1
Internship report
Emily Howard
S3104095Placement: Universiteitskrant, Groningen University supervisor: Greta Riemersma
Internship supervisor: Rob Siebelink Period: 26 February 2018 – 26 April 2018
2 Table of contents 1. Introduction……….……….……3 2. The internship………..……….……....3 2.1 The UKrant………..………3 2.2 Meetings………4 2.3 Expectations………4 3. My tasks.………..……….……....5 3.1 My stories……….5 3.2 Others’ stories………...5 3.3 The UKrant………..……...6 4. Supervision………..……..………..6 4.1 The UKrant………6 4.2 University………..6 5. Evaluation……….……….…..….7 5.1 What I learned………..……….………..7 5.2 Problems I encountered…………..………..………..7
5.3 Skills from the Master’s………..………..8
5.4 Goals………..……….8
6. Conclusion……….………9
3 1. Introduction
I very much wanted to do my internship at the UKrant, more than anywhere else! First of all, I jumped at the possibility of staying in Groningen, as I love the city. Seeing as I intend to stay in the Netherlands, I wanted to see how journalism works here; such as how the newsroom is structured, what conventions there are when interviewing and writing, and so on. A few of the courses I followed during the Master’s were geared towards a more global journalistic perspective, and so I wanted to see how the UKrant works both as a Dutch news outlet but more specifically, as a Dutch news outlet which covers stories in English too, for an international audience.
Furthermore, I am very interested in academia. Not only am I considering in staying in academia (or returning to it in the future in terms of doing a PhD), but with both this interest and with training in journalism I was curious to explore the relationships that academia and journalism can have
together, and what sort of possibilities exist for pursuing academia and journalism at the same time. Therefore, I was highly curious to see how the UKrant functioned in relation to the university and what sort of content it covered.
After learning about journalistic business models, I found it very interesting that the UKrant has a rich history going from a printed weekly paper, to online-only, to also using social media and video. The UKrant is a good case study mapping the changes journalism has faced with the trend of digitisation, and so I wanted to get more involved to see how the UKrant functions on a day-to-day basis to keep up with the changes that journalism faces, and to see how it evolves.
2. The internship 2.1 The UKrant
The UKrant is an online-only, bilingual news organisation in Groningen which covers stories about the University of Groningen and its staff and students. It is independent from the University of Groningen. The UKrant used to be a weekly printed newspaper, and a weekly newsletter is still sent every Wednesday at noon. This is how many readers continue to access the UKrant, as well as through its website and social media channels. Therefore, most stories must be ready by Monday mornings in order to get them edited and published ready for the newsletter.
The editorial team works 4 days a week. It is comprised of 6 people: the editor-in-chief, magazine coordinator, international editor, news coordinator, designer and webmaster, and editorial support. The editorial team are usually the only ones in the newsroom. Sometimes stories are written by the editorial team, but the majority are written by the freelancers: around 12 Dutch and international freelancers. Some of the freelancers are students at the university still, so they provide insight into student life. There are also a few columnists, photographers, and a translator. The UKrant also has a board and an editorial council.
The UKrant’s journalistic visions aim for critical, in-depth and reliable stories. It follows traditional journalistic visions of accuracy, reliability, and objectivity as well as performing a fourth-estate role in terms of how it critically engages with topics about the university. It has its own UKrant code, to ensure that quality journalistic criteria are met.
The process of publishing stories begins with freelancers pitching stories during the weekly freelance meeting. They get feedback from the editorial team, before going out and writing the story. If it’s for an international audience, the international editor will look at it as well as one of the main editors, before publication.
4 2.2 Meetings
The editorial team meet every Monday at 9:30am to discuss the week ahead. In this meeting, generally the editor-in-chief opens with any announcements about stories happening this week, and then everyone else shares what they are working on and their ideas for stories. This is a chance to find out what stories are most urgent to be published this week, as well as to keep track of what people are currently working on. The meeting is the place where stories are suggested and assigned to people, as well as where stories are pitched. My role in these meetings was to follow what is happening at the UKrant for the upcoming week, join in the conversation and make suggestions if people asked for tips or feedback on stories, as well as to pitch my own stories. I found the meetings very useful in terms of getting feedback on my stories as well as pitching stories, as all the editorial team was there at once, so they could all give me tips or discuss my story ideas together instead of going around the office or just getting advice from one person.
On Wednesday afternoon at 4pm, all the freelancers come into the office for a meeting with the editorial team. The meeting starts by evaluating the stories of the past week, so that people can get feedback on what they wrote and learn for next time. Then the freelancers tell the news coordinator their availability for the upcoming week, so that stories can be assigned to them. It was useful to see this part of the meeting even though it didn’t concern me, as I got some insight into how freelancing works. After this, the freelancers take turns to pitch ideas for stories, which they then get feedback on from the editorial team and the other freelancers. My role in this meeting was to listen to story pitches and if I had feedback, tips or sources that could be useful I could share them. A couple of times I also used this as an opportunity to ask people if they knew useful sources for stories I was working on.
Both the editorial and the freelance meetings are held in Dutch, which I think is both a positive and negative – it helped me to practice my Dutch, and of course it’s natural that when 90% of the staff are Dutch, they want to speak in their native language. But at the same time that meant that myself and some staff members (including the international editor and international freelancers) couldn’t follow everything that was going on.
Every Thursday, the editorial team have lunch together. This was also a nice chance to informally discuss how the week went, what had been published, and what would be published next week. It was useful to summarise the week and prepare for the next week, and it gave a chance to ask any questions about stories people were working on.
2.3 Expectations
My expectations for this internship were that I would be pitching stories, as well as being assigned stories. Before the internship, I was worried that I might not think of ideas or suitable pitches, but actually I thought of many and most often, I worked on stories that I had pitched myself. I was given a story to start me off on the internship, and I was assigned three or so stories during the internship. I expected that I would be busy mostly writing news stories and I hoped that I would be able to write feature stories too, and I am happy that I was able to write quite a few feature/magazine stories as well as news.
After the high-intensity skills courses during the Master’s and what we were taught about newsrooms, I expected that I would be often dealing with high pressure, many deadlines, and I prepared myself for being overloaded with work. During the Master’s, we were often told to find, pitch and write a news story in one day. As it happens, I was relieved to find that I was not pressured or overloaded. There was not pressure to find and pitch and write a story all in one day. I was busy
5 during all of my working hours, and there was never time that I wasn’t working on something, but there was definitely not as much pressure as I expected and I didn’t feel overloaded. This was nice, as I then had time to research and write an article thoroughly with quality.
I hadn’t expected that I would work with other people as I didn’t realise that this happened, but in fact it was very nice working on stories together with the international editor as well as one of the international freelancers.
3. Tasks 3.1 My stories
I worked 4 days a week, with the editorial team. My main task was to pitch, research and write news and feature stories. As I worked closely with the international editor, I was mainly expected to think about potential stories for the international page of the UKrant, so stories about and for an
international audience. Once I had thought of a story, I then had to pitch it, research it and write it up according to a deadline. I was also sometimes assigned stories to write – around 3 of the stories I wrote in total were assigned to me. I was expected to be open about what I was working on and keep the editorial team updated, as well as ask for advice if need be.
I mostly wrote longer feature articles. These usually took between one and two weeks to pitch, research, interview and write up, as I had to search for and contact potential interviewees. I wrote 5 feature articles in total, as well as doing all the interviews and preparation for a 6th feature article
which I will write up after the internship as a freelancer for the UKrant. As well as this, I wrote 5 news stories. The news stories usually took less time, between 1 and 3 days to research and write. In total, I wrote 10 stories over 8 four-day weeks.
The articles ranged in subject, from sciences to history. The news stories dealt with current events such as new research being published, student protests, and student boards searching for new members. The feature stories included a reportage about an international event, a critical article about problems in science, and an article about German students’ experiences of Bevrijdingsdag. Therefore, I would say that I was able to try out a range of different journalistic styles in terms of the register, style and topic of the story. I had to switch between writing factual, short and snappy news to getting deeper into people’s emotions, and so a major part of the process was learning how to interview.
When writing the stories, I had help from the international editor Megan as well as the magazine coordinator Christien. These two editors were mostly responsible for editing my work and giving me feedback. I also had to collaborate with the designer Rene, to decide on a header photo for the stories that I wrote as well as to discuss the presentation, for example if I included a side-box or a table.
3.2 Others’ stories
Another of my tasks was to help on others’ stories. I didn’t do this so often, but sometimes I helped Megan on stories she was working on. She asked me if I knew anyone who had experienced
discrimination, for a story she was working on, so I did around 3 or 4 interviews with people who I had found who were relevant to Megan’s story.
I also helped people find sources, for example if I happened to know anybody who might be useful to talk to for articles other people were working on, I would direct them to the sources. This happened both within the editorial team, but also during freelance meetings. At these meetings, I
6 listened to other people’s pitches and then I was expected to suggest sources if I knew them, and also give feedback or tips if I had any.
On one occasion, I worked together with an international freelancer (Andriana) on a story. We both attended separate parts of an event and wrote separate reportages, which were then combined into one story. This meant that I had to collaborate with Andriana: we discussed how we would work on the story, and write it together.
3.3 The UKrant
In general, I was expected to keep on top of and aware of what was going on at the UKrant – what stories people were working on, what events were coming up, and so on. I was expected to give feedback if I saw any mistakes on the website, or to help out translating captions for the social media pages. If I had any ideas about new ways of presenting stories, for example, I was expected to actively participate in discussions and help the UKrant to be innovative.
4. Supervision 4.1 UKrant
At the UKrant, I was supervised by Megan, Christien and Rob. I would say that I was supervised in that order – I sat nearby Megan and I always asked her if I had any questions. As the international editor, she was usually the first to look at my articles and give feedback or suggest edits. I think it was a very good form of supervision as it was informal and constantly accessible, and we became quite friendly.
Christien was also always aware of what I was working on, as she had to coordinate the articles into the planning and give deadlines. Christien was very helpful in giving me tips for interviewing people, or tips for writing leads and introductions. Usually, Christien looked at my article once I had drafted it and then gave me advice on how to improve it. I spoke with Christien one-on-one about almost every article which I wrote, after I had drafted the first version. If I had any questions about articles I was writing, I also went to her desk and asked with no hesitation.
Lastly, Rob as editor-in-chief supervised my work. He had the ultimate decision on whether or not I would write an article, and he put the articles I had written into the weekly newsletter. As he was often very busy and Christien was generally in charge of magazine articles (and Thereza, the news coordinator, was in charge of news articles), I didn’t hear so much feedback from Rob. Sometimes during our Thursday lunches, we discussed my progress at the UKrant. A couple of weeks before the end of my internship, I had an official meeting with Rob and Megan together where we discussed my progress during the internship, and their thoughts on my work.
Generally, I enjoyed the supervision structure as I feel like I was given a lot of room and
responsibility to do my own thing – I was trusted to work on articles alone, and that was good as I got a taste of a real journalistic working environment instead of being directed constantly. No news is good news, as Rob said. The atmosphere with the editorial team was also very open, so I had no problems approaching people to ask advice or receive feedback. As the style was more informal, it is also harder to say how often I had contact with my internship supervisor (Rob), as we met every day and informally discussed articles and how things were going.
4.2 University
The supervision from Greta at the university was very helpful. Greta responded to almost all of my weekly journal entries on Nestor, asking more questions or giving me feedback and motivation. As
7 well as commenting directly on the journals, Greta also emailed me a few times to ask how things were going in general. She was helpful in reminding me to ask for feedback from Rob on my progress at the UKrant.
I also met with Greta in person, which was extremely helpful. We met halfway through my internship, discussed widely how it was going and any problems I had. Greta was very open and trustworthy during our discussion, and she gave me good advice on how to overcome problems I experienced. It was a coincidence that Greta had previously worked for the UKrant, but this was very useful as then I gained a deeper insight into the news organisation, which helped me when
considering what sorts of stories to pitch.
I very much liked the supervision from Greta as she took my journal entries and comments seriously, and she always responded quickly. She made me feel like I could always ask her for advice about any topic.
5. Evaluation 5.1 What I learned
One of the main skills I improved during the internship was interviewing. For my first interview, I was very nervous and had planned out all the questions I would ask, which sometimes made me miss out on interesting questions that would have came up if I had followed the conversation more naturally. I think it was a case of practicing over and over again – by the end of the internship, I was much more confident on pushing people to answer questions they were avoiding, or also asking more emotional questions to people. This is one of the things that Christien advised me to do, to ask more about how people felt at a certain time, and so on. Initially I felt too awkward to ask emotional questions but by the end, when I wrote about emotional experiences such as being German on Bevrijdingsdag, I was a lot more comfortable asking these sorts of questions.
This also ties into another skill I learnt: improving the way I begin articles, to make it more emotionally appealing to the reader. I had initially started out quite factual, but again Christien advised me to begin with more emotional sentences to catch the reader. When I wrote scientific articles, I hadn’t considered doing this as I assumed I should stick to the facts, but I definitely learnt that sticking to the facts doesn’t mean avoiding personal and emotional content, too.
Another major thing I learnt was to include my own journalistic voice. At the start of the internship, I led stories around quotes from interviewees, as I felt like I wanted to show their stories. But by the end, I learnt that I could still tell their stories without quoting them so much – so I learnt to
paraphrase and describe. By the last story I wrote, I also learnt not to include too many quotes or even too many sources, as lots of names get confusing, especially if the article isn’t so long. In terms of my own personal development, I feel like I have become a lot more confident and
professional in how I approach interviewing and writing. I feel ready to be a freelancer or work in the media!
5.2 Problems I encountered
I did encounter a few problems. One of these was learning to pitch the right stories for the medium – at first, I didn’t understand why certain stories got rejected, but I learned that if the UKrant had covered too similar stories in the past, or if the event wasn’t big enough in itself to be news, then there wasn’t much point in writing it.
8 3 times, people who I had interviewed sent in complaints after the article in which I quoted them was published. This was a learning curve for me as in England, interviewees don’t necessarily have to see copy and definitely aren’t always allowed to change their quotes. At first, I was quite
disheartened to hear that some of my interviewees weren’t happy with the article. But my colleagues also explained to me that it wasn’t always my fault – sometimes interviewees, and especially academics, can be very sensitive about how they are represented and also specific in the words they use. Therefore, I learned how to be diplomatic, to accept certain changes they wanted to make but also to reject others if they weren’t acceptable to the story.
5.3 Skills from the Master’s
Skills that I learned during the Master’s courses specifically helped with my writing during the internship, such as chunking paragraphs (specifically for online news) and embedding quotes within sentences. I think I was a lot quicker in being able to research, interview and write articles due to the sheer number of articles we had written during the Master’s course. This is because I had already learnt how to prepare (which sources to find, how many, what sort of questions to ask, and so on); as well as having done so many interviews, which gave me an idea at least of how to interview people. I was able to use frameworks for writing news stories and feature stories that we had learnt during the Master’s.
As the internship was very specific (online-only, text only, and only writing traditional news or feature style stories), I didn’t use very many skills from the Master’s – such as radio, video, Q&A, profiling, and so on. But I think having learned these extra skills, I also had more insight into how to be inventive in writing for print. Also, having done photography during the Master’s was useful as journalists often provide their own photos for the UKrant. But, during the Master’s we only had one day for photojournalism, which was no where near enough preparation. I think it would also have been useful to learn some things about graphic journalism, as the designer for the UKrant was often trying out new graphics and styles of presenting stories in print.
One thing I noticed that I wasn’t prepared for was writing reportages. I think we had briefly learnt these sorts of skills during the Master’s, but we only really focused on learning them for one afternoon. So when my editor asked me to write a reportage, first of all I had no idea what this meant and then when I realised, I sort of had to learn it on the spot.
5.4 Goals
Here are the goals I specified in my internship plan, before the internship started. Some of them I reached, but some of them I did not, for reasons explained below.
Goal Achieved? Explanation
Learn how to target content to a specific audience
Yes The UKrant writes specifically to the academic community, and I really learned how to do this. I wrote specifically for international students and staff, and it helped me also to learn how to angle stories.
Improve writing headlines and leads
Yes I was given a lot of feedback on how to begin stories. At first, I was quite wooden in how I started stories, but I learned to start with more emotions and catchy sentences, instead of just facts.
Make feature writing more engaging
Yes I definitely learned how to make a personal story, with emotional quotes from interviewees, by the
9 end of the internship. This is something I struggled with at the start but the editorial advice really helped me. I think this is the most visible way I have developed my journalistic capacities. Try using different forms of
social media
No I hadn’t realised before the start of the internship that the UKrant has somebody specific who is in charge of social media. As well as that, they don’t really use social media as a journalistic platform (apart from sharing stories from the website). Learn how to write opinion
pieces
No I hadn’t realised that news/magazine writers are not allowed to write columns, and that columnists are a completely separate category of journalists. I still think it would have been useful to learn this in the Master’s, but I understand why I couldn’t do it at the UKrant.
6. Conclusion
Overall, I am really happy with how the internship went. It was at the exact place I wanted to go, and I really enjoyed the responsibility I was given as well as the work pace, which allowed me to focus on my stories with quality. I am satisfied with the supervision I was given too.
In terms of organisation, even now when I have finished my internship, it is a little unclear to me about the grading. As well as this, it was definitely very hard to get an internship approved by the coordinator – I had been offered two quite prestigious internships (at the European Federation of Journalists and at RNW Media), but both got rejected by the internship coordinator as they weren’t seen as satisfactory. During the Master’s, we learnt about how journalism is multifaceted and innovative and changing, especially in the current climate, but the internships still had to be so strict. Of course, this has no bearing on the internship I finally took, but in terms of recommendations of internship organisation, I think this must be mentioned.
10 7. Attachments
Published articles during the internship:
12 March 2018 – ‘March for Women’, news,
https://www.ukrant.nl/groningen-march-for-women/?lang=en
12 March 2018 – ‘Mingling with the Dutch’, reportage, https://www.ukrant.nl/dining-with-the-dutch/?lang=en
13 March 2018 – ‘Internationals struggle for internships’, features,
https://www.ukrant.nl/magazine/out-of-their-reach/?lang=en
19 March 2018 – ‘Uncertain future for British students’, news, https://www.ukrant.nl/uncertain-future-for-british-students/?lang=en
3 April 2018 – ‘Flimsy science can be dangerous science’, features,
https://www.ukrant.nl/magazine/flimsy-science-can-be-dangerous-science/?lang=en
4 April 2018 – ‘Who’s got that little something extra?’, features,
https://www.ukrant.nl/magazine/which-teacher-has-got-that-little-something-extra/?lang=en
9 April 2018 – ‘Student boards lack internationals’, news, https://www.ukrant.nl/student-boards-lack-internationals/?lang=en
11 April 2018 – ‘YouTube in the 1970s’, news, https://www.ukrant.nl/youtube-slootweg-video/?lang=en
16 April 2018 – ‘Childhood trauma affects obesity’, news, https://www.ukrant.nl/trauma-affects-obesity/?lang=en
30 April 2018 – ‘Germans on Liberation Day: Always the bad guy’, news,
