Media professionals give internship advice to students

If you send Sharon Walsh a cover letter addressed, “Dear Sir or Madam,” she will throw your application away.

“If you don’t have the wherewithal to find the name of the editor when it’s right there on the website, I will discard your letter,” Walsh, founding editor of the investigative journalism organization PublicSource, said.

Walsh was one of eight media professionals who doled out advice to more than 100 audience members at a panel discussion titled “Media Internships: Writing on the Job” Monday night in the William Pitt Union ballroom.

David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, moderated the panel, an annual event which Pitt’s English department and The Pitt News sponsors each fall. The panel celebrated its tenth anniversary this year.

Mike Darling, senior editor of Men’s Health magazine, advised students to come prepared and come with ideas.

“Ideas, ideas, ideas! Don’t be afraid to pitch ideas,” Darling, a  2005 Pitt graduate, told students.

According to Darling, one of his friends — who had no prior journalism experience — once applied to a job at a magazine, and the editor asked him to bring five story ideas to his interview. Instead, Darling’s friend brought 100 ideas. Fifteen years later, Darling said, his friend became editor-in-chief of a different magazine.

The panelists’ advice emphasized that interns should expect to work hard and be up for any task. Darling said the qualities past successful interns share are persistence, genuine enthusiasm and “a willingness to take on a lot of work without complaining about it.”

Brian Braiker, executive editor of Digiday, jumped in with his agreement.

“Never say, ‘It’s not my job,’” Braiker said.

Omar Khan, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ director of football and business administration, cautioned potential interns against getting a big head once they’re hired.

“Don’t expect too much,” Khan said. “Wait and pay your dues.”

While the panelists agreed that ideas and other big-picture concepts are vital, they highlighted the little details, like footwear, matter as well.

“We’ve had interns show up on the first day in flip-flops, in spaghetti-strap tees, in short shorts. It just baffles me,”  said Jamie Stockwell, a managing editor at San Antonio Express-News.

Cindy Skrzycki, a professor in the English department, organized the panel. Skrzycki said she established the first media internship panel at Pitt in 2005 after she realized that students weren’t aware of opportunities available outside of Pittsburgh.

“If you want to get a job in the creative industry — writing, television, publishing — it’s really important to have an internship,” Skrzycki said.

In past years, Skrzycki said, Pitt students have gotten jobs at media outlets like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, KDKA, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer through the connections they made at the panel.

As online media began to rise, Skrzycki said she made sure to include perspectives from non-traditional news outlets like PublicSource and Digiday, a website that covers the media and agency-related news.

“Ten years ago, PublicSource wouldn’t have been here. Digiday wouldn’t have been here,” Skrzycki said.

Other panelists included Hattie Fletcher, managing editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine. Anne Linaberger, news director of KDKA-TV/WPCW-TV and Nick Murosky, director of public relations services for the media agency LarsonO’Brien.

Audience member Matthew Doan, a marketing major, said he plans to apply for an internship with the Pittsburgh Steelers, which Khan represented on the panel. Doan said he appreciated the panelists’ advice to follow up repeatedly on internship applications.

“Persistence was one of the thing they talked about,” Doan said. “I thought it might be a little weird to be dogging people.”

Natalie Bono, a sophomore marketing and communications major, said she appreciated the panelists’ advice “not only [on] how to get an internship, but what to do once you’re there.”