Early-Career Journalists Search for a Path Forward During a Pandemic

As waves of layoffs hit the media industry, internship programs and entry-level jobs are some of the first positions to go. 

By Jewel Wicker

Shari Celestine wrapped up her final semester as an undergraduate English major at Georgia State University a week ago and she says she’s already feeling stuck. “I don’t know what I’m doing right now,” Celestine, who plans to go into journalism, says. The sentiment isn’t uncommon for graduates, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made the pressure more acute. As the journalism industry continues to face layoffs and budget cuts, students and recent graduates entering the field are left wondering what this means for internships and entry-level positions.

At the beginning of the year, Celestine was working as the opinion editor for Georgia State’s student-run newspaper and interning with CNN’s health and news department in Atlanta. The CNN internship was scheduled to run from January through the first week of May, but the company ended the program in March, just as much of the country was beginning to work from home. A CNN spokesperson in Atlanta declined to be interviewed for this article.

Over the last few months, Celestine has been working to complete her undergraduate courses, and she’s applied for about 15 positions at CNN, as well as at media companies in Los Angeles and her hometown of New York. She says CNN has told her that they plan to reach out to applicants for certain internships and full-time roles in the future, but the out-of-state positions she’s applied for aren’t an option anymore — those jobs have been eliminated entirely. Despite her frustrating job search, the recent graduate says she’s been hesitant to reach out to mentors or experienced journalists for advice given the current state of the industry. “They’re dealing with their own stuff and I don’t want to pile on top of that,” she says.

The industry response to hiring early-career journalists in the midst of the current crisis has varied, with some publications conducting business as usual, others cancelling internships and implementing hiring freezes, and other companies seeking alternate ways to work with students and recent graduates. The uncertainty has created concern for recent graduates about whether they will be able to find a foothold in the shrinking industry.

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It’s unclear how many entry-level positions have been affected by the pandemic, but the onslaught of budget cuts and layoffs in the industry suggests that the concerns students and recent grads have about finding jobs are well-founded. Vox Media, which sometimes hires early-career journalists across platforms such as SB Nation, Eater, Curbed and NY Mag, told Study Hall that the company has ”scaled back our hiring and are only recruiting for roles that are critical to our business — very few among those are entry level. We’ve also unfortunately had to cancel our internship program for Summer 2020 — the experience of working remotely means we likely wouldn’t have achieved what we wanted for the interns.”

There are many reasons publications are cancelling internship programs, but one major concern is that internship coordinators might not be equipped to offer a beneficial experience to students remotely, especially in the midst of a pandemic that has demanded much of the staff’s time and limited resources.

Still, some companies are moving forward with plans to host interns or hire entry-level reporters in the coming months. The Associated Press recently posted a position for a news associate in New York, and Business Insider is currently hiring for a number of fellowships. The Sun newspapers in Charlotte Harbor, Florida are open to considering recent grads for two reporting positions they’re looking to fill. The Wall Street Journal will have about seven remote interns in the US this summer, according to Sarah Rabil, assistant managing editor for talent. “It was really important for us to figure out some way to continue this program because we feel like it’s really important to the education and development of the future journalists,” she says.

The 10-week internship program, which traditionally only takes place during the summer, will now extend through spring. This allows interns, especially those who aren’t graduating this year, to defer and potentially participate in a traditional internship in future months. (Students from this current intern class were also given the option to defer until next summer.) Andrés Martínez, senior editor for internships, says he believes the company’s first attempt at remote internships will be a worthwhile “experiment” that will help them to prepare for the future. “We’re going to learn a lot this summer. We don’t know if we’ll have to go back to remote at some point [or] if we’ll have to stagger, or do different kinds of shifts,” he says. “We are going to be in a much better position and actually have three months of experience to [find out] how we best work as a newsroom, not just for the interns, but in general.”

Rabil agrees. She also stresses that one of the primary goals when planning for this summer is ensuring the wellbeing of editors. “We wanted to make sure that they were in a situation where they felt comfortable taking on that [extra] work right now,” she says.

Laura Zelenko, senior executive editor for talent, diversity, training and standards at Bloomberg News, says the company will have about 40 interns working remotely with newsrooms in the US and Canada this summer. To combat feelings of isolation and make sure interns feel like they’re a part of the team even while working from home, Zelenko says they’ve worked to equip newsrooms with remote support. “In every case, [interns are] attached to one of our reporting teams. We also assign them each a mentor, which is someone different from [their] manager,” she says.

Zelenko says it’s not uncommon for interns to be hired in some capacity after the program ends, although it’s too soon to determine if that will happen after this summer. “We’ve had a very robust news internship program for many years. We see it as a really important service to the students, but a very important pipeline for us for entry-level hires,” she says. “I don’t think it was really a consideration not to do it.”

Still, the Wall Street Journal’s Rabil says she understands why other newsrooms have decided to cancel their internship programs altogether. “It’s asking a lot of people when they’re already stretched thin, because not only are we working remotely, but there’s more news than ever and more interest in the news,” she says.

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Although some internship programs are still operating, many journalism students are facing a future with no clear way into the industry. Rebecca Burns, a journalism professor at the University of Georgia and publisher of the Red & Black, a non-profit, independent student publication that covers the university, notes that “quite a few [students’] internships were completely canceled.” For student sports reporters especially, whose work for the Red & Black is often syndicated by local papers, the lack of events has slowed down their opportunities, including potential summer internships with sports publications and teams. Some students who can’t find post-graduate employment are considering putting off the job hunt for now. “I anecdotally have seen more students go ahead and apply for graduate school right away than I have in years past,” Burns says.

After graduating from Georgia State University this month, Imani Dennis was set to intern with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this summer, but due to the pandemic, the program has been deferred to this fall. Dennis says she’s uncertain about whether her future will include a career in journalism. “I had a whole system set in place to apply for jobs in New York and Atlanta that I was going to do this summer. I had a spreadsheet and everything, and now it’s just sitting on my computer,” she says, noting that the layoffs and budget cuts make her concerned about finding employment after her internship ends.

“At the beginning of this, with everything that was going on and the stress of it, I was originally like, ‘I don’t want to be a journalist anymore.’ I’ve been uncertain about my future, but also uncertain about the future of the people around me and the journalists I look up to,” she says.

Still, despite the current state of the industry, Dennis is still hoping to at least give a career in journalism a shot. “The rush that I get from sharing other people’s stories and taking the care to make sure that it’s done right…It’s gratifying, but it’s incredibly stressful,” she says. “I don’t want to give that up.”

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