To find an internship, part-time job or freelance opportunity that matches your particular needs, please contact journal@arizona.edu. Students also can check out our internship and job listings.
Finding an Internship
Finding an internship is a time-consuming but worthwhile challenge, and completing an internship increases your chances of finding a job after graduation. Our students have interned locally, throughout Arizona, across the nation and around the world, including at the Arizona Republic, Arizona Luminaria, the Tucson Spotlight, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the LA Times, NBC, CBS, Sinclair Media, Las Vegas Review-Journal, ESPN, and MLB.
Internship Credit
To receive journalism credit for an internship, you must be a University of Arizona undergraduate or graduate student with a journalism major or minor and have passed JOUR 205 (Reporting the News) with a C or better. (Graduate students must have passed JOUR 506 with a B or better.) You may interview for an internship while in-progress in JOUR 205/JOUR 506, but will not be enrolled for credit until your final grade for the class has posted.
You must meet with the Internship Coordinator and review the offer for a journalism internship you have received to have it approved for credit. In some cases – marketing and public relations internships, for example – the School of Journalism will not offer credit, but you will be able to receive credit through the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Consult the Internship Coordinator to understand from whom you will get credit.
To receive internship credit, you need to:
- Review the University's internship policies and guidelines.
- Complete a work-plan, then have the form signed by the company offering you the internship.
- Review the credit requirements with the internship coordinator before being enrolled to receive academic credit for the internship. Please note that tuition applies to internship credit.
- Undergraduates: Review requirements for part-time (2 units) and full-time (3 units) internships.
- Graduate Students: Review requirements for graduate internship (1-3 units).
- Complete the student self-evaluation form at the end of the internship along with submitting work samples.
- Ensure the supervisor completes this supervisor evaluation form.
Internship FAQs
The internship must be a journalism internship approved by the school’s internship coordinator. You must have completed JOUR 205, Reporting the News, to be eligible. Some internships have other requirements such as completing JOUR 306, Advanced Reporting, and JOUR 208, Law of the Press, before being eligible for the Arizona Daily Star Apprentice Program. Some internships are extremely competitive, so you will have to have gained experience and clips in another newsroom before you can apply. The best way to do that is to work for the Daily Wildcat, the University of Arizona campus paper. Students must be registered for internship within the first 10 days of the semester. You must be registered via the School’s internship and career coordinator. No changes will be made after that date.
After you have been offered and accepted an internship that has been approved for credit by the school’s internship coordinator, there is paperwork to fill out to add the class. Make an appointment with the internship coordinator to go over requirements and complete forms.
Internships can be repeated for a maximum of seven credits (e.g., two full-time and one part-time), or a maximum of four internships. Part-time internships, which require about 120 hours over the semester receive two units of credit. Full-time internships are approved normally only for the summer and require about 240 hours of work at the internship site. Full-time internships receive three units of credit.
Four or up to seven hours of university credit.
Yes, but remember that you do have to pay tuition to earn academic credit for any internship. Discuss this with the School’s internship coordinator.
Fortunately, there are lots of ways to find an internship. Read the internship listserv emailed to UA journalism majors weekly and follow up. Check out our How to Find an Internship page. Attend the internship fairs held at UA Journalism every semester. Use your connections – ask friends, relatives and others you come in contact with to help you set up an interview. Search the Internet yourself for media where you’d like to work and contact the editors or producers there.
No. The University of Arizona does not grant transfer credit from any institution for internships.
The faculty of the UA School of Journalism strongly believes that students should have reporting and ethics training taught by our faculty before you undertake a journalism internship so that you can contribute more to the newsroom and gain more from the experience.
Yes, just as you would for any credits that appear on your transcript. Students often think they don’t have to pay for internships during the fall and spring semesters, but that is usually because they are already paying tuition for a full-time schedule and the internship is included in that full-time tuition.
This depends. In general it is better to try different work environments so you can get a feel for different corporate cultures and broaden your experience. But sometimes, it is best to stay more than one semester. The best way to make this decision is to consult with the School’s internship coordinator.
Someone who has education and/or many years’ experience in journalism who will be able to give you editorial guidance and training at the internship.
Some media organizations are looking for people to contribute articles, but may not have an experienced supervisor who can guide you through the editorial process from start to finish. These publications often don’t pay their writers. Others are start-ups without a proven record. You may choose to contribute an article to these sites to generate a clip, but you won’t be able to get internship credit for it. Consult with the School’s internship coordinator to determine if credit is possible.
No. Check with the College of Social and Behavior Sciences; the Communication Department (if you are a Communication major/minor), Eller College (if you are a marketing minor) or Pima Community College. Please be aware that if you choose to get internship credit from another educational institution, it will NOT transfer to the University of Arizona.