Description
Student journalists participating in the WUSF Public Media News Internship program work in the newsroom of a National Public Radio station in one of the 20 largest radio markets in the country, producing journalism heard and viewed by millions of Tampa Bay area residents.
Interns work closely with WUSF’s team of seasoned professional reporters, producers and editors, learning how to research, write and produce stories for radio broadcast and digital platforms. Students are treated like real journalists from the start, assigned stories that matter to WUSF’s broadcast and online audience. Students also learn how public media serves its audience differently from commercial news organizations.
Goals
The WUSF News Internship program gives students hands-on journalism training, experience, and a collection of stories to add to their resumes. WUSF 89.7 uses these additional journalists in its newsroom: reporters who can produce material for WUSF’s audience, including daily on-air newscasts and stories on WUSF.org.
Members of the WUSF News team get the opportunity to share their skills and journalism expertise with interns who want to learn from a variety of different reporters and editors.
Students can earn academic credits for their time with WUSF Public Media, ranging from one to three credits, depending on which school they are enrolled in, as well as the length and depth of their internship.
Background
WUSF News been working with interns for years; most of them University of South Florida students. In the last five years, there has been a concerted emphasis on our working relationship with the University of South Florida’s journalism programs at both the Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses.
Mark Schreiner, producer and host of WUSF’s “University Beat,” a weekly feature on issues and events around USF and its campuses, was named Intern Coordinator in summer 2016 with the goal of developing a more meaningful training program for interns.
Since then, WUSF News has honed the program to include more systematic and comprehensive training before and during the semester when students participate. WUSF News also collects meaningful feedback from interns as they complete a term, in order to better improve the program moving forward.
WUSF news managers work closely with faculty at the USF Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications and the USF St. Petersburg Department of Journalism and Digital Communication to recruit students, and to support them during their intern experience.
WUSF recruits potential interns from programs such as City University of New York, University of Florida and Think.Public.Media, a coalition of more than 30 organizations that informs journalists of color about opportunities in public media. WUSF staff aim to make WUSF a “destination station” where interns around the country want to come learn and work.
When an intern finishes a term with WUSF News, members of the news staff use their contacts at NPR stations and public media programs across the country to help interns find jobs and advance their careers in public media.
Many USF students who have interned at WUSF News have won national awards for their journalism first as students, and continue to excel as professional public media journalists. They include:
- Quincy Walters joined WUSF in spring 2015, and became the Stephen Noble intern in fall 2015. Walters, who graduated from USF, turned his success at WUSF into an internship with NPR’s national program Weekend All Things Considered. After briefly working as a freelance reporter for WUSF, he worked as a fulltime reporter at WGCU, in Ft. Myers, FL and is now a general assignment reporter at WBUR in Boston, MA, one of the nation’s largest and best-known NPR affiliates.
- Roberto Roldan interned at WUSF in spring 2016 before graduating from the mass communications program at USF Tampa and serving as a Fulbright fellow in 2016-2017. He returned to WUSF News as a general assignment reporter until December 2018. He joined NPR station WCVE in Richmond, VA in early 2019, and is currently serving as a political reporter covering state and local politics.
- Naomi Prioleau served twice as an intern at WUSF News, first from 2010-11 when she was an undergraduate at USF, and then as a news fellow in 2016 while pursuing a graduate degree at USF. In 2017, she joined WUNC in Chapel Hill, where she is the Greensboro Bureau chief and occasional weekend program host.
- Carson Frame was a Noble intern in spring 2017. Frame earned her undergraduate degree at USF, before studying for a master’s in journalism from New York University. She is currently a reporter on military and veterans’ issues with Texas Public Radio in San Antonio, TX. Frame is part of a national NPR collaborative project called the American Homefront Project, a military-related feature that airs weekly on stations around the country, including WUSF, which is also produces reports for the American Homefront Project.
- Hafsa Quraishi was WUSF’s first digital news intern in fall 2017, and returned as a Noble radio reporting intern in spring 2018. The USF graduate interned in 2019 at NPR’s National Desk in Washington D.C. and is now pursuing a graduate degree at City University of New York.
Types Of Internships
The WUSF News Internship program offers multiple opportunities for student journalists with varying skill levels and interests in different aspects of broadcast and digital journalism. They are:
- The Stephen Noble/WUSF News Internship, a multi-day paid internship where a student learns how to research, write, produce and report for WUSF 89.7 and WUSF’s digital news platform. In addition to daily news assignments, the Noble intern produces a pair of University Beat reports. Students from any university are welcome to apply for this job. During spring and fall semesters, it’s a two-day-a-week (15 hour) position. Starting in 2019, the summer internship is a full-time, five-day-a-week (40 hour) position.
- The WUSF Radio News Internship is similar to the Noble Internship, in that the student journalist learns how to research, write, produce and report for WUSF 89.7 and WUSF’s digital news platform. In addition to daily news assignments, the intern produces a pair of University Beat reports. Students from any university are welcome to apply for this job. This twice-a-week (15 hour) offering in spring and summer semesters is an unpaid post, but can be applied to academic credit.
- The WUSF/USF Zimmerman School Digital News Internship is offered to three-to-five students from the USF Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications each semester. Designed as an entry-level internship, digital news interns work with a USF mass communications graduate assistant and the WUSF News team reporting, writing and producing digital journalism and sometimes for radio news broadcast. These interns must be enrolled in the USF Zimmerman School in Tampa. This one-day-a-week (8 hour) unpaid post is often used for academic credit year round.
- The WUSF Visual News Internship is new as of August 2019. The visual intern works with the WUSF news team to learn how to produce visual journalism (photos and videos) for the WUSF News digital and social media platforms. Students from any university are welcome to apply for this unpaid position.
What WUSF News Interns Do
Interns start each semester with a comprehensive orientation and training period, conducting a mock interview and writing a story. They are assigned stories every day by WUSF News editors and are expected to conduct research and interviews and write news stories for the digital platform and WUSF 89.7. Noble and Radio News interns broadcast reports for radio newscasts that can also air on public radio stations throughout Florida.
Noble and Radio News interns also create and record longer-form journalism (stories lasting between 90 seconds and four minutes) that feature multiple voices and natural sound, just like the pieces produced by NPR and WUSF News staff. Radio interns also are required to produce two University Beat reports a semester.
This is the sixthfull semester of the collaborative program called the WUSF/USF Zimmerman School Digital News Internship. Four days a week, an undergraduate from the Z School puts together stories for the WUSF News website. Students are mainly developing writing skills, but as the semester progresses, we will add more audio collection and writing duties to their responsibilities.
The goal is that, as the students build their skills and portfolios, WUSF can identify one, two (or more) who we will try to bring back in future semesters as radio news interns
| WUSF Student Assistants and Interns – Fall Semester 2019 | |||
| Name | Major | Title | Department Name |
| Balkcom, Chandler | History | Intern | Digital Services |
| Brown, Delaney | Journalism | Radio News Intern | News |
| Cruz, Alysia | Journalism | Paid – Student Assistant/Noble Intern *1 | WUSF-FM |
| Hendrix, Britney Tena | Physics | Paid – Student Assistant | Public Broadcasting |
| Hoyle, Ariel Yancy | Biomedical Sciences | Paid – Student Assistant | Public Broadcasting |
| Iacobucci, Thomas | Journalism | Visual News Intern | News |
| Kheireddine, Manelle | Journalism | Digital News Intern | News |
| Rasmussen, Holden | History | Intern | Digital Services |
| Sala, Eric Thomas | Marketing | Paid – Student Assistant | WUSF-FM |
| Tsyruleva, Maria | Journalism | Intern News Editor | News |
USF journalism instructor Wayne Garcia is an academic fellow in the WUSF newsroom for the fall semester of 2019; working with digital interns and learning how to create podcasts.
The list above is reflective of each semester for the past three years with the addition this semester of two interns from the History Department, Chandler Balkcom and Holden Rasmussen
WUSF is in the final year of the Noble Scholarship program, named for Stephen Noble, the late husband of a WUSF donor. WUSF Development staff *2 are actively seeking philanthropic funds for paid student interns. Paid internships provide students with the opportunity to afford the internship experience.
Bulls Radio
WUSF Public Media works with Bulls Radio in numerous ways. While Bulls Radio pays for broadcast over WUSF’s HD-3 channel and services, the effort made by WUSF staff go far beyond the financial transaction. The most-requested services are from our engineering department for equipment repairs. Occasional assistance is requested from other departments.
Usf Zimmerman School Of Advertising And Mass Communications
This weekend, following the membership campaign, reporters Mark Schreiner and Stephanie Colombini will be working with Jeannette Abrahamson on Telling Tampa Bay Stories. This is the third year WUSF has worked with the Advanced Reporting class led by Abrahamson. WUSF reporters train students about conducting interviews, then assist as student journalists record oral histories. Mark and Stephanie have already been to Jeannette’s class to teach students about the interview process. This semester they’ll be recording stories in Newtown, a historic neighborhood in Sarasota. Mark and Stephanie will spend a minimum of 20 hours editing the recorded stories in order to create a program. We’ve used these TB Stories as Florida Matters programs and this year we’re considering creating a different kind of program that could better serve our audience.
You can hear and see all of the pieces here:
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/term/telling-tampa-bay-stories
Here are the individual shows:
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/florida-matters-telling-tampa-bay-stories-progress-village-part-1
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/florida-matters-telling-tampa-bay-stories-progress-village-part-2
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/telling-tampa-bay-stories-plant-city-part-1
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/telling-tampa-bay-stories-plant-city-part-2
This is the sixthfull semester of the collaborative program called the WUSF/USF Zimmerman School Digital News Internship. Four days a week, an undergraduate student journalist from the Z School researches, conducts interviews and produces a news story on deadline for the WUSF News website. They are mainly developing their writing skills, but as the semester progresses, the interns will add more audio collection and writing duties to their responsibilities.
The goal is that, as the students build their skills and portfolios, WUSF can identify one, two (or more) who we will try to bring back in future semesters as radio news interns.
USF Department Of History Interns
In Fall Semester of 2019, WUSF’s Digital Services Department began working with 2 student interns from the USF Department of History. The students have a rigorous background in writing, research and critical thinking and are integral in creating content on the website for Florida’s Classical Music Station, WSMR, at wsmr.org.
Past Intern Experiences
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
In 2012, WUSF recruited and worked with USF Honors College students who researched and catalogued locally produced radio and television content. The achieved goal was to convert taped, locally-produced broadcast content to digital files, creating permanent records in a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH. https://americanarchive.org/
StateImpact Florida
StateImpact Florida was a two-year-long reporting project from 2011-2013 on Education Policy in Florida, in partnership with NPR, the Florida College Access Network (FL CAN) at USF, WLRN Radio in Miami, and the Lumina Foundation for Education.
Veterans Coming Home
Through participation in the Veterans Coming Home project, WUSF worked closely with USF veterans’ success services and reached out to the campus veterans community. A town hall was held on the USF St. Petersburg campus in October 2018 on career and entrepreneurial opportunities for veterans.
Partnership with the USF College of Education’s Florida Center for Instructional Technology
In 2018, WUSF partnered with the USF College of Education’s Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT) to develop and test a grades 3-12 curriculum aimed at teaching children to tell their personal stories through the use of audio recording technology.
In 2015, WUSF partnered with FCIT to provide pre-service teacher training for over 1,100 USF education majors as well as in-service teacher training for 50 teachers from Tampa Bay area school districts through PBS’s MISSION US Outreach Initiative. The event took place on the University of South Florida’s campus.
*1 – Stephen Noble Scholarship was founded by Deborah Van Brunt in memory of her late husband, Stephen Noble.
*2 – Most of the academic unit development staff costs are split 50/50 with Foundation. WUSF Public Media fully funds its own development staff.