Students looking to gain experience reporting public affairs now have another internship to apply for with the advent of a new partnership between the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and The Columbus Dispatch.
The partnership aims to provide Ohio media outlets with an influx of content while offering students reporting experience at a major metro newspaper.
For the inaugural internship, The Columbus Dispatch will place journalism students Alex Stuckey and Tristan Navera as Statehouse reporters for a wire service the Scripps school has set up through the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau.
Previous heads of the journalism school have considered this idea for a while, said Bob Stewart, director of the school of journalism.
“I decided that this is an important initiative, and this is the time to do it,” Stewart said.
For the first internship, OU and the Dispatch selected participants from OU, but in the future, the application will be open to students from other universities, Stewart said.
The internship will be offered each quarter this year and each semester in the coming years.
This year, the Dispatch is paying Stuckey $450 a week, and the Scripps school is giving Navera a $3,500 scholarship with an additional $1,000 to offset the cost of registering for the class accompanying the internship, Stewart said.
In the future, more students will be chosen to participate in the internship, and other news outlets will be involved in mentoring and editing them, Stewart said.
“This is an incredible opportunity, and I’ll be able to make a lot of good contacts in the Statehouse for the future,” Stuckey said. “Working at The Post and most institutions, you don’t get to interview the governor or things like that. I’m hoping to get more of a handle on how you would write those kinds of stories.”
Both Stuckey and Navera have experience working for The Post, and Navera also worked with WOUB Radio.
Stuckey, a senior studying journalism, has interned at WHIOTV in Dayton and the Dayton Daily News. She spent this past summer as a reporting intern at The Columbus Dispatch and will be The Post’s assistant managing editor when she returns to campus in the winter.
Navera, who graduated in June with a degree in journalism, has interned at WHIOTV in Dayton, The Athens Messenger and the Dayton Daily News. Last year, he worked as The Post’s assistant campus editor, and he now freelances for Independent Restaurateur magazine.
“I’m definitely looking forward to it,” Navera said. “I’ve wanted to work at the Dispatch, so this is a great opportunity. This is a great way to move up.”
Navera said he is looking forward to writing about the Statehouse.
“I’m a big fan of covering politics,” he said. “I didn’t get much of a chance to do that up ’til now.”
Although most of the wire content will be print stories, Stewart said he hopes to also see video and multimedia content. The wire content will be hosted on the journalism school’s website.
“One of our goals is not only to increase Statehouse news coverage for students, but to increase overall coverage of Statehouse news,” Stewart said.
“These student reporters have an eye to issues that would be of concern to college students. We’re hoping that college media across the state will have more coverage of Statehouse news coming out of Columbus, especially issues that affect college students.”
Students participating in the Statehouse Bureau internship also will take part in a seminar-style class with Tom Suddes, an adjunct assistant professor in
Scripps, to discuss and strengthen their public-affairs reporting skills.
“State government coverage, in my opinion, is more needed than ever,” Suddes said.
During each quarter, Suddes will meet with the interns to analyze their own content and other public-affairs content. He also will connect the students with sources in the Statehouse.
“We’re at an interesting time in Ohio right now, economically and politically,” Suddes said. “Having a chance to do reporting in a busy city and a state capital building will be very, very formative in (the interns’) journalism education.”
rm279109@ohiou.edu
