines.

Be prepared to do some training. Many editors fear that if they hire an intern, the time taken to train them will negate any benefit the intern might bring to the publication. But when you hire new employees, you still have to spend time teaching them the job and breaking them in. Interns are no different. Yes, you may have to explain things in more depth to an intern than you would to a seasoned magazine staffer. But the interns we've hired have been eager and quick to learn, ready to dive right in, and able to work without the constant supervision you may fear.

And interns bring many benefits: a fresh perspective, new ways to do things, and a vibrant attitude that only eager college students can generate in an office. Plus, it's a good testing ground for the students. Although some might ultimately decide that magazine work is not for them, others have left our magazine knowing that they have chosen the right career. And several are now on staff permanently.