With just a little over a month until the deadline to apply for one of our summer internship spots, we wanted to talk about what it’s like to be an intern at the Center.
Our interns are a pivotal part of Center staff during the summer months. This isn’t the type of position where you’ll be going for coffee runs or answering phones — from the first day, Center interns are immersed in our newsroom and most begin work in their respective projects the moment paperwork is completed. Center internships are full-time, 40 hours/week positions, and compensated at an hourly rate.
The bulk of our internships are for reporting positions: each of our coverage areas or beats will choose a reporting intern, and that person will report to a section editor for the entirety of the program. Some of the areas we cover are: politics and campaign finance, national security, environment and health care, as well as global, investigative reporting on all topics. We will be offering two to four reporting positions this summer.
Additionally, we’re looking for what you might call “out-of-the-box” interns, such as candidates with experience in: computer-assisted reporting (CAR) or interactive news design.
CAR applicants should be adept at using Microsoft Excel, and experience with Microsoft Access is a big plus. Above all, the ideal candidate will have a staggering attention to detail. In lieu of writing samples, tell us about a few of your experiences with data sets (links to published work are greatly appreciated).
If you know your way around HTML, CSS and JavaScript/jQuery, we strongly encourage you to apply for an interactive design internship. We're especially interested in designers with some knowledge of responsive web design and experience with libraries, such as D3.js or Highcharts. Please include links to recent work.