The WORD Blog

This was originally published March 24, 2009, with the headline, Business Press Education Foundation:

Several years ago, Hunter use to rank one, two or three among about 60 colleges (Big 10, Big 8, NYU, Fordham, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, others) whose students were awarded paying internships arranged through the Business Press Education Foundation.

There was one year the Big H slipped to fourth (sniff). And there was that one moment at a fête at Baruch College (the so-called business college) to celebrate the awardees, and five from the Big H stood up – Uno Numero. I remember the ooh’s and ah’s, and someone saying aloud, a paraphrase: “What’s going on at Hunter?”  The Hunter students winning the awards were all enrolled in my journalism writing classes, and all of their articles submitted for the contest at that time had been published in the Envoy because there was no WORD at the time. The College, of course, got the credit, however.

So much for history and why published portfolios are super important and why requiring students to submit articles for publication is so much better than any of the other teaching formulas for teaching writing, of course, taking place at the Big H.

BPEF internships include news editorial and business side positions for summer internships, sometimes as much as $300 per week. Students completing the internships have continued into the following fall semester in part time, stringing and full-timepositions. The deadline is late this year, real late. April 9.

There is a drawback, however. Sometimes the BPEF doesn’t adequately oversee the internship process and some companies try to rook students of their stipends or give them secretarial duties which have nothing to do with editorial tasks.

[February 10, 2018 update: Phyllis Reed, who for several years headed the BPEF internship program, was committed to rooting out these unfair practices and was especially committed to making sure that ethnic minority students were fairly treated. Click here for more information about Phyllis Reed.]