Ask the Recruiter

Q. I am nearing the end of a successful summer internship at a community daily, but the paper is going to be sold next month to the highest bidder.

My editors (newsroom and online) have said they would like to hire me, but given the recent cutbacks in staffing and the paper's impending sale, it looks more and more like that won't happen. I promised myself back in June to give this unpaid summer internship a shot in the hopes of turning it into a full-time job. Now, I am frantically applying to any journalism job out there.

Q. I'm a graduate student in journalism, coming straight out of an undergrad communication program. I'm a print guy at heart, and I've been a reporter/editor at several student newspapers. I studied broadcast news in college and reported, produced, edited and wrote for a nightly student newscast. I would feel qualified to work in either print or broadcast news, but my main focus is now on the Web. I'm trying to pick up more skills in programming, Flash, multimedia reporting, etc., with the goal of becoming a Web producer or developer for a journalism outlet of some kind.
 
I have two internships under my belt -- one at my hometown weekly (general assignment reporting), and one at an 18,000 daily (video production and print reporting). My question is, what should I be looking at for next summer? Am I qualified to look for an online internship at a major metro? Should I be less concerned about the size of the paper and more about the quality of its Web product? Or might a broadcast internship be good for variety on my resume?

Converging

Q. I'm attempting a career switch and am wondering if one can get a job in journalism without a bachelor's degree. Are there programs that I might attend online that are taken seriously by hiring managers/news directors?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Brian

Q. A month ago I got my first reporting job. I'm at a small weekly in the suburbs of a city with a top-10 newspaper. I'm enjoying the job, and I was probably lucky to get it. But after a month I'm already feeling the itch to get to bigger and better things.

Since graduating from college, I've been teaching math in a high-needs school district on the other side of the country through Teach For America. After two years of that, I moved back to the area where I went to college with vague plans to break into journalism. I had no experience, not even with my college paper, but I secured an unpaid internship with an alt-weekly in the city. Off the strength of my first published clip there and some solid people-skills, I landed this reporting job after three weeks.

Q. I am afraid my credit is not perfect. Some unpaid emergency room bills, student loans and so forth.

Tell me, do newspapers check? And if so, how much weight will they put on it.

Thanks,

Curious