Internship Report Bob Heurman (2974932) University of Groningen (RUG) Course: MA Journalism Internship
Placement: Editorial at Business Insider Netherlands (BIN) Supervisors: Herwin Thole (BIN) & Robert Chesal (RUG)
Date: 20-01-2021
2 The Internship
To round off my Journalism Master’s, I chose to do an internship with Business Insider Netherlands (BIN). Working for an internationally acclaimed news outlet had been my preference from the start of the university programme. Given the coronavirus pandemic, which limited (international) opportunities, working as part of the Dutch branch of an international outlet, with a strong reliance on English content, seemed a good compromise.
Additionally, BIN struck me as a rather challenging internship because of the complexity of much of its economic content.
BIN’s relatively small, local office is located in Amsterdam. Including the editor in chief, there are five people, as well as a handful of freelancers, that make up the editorial team. To ensure a steady stream of revenue, there is also a marketing team, the members of which can be counted on two hands. Apart from the occasional international collaboration and the annual Business Insider Partner Summit, you will mostly be dealing with the Dutch team.
However, that is not to say you will not be relying on international BI content on a day-to-day basis.
Every day, there is an editorial meeting around 10 a.m., during which the team discusses what everyone will be up to that day. As the intern, you are a fully-fledged member of the editorial team, which means you can contribute to these chitchats by coming up with ideas for stories, or by engaging in a discussion of the daily news with your colleagues.
As any outlet, BIN focuses on content that is relevant for their readers. That being said, the Amsterdam office can be described as an outlet by somewhat older people for somewhat older people. Though this does not exclude types of content aimed at younger generations, it does mean that content revolving around e.g. the housing market or personal savings does rather well. Chances are that, as the intern, you will be the youngest person on the floor.
The Intern’s Tasks
Your tasks as an intern correspond with your role as a fully-fledged member of the editorial team. As such, you can expect to perform the same tasks as your editorial colleagues. To give you a sense of what you will be doing on a day-to-day basis, here is a range of prospective tasks:
• Familiarising yourself with the CMS (Wordpress), practices and tone of voice of Business Insider.
• Translating articles from other Business Insider editions and adding to these with information that is relevant for Dutch readers.
• Writing a news piece on the basis of a press release or a publication in another medium.
• Writing in-depth pieces, like an interview with a business/entrepreneur, background stories about a certain trend in for instance the car industry or the housing market, etc.
• Coming up with ideas for new articles, such as a follow-up to an earlier story.
• Being the final editor. Every day, one member of the editorial team is responsible for the website. This person keeps an eye on the news, determines the order of the news
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stories on the homepage, performs the final check on articles, and sends out the daily newsletter.
Supervision
Overall, the supervision was good. Though you will not get extensive feedback on every piece you write, due to obvious limitations in time and manpower, the team will always provide feedback when asked. And there has never been a time where I have not been able to learn a thing or two from the feedback I received, which either comes from the daily final editor or your BIN internship supervisor. Though there is a definite ‘just do it’ and ‘use your own judgement’ mentality, it never hurts to ask if you are unsure about something.
In addition to the feedback on your stories, there is the occasional 1-on-1 meeting with your BIN supervisor. Among other things, they will be interested to know how you are
experiencing the internship, how you are handling the work you are given, and – most importantly – whether you actually like the stuff you are writing about or whether you would prefer to explore other interests.
During my time at BIN, I did not have much contact with my internship supervisor from the University of Groningen. This was mostly due to the lack of complications I ran into during the internship. That being said, it was good to know that, if need be, someone from the university was readily available.
Evaluation
The journalistic writing and interview training we received during the master’s programme were by far the most helpful for the internship. In terms of writing skills, I found that using active sentences and sticking to one idea per paragraph were especially vital for producing a proper news story.
The interview training also came in useful, as I have conducted over a dozen interviews for Business Insider. Some of the most important takeaways from the master’s degree are the strength of open-ended questions and the need to embrace silence – so as to get the interviewee to talk.
That being said, the master’s curriculum is not perfect. While going out on the streets to find a story is a wonderful skill to have, and should definitely remain part of the programme, it would have been nice to practice more rewrites.
In reality, although this might differ per internship, you are far more likely to combine news pieces from outlets x, y and z into an article for your internship provider than you are to run down to the local butcher’s shop to find a news story. A simple yet effective exercise for students could be to give them one or more news articles and ask them to produce a rewrite, on their own, within x amount of time. Then, at the end, students can compare their work.
Needless to say, one of the skills I developed during the internship is rewriting. Other areas I improved upon are conducting interviews, translating English and German news stories, and determining newsworthiness. I also became more efficient in my journalistic practices – one
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of the personal goals as laid out in my internship plan – which means I now complete the above, and other, tasks at a faster pace.
Last but not least, I have become better at coming up with ideas for new stories – the second goal as mentioned in my internship plan. As such, following the terrible launch of the game Cyberpunk 2077 in December, one of my final pieces will be on whether the game industry is fundamentally flawed, based on the rising number of pre-orders and unfinished products.
As to the final goal of my internship plan, concerning my career path, I can at most see myself work as a parttime journalist in the future. Indeed, I would not mind writing a news story every once in a while, but I also would not want to do it fulltime. At least not until I have pursued and tried some of my other interests.
Conclusion & Recommendations
All in all, BIN offers a great internship for those with an interest in economic affairs. What makes this place especially internship-friendly, is their focus on quality over quantity. As such, there is little pressure on the intern to churn out as many articles as humanly possible.
Rather, they give you the time and space to work on your stories.
If I had to recommend something to be improved at BIN, it would be the final check of articles. Although this largely depends on who performs said check, every now and then there are some minor faulty corrections. For instance, throughout my piece on golf platform
Leading Courses, the Dutch word golfers (plural of ‘golfer’) was changed to golvers (a non- existent word). Preventing such hasty mistakes would be my main feedback for the outlet.
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Attachments (in Dutch, a sample from https://www.businessinsider.nl/author/bob- heurman/):
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