Internship and Careers 2014 Abstracts
Punctuation professionals: A historical analysis of newsroom copy editing • Alyssa Appelman, The Pennsylvania State University • This analysis explores the profession of newsroom copy editing. Through historical descriptive analysis, it presents an overview of the 120-year history of the profession of newsroom copy editing in the context of four themes: changes in newsroom technologies, changes in newsroom business models, changes in attitudes toward the profession, and changes in advice for future copy editors. It concludes with a discussion of the profession’s current struggles.
BP in ICIG: Three levels of assessment • John Chapin, Pennsylvania State University • The internship should be among the most valuable experiences of a college career. In addition to proper advising and guidance in finding, selecting, and procuring the right internship, assessment plays a key role in maintaining quality control within the program and gauging student success. This poster illustrates three levels of assessment (evaluation of the student, evaluation of the site, and evaluation of the program).
Using Klout to Teach Online Influence and Social Networking Skills to PR, Advertising and New Media Majors • Mia Moody-Ramirez, Baylor University; Sydney Garcia, Baylor • This essay uses a constructivist approach to offer suggestions for using the social media aggregator, Klout, to help PR, advertising and new media majors build their online influence. First, it explains the social media platform, and then it offers strategies for incorporating Klout into course curriculum, student resumes and digital portfolios. With the rise of Web 2.0, a multitude of new possibilities for how to use online technologies for active learning has interested academics. Evolving technologies and high employer expectations in a narrowing job market require innovation and adaptation of journalism/public relations and advertising teaching materials. Professors may use applications such as Klout to enliven and augment college curriculum and to help prepare students for the tightening job market.
A career in journalism or just a job: An examination of job satisfaction and professionalism • Greg Pitts, University of North Alabama; Blythe Steelman, University of North Alabama • We are living in a world of digital content but journalists still have jobs and they like what they do. This quantitative survey found job satisfaction and professionalism among the news workers in Chicago. Students (and faculty) may wonder about the suitability of a journalism career but journalists are satisfied with the freedom afforded by the job, the satisfaction they are doing something worthwhile and even the treatment they receive in the workplace.
Taking it one game at a time: Prevalence of temporary work in North Carolinian newspapers’ sports departments • Sada Reed, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Shrinking newsrooms have led to a variety of concerns for industry professionals and academics. Though a shrinking full-time staff and a growing temporary, freelance workforce has been blamed for slipping journalistic standards, little research has been done on the actual prevalence of precarious work in local sports departments. The following paper is a pilot study that explores the prevalence of precarious work in sports departments at North Carolinian newspapers. In this study, 25 department heads hailing from North Carolinian newspapers participated in a survey that examined whether North Carolinian sports departments have lost full-time employees in the last year; if they have gained unpaid or temporary workers to “replace” these full-time employees; and for sports departments that have lost employees, how many departments plan to replace the full-time employees they lost with “new” full-time employees.
The Value of the College Internship: Acquiring Cultural Capital through a well-managed collegiate program • Mary Beth Ray, Temple University; Dana Saewitz, Temple University • In response to the recent flurry of lawsuits regarding the exploitation of interns and the negative press regarding internships, this mixed method study addresses a number of timely questions: Are undergraduate internships valuable or exploitive? Do they actually lead to jobs and careers? Are they essential to break in to certain fields? Do they adhere to current labor laws? Are they illegal? Our key findings indicate that most college graduates who engaged in undergraduate internships, even if they were unpaid, felt that the internship was valuable. Internships inherently help students develop necessary cultural capital such as mode of dress, professional speech and language patterns, posture and personal grooming, appropriate eye contact, behavior in meetings, and written behaviors, which are all part of the professional code that students must learn. In addition, our findings indicate that most internships do not lead directly to employment at the internship site, although they are widely perceived by college graduates as helpful in career preparation. Finally, almost half of internships violate current labor laws and many students feel exploited by unpaid internships. To address these issues, this study presents recommendations for internship program best practices and recommends that universities band together and follow the lead of Conde Nast publications, which has banned all unpaid internships.
Perceptions, Experiences, and News Routines of Entry-level Journalists in Local Television News • Andrea Tanner, University of South Carolina; Elena Faria; Jenni Knight; Yue Zheng, University of South Carolina • This study qualitatively explores the perceptions, experiences, and news routines of entry-level journalists working in local television news in the United States. Seventeen in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with entry-level journalists from varying geographical regions and media markets. Journalists were often influenced by their news managers and the need to cover stories that could be produced under deadline across multiple media. Findings have implications for students, journalism educators, and news managers who work alongside millennials.
Connecting Theory with Practice: Strategies for Improving Academic Rigor in Internships • Bob Trumpbour, Penn State Altoona • This poster will attempt to convey successful strategies for enhancing the academic rigor as it relates to the college internship experience. The poster will explore ways that XXXX University faculty have connected classroom work and assigned readings to an internship experience as a mechanism to improve the degree of professional exhibited by internship applicants. The poster will offer strategies for implementing academic rigor into the overall planning process, while offering tangible strategies that have worked for us at XXXXX University. Our program has had numerous students working in locations such as New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Nashville, and Pittsburgh, with some settings sufficiently impractical to allow for face-to-face meetings as the internship process unfolds. As a result, the poster will also offer ideas for implementing these strategies for internship recipients who may be working at distant locations. We will attempt to tease out tangible examples, while pointing out ways that our strategies have worked. We will also lay out potential challenges and possible issues that may be faced when implementing our strategies and ideas.
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