Several years ago, Hunter started ranking in the top five colleges with students receiving paid summer internships with the Business Press Education Foundation. Hunter at times raked in more internships that the journalism programs, graduate and undergraduate, at Ohio State University, NYU and Columbia University. There were usually 50-60 campuses represented in the competition, and Hunter for years ranked in the top five.
Hunter students awarded the internships at the best of the trade publications (AKA business-to-business media) had been required to have stories published in either student-run news media like the Hunter Envoy, or, subsequently, as things turned out, in a faculty-supervised, student-written online zine, the WORD (now temporarily located at hunterword.com). Other students who had published portfolios from those J-classes that required students to publish, won journalism internships that had direct effects on their careers. And, it has to be said, many who did not win the so-called prestigious internships, did well. That is, got on career paths because of their portfolios which helped get them internships and jobs.
Then, of course, a new sheriff came to town a few years ago, and “things” begin to jump. One has to wonder why the Department of Film and Media Studies was and has been sooooo slow about getting with the program.
Anyway, it’s crunch time, that period when students must begin applying for the best of the J-internships offered in the country and also that period when students in my classes are realizing, if they haven’t already, that the deadlines and requirements for my writing/reporting classes are for real.
Gregg Morris