04/09/2019
Paid reporting summer internships are still available at several Oklahoma newspapers!
We also have a couple advertising internships available in eastern Oklahoma.
These would be excellent training opportunities for students interested in a newspaper career. Students looking for a summer job should contact the newspapers directly. The papers listed below are organized by region. Thank you!
NEWS REPORTING INTERNSHIPS
CENTRAL REGION:
SHAWNEE NEWS-STAR
Editor: Kim Morava, [email protected], 405-214-3922
The Shawnee News-Star, a five-day daily, has a small but dynamic newsroom staff of six award-winning journalists who focus on both print and digital in our fast-paced newsroom.
While circulation numbers for the print product are doing great and even growing, our website traffic and page views were up 7.25 percent for 2018. We had just over 6 million page views, which surpassed our record from 2017.
The News-Star has been innovative in our use of social media, especially in driving traffic to our website and with local engagement.
Our newsroom's top objectives include more enterprise, a focus on community engagement and growing our digital audience even more.
A reporting intern will have the opportunity to do and learn everything in our newsroom, all while producing stories for both print and online.
A reporting intern will also see great variety in stories, covering everything from breaking news situations to meetings, features and other community events, while also working on an enterprise package of their own choosing over the summer. The reporter also will also have a chance to do photographs and video for their stories.
Responsibilities will include uploading stories to the website and interacting with readers via social media. If an intern is interested in page design, we also can have that person work with our designers to create daily pages.
The internship program is such a beneficial program for students and newspapers. Our 2016 intern was hired as one of our staff reporters after his internship ended. He later moved up to the position of sports editor after graduating from OBU in 2018. Our 2018 intern still works occasionally as a paid freelancer while continuing her education at OU.
The News-Star, with close and easy access from both Oklahoma City and Norman, offers a great community journalism experience for an intern, all while providing a great blend of working in both print and digital platforms.
SOUTH-CENTRAL REGION:
THE MADILL RECORD
Editor: Tina Firquain, [email protected], (580) 795-3355
At The Madill Record, we are a staff of six women - four full-time and two part-time. We produce a weekly paper every Thursday and have a circulation size of 3,900. We are a small staff of mostly young women who have a passion for the newspaper and the community. We are also a paper under the ownership of Brett Wesner of Wesner Publications.
In 2015, we were the recipient of OPA's Sequoyah Award in Division 4 (large weeklies) and through 2016 and 2017 we have continually won awards in the OPA Better Newspaper Contest.
We pride ourselves on being a small-town community newspaper that covers exactly what the residents of Marshall County want and need to know.
Right now, there is no Reporter on staff, so the intern would have the opportunity to gain an abundance of hands-on-training on the daily functions of designing and producing a weekly newspaper, and he/she would have the opportunity to acquire real work experience as a Journalist.
He/she would get to work on the following:
• Writing stories that impact the local community;
• Attend council meetings to see local politics at work;
• Layout and design of pages to be used in the paper; and
• Have the opportunity to help produce profile videos on people in Marshall County.
Our goal is to provide the readers of The Madill Record with news and information they cannot get from other news sources. We are in the process of starting a video series that profiles and records the heartfelt and real stories of the people in the county. The selected intern would help with this project so he/she can gain more than just writing experience.
Also, here in Marshall County the people love sports, so we cover two schools, Madill and Kingston. There are times we follow the teams across the state to photograph the players and report on the games. The selected intern would gain experience on sports coverage and photography, as well as designing Sports pages that standout.
We at The Madill Record welcome the opportunity to provide useful experience to a student through the Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation Internship program.
EASTERN REGION:
EUFAULA INDIAN JOURNAL
Publisher: Shauna Belyeu, [email protected], 918-689-2191
It is our pleasure to open our doors to an intern. We publish three publications including two weekly newspapers and a TMC. Our staff includes six employees, which can offer a combined 70 years of newspaper experience in different areas. Both of our papers are winners of the OPA Sequoyah Award (sweepstakes in circulation division) and both papers have won first place awards for news, advertising and sports.
The intern's responsibilities will include covering local civic meetings along with hard news and feature opportunities. Intern will also gain photography and editing experience along with our media platforms.
Small weekly papers offer the ability to see the functions of each department firsthand. The intern will have a basic working understanding of how the paper functions from the front office to the final product.
Our group has also recently added a travel app. It can be downloaded on Google Apps. This is also another layer of experience we can offer. The intern can experience the partnership of this media platform along with the print media. It offers another level of communication with our readers.
TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS
Editor: Kim Poindexter, [email protected], 918-456-8833
Ours is one of the oldest newspapers in Oklahoma, when you consider all the predecessors that have melded. We won sweepstakes with OPA three years running, and we’re known for winning a number of awards in various contexts and disciplines. Our newspaper has a good reputation in the industry and is therefore a good inclusion for any resume. We have more Facebook followers (more than 25,300) than any newspaper in the state other than the Tulsa World and The Oklahoman. OPA Executive Director Mark Thomas often jokes Cherokee County is the "newsiest" in the state for its size, and any intern will get plenty of experience covering various types of news and features. We especially like those who are willing to investigate, because we are pretty fearless when it comes to that.
I like an intern to try his hand at every type of writing: news, features, sports, enterprise, perhaps even opinion. We also expect an intern to take his/her own photos to accompany stories; to engage readers with social media, using links from our paper; and if possible, to dabble in layout and design. We are flexible with hours, but we expect quality and reliability. We have high expectations, especially for a dinky little community paper, but the intern will be better off because of our picky nature.
The loss of one position has spread us quite thin, and that means we would be taking turns showing the ropes to any intern. We obviously prefer someone with some newswriting experience.
NSU is right in our backyard, so it would probably be preferable to get an intern from there. It would be easier for that student to work through flexible hours, and even to fill in on weekends and other odd times – which is something reporters should get used to as quickly as possible. So rest assured that any intern here will get the biggest mix of experience that we can provide him/her.
ADVERTISING INTERNSHIPS – Eastern Oklahoma
SEQUOYAH COUNTY TIMES
Advertising Manager: Carrie Carberry, [email protected], 918-775-4433
Publisher: Jeff Mayo, [email protected]
The Sequoyah County Times is an award winning community newspaper in Eastern Oklahoma. We would be honored to be allowed to host an intern in our advertising department and share our experience in the changing world of marketing while holding tight to ethics and tradition.
The Sequoyah County Times currently has approximately 20 employees that work in our Sallisaw office. We are part of Cookson Hills Publishers, Inc., an umbrella of seven family owned community newspapers and one shopper. Our family group employees 45 full-time people.
We are a leader in innovative marketing, winning multiple awards for Advertising Promotion in recent years. We strive to lead the way by creating new opportunities for our advertisers while holding on to the valued traditional vehicles. Our Treasure Hunt received national attention for its novelty; our annual events are hosted by hundreds and the accompanying magazines that promote these events have received advertising and design awards; we were the first newspaper in our area to offer live-streaming and sell commercial advertising during local sporting events, and we sell, create and design over 50 special advertising opportunities each year.
While at the Sequoyah County Times an intern would be a valuable part of our advertising team sharing responsibilities in print, digital, social and email media. We would like to include an intern in our plan to launch email blast marketing as well as assisting with Facebook sponsorship ads, live-streaming sponsorship ads and event hosting and planning.
Taking a hands-on approach and joining the advertising department within our family owned newspaper with long-term employees would be a positive learning experience.
STIGLER NEWS-SENTINEL
Publisher: Summer Long, [email protected], (918) 967-4655
Individuals who intern at the Stigler News-Sentinel will have the opportunity to learn many useful skills in a professional, fast-paced environment.
Interns will have the opportunity to learn:
How to make a sales-pitch in a professional manner, both in-person and over the phone.
How to establish contacts and obtain pertinent information to close a sale.
How to manage advertising with multiple customers, accounts, and publications.
To increase productivity through time management.
To become a team player.
To become a self starter.
Interns will also have the opportunity to work for a local, family-owned business that allows room for growth for both the team and the individual.
Interns will learn to adapt in the ever-changing climate of news advertising with a company that values innovation.
Bonus: Individuals who intern at the Stigler News-Sentinel will have the opportunity to also learn useful skills in a printing business environment. The owners of the Stigler News-Sentinel also own and operate Stigler Printing, which provides a variety of printing services including newspapers, business cards, marketing materials, business essentials, promotional items and signage. The company also provides video services.
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Lisa Sutliff
Member Services Director
Oklahoma Press Association
Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation
(405) 499-0026 direct; 1-888-815-2672 toll-free
