Preparing journalism students for internships: Tech-savvy, analytical skills and entrepreneurial attitude

Dr. Yael de Haan & Dr. Piet Bakker
University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, the Netherlands

Journalism today and in the near future is entirely different from what it used to be. In the Netherlands the expectation is that 70 per cent of journalists will not be fully employed at a major media corporation. Journalists will become freelancers working for varied and multiple platforms, and will be employed in other capacities as well, sometimes outside the realm of journalism. The new journalist will utilize multimedia and social media tools and will be characterized by creativity, flexibility and an entrepreneurial spirit.

Most schools for journalism have not renewed their internship-model to correspond with these changes. We use yesterday’s models to train for yesterday’s media. The largest journalism school in the Netherlands is at crossroads –the urgency to transform programs and the internship model is felt now more ever than before. At the same time the bureaucratic educational structure and the advanced age of the majority of the lecturers stands in the way of initiatives that have the potential of actively transforming the current situation. A possible reorganisation of internship programs firstly demands a closer look at the gap between the education program and journalistic ‘reality’.

This research is in essence a gap analysis of how the school of journalism in Utrecht educates its students vis-à-vis the journalistic demands of today. We used a mixed method, analysing the written evaluation forms of the intern supervisors, comparing the grades of the supervisors and the lecturers and holding 20 interviews with intern supervisors at different media organizations including television, radio, magazines and online and multimedia media initiatives.

Results can be divided into skills, knowledge and attitude. Supervisors of different media are satisfied with the hands-on attitude of the students compared to academic equivalents. However, they feel that students have

shortcomings in tech-savvy skills, analytical comprehension, and entrepreneurial attitude. These results have led to new initiatives within the school for a more robust research program and more collaborating programs with creative and technological educational programs to better prepare their students for internships.