Media representatives to discuss internship opportunities

Representatives from newspapers, a tv station, a public relations firm and a publishing company… Representatives from newspapers, a tv station, a public relations firm and a publishing company and a travel website will gather in the Twentieth Century Club to discuss internships tonight.

Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and 1988 presidential candidate, will join the slew of publishing professionals. Dukakis said he’s attending the panel because he’s an advocate for internships.

As a professor at Northeastern University and lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, he knows what happens to students who complete internships and to those who do not. Northeastern students have a required five-year plan that includes co-oping with as many as four different employees. Many of those students are hired by the companies for which they co-op, Dukakis said.

“Do every conceivable internship you can and always emphasize work experience in the real world,” Dukakis said. “It’s life transforming. We need to hammer kids to take all the opportunities they can.”

Dukakis said students should start to get work experience as early as high school. “If students are not educated in politics, do a part-time internship or public service at the federal, state or local level,” he said.

Dukakis is also attending the panel because he offers a different perspective on the media. As a politician, he works frequently with the media.

“You can’t be in politics without experience with journalists,” he said.

Dukakis said he teaches his students that if they become political figures, such as politicians, the press will be a part of their lives. Developing excellent skills to manage their relationships with the media is important, because “the media is going to come at you,” Dukakis said.

One of the keys, he said, is to learn which journalists to trust.

Dukakis said if he respects a journalist, he’ll read his work, listen to it and take it seriously.

But others, such as talk show host Rush Limbaugh, he doesn’t pay attention to. The host does have a following, “but 310 million other people don’t even know who he is,” Dukakis said.

Dukakis is one of seven people participating in tonight’s panel, which begins at 8 p.m.

The other panelists are: Stacy Smith, Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV news anchor; Susan Goldberg, editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer; Jessica Bayer, senior associate for recruitment at the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller; John Sullivan III, executive editor at Bedford/St. Martin’s publishing company; Kerala Taylor, editor-in-chief of Glimpse.org; and former Pitt News staff member Elham Khatami, who interned for CNN.com and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

David Shribman, executive editor of the Post-Gazette, will moderate the event.