Two UNC Hussman students heading to The New York Times as 2022 DJNF interns this summer

by Barbara Wiedemann

Two UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media undergraduate students are among a select group of college juniors, seniors and graduate students from around the nation who will work in paid 2022 Dow Jones News Fund (DJNF) internships across 77 U.S. newsrooms this summer. Interns are chosen and assigned to leading news outlets based on their résumés, experience, performance on DJNF tests, telephone interviews, 500-word essays and the needs of media outlets.

Curious readers may want to download one of these practice DJNF tests (and an answer key) and give it a go!

This year’s cohort of 107 students, which the program describes as “the largest class in nearly a decade and one of the most diverse in the Fund’s history,” is nearly two-thirds students of color and more than half women.

DJNF interns attend one week of pre-internship training before reporting to work in June. Both UNC Hussman students will attend a virtual multiplatform editor training session taught by Professor Emeritus Edward Trayes from Temple University. The editing internship training program aims to help interns hone their visual design, headline writing and SEO skills, strengthen their news judgment and publish high quality content on deadline. Both students will head to The New York Times following their training.

Program participants receive a weekly salary and a $1,500 scholarship for students and graduates with federal loans.

2022 DJFN Intern Clay Morris  |  UNC Hussman junior Clay Morris, a Morehead-Cain Scholar and co-editor-in-chief of the student-run fashion and lifestyle Coulture Magazine, heads to the print hub team at the Times in June, where he’ll edit the features section with Eric Dyer following the Trayes-run training session. His friend and mentor Ruth Samuel ’21 (culture reporter at HuffPost) inspired Morris to apply to the competitive internship program.

“...Having taken classes with great professors in the MEJO school, and in particularly having taken MEJO 153 [Writing and Reporting] with Finn Cohen and editing at Coulture and The Daily Tar Heel, I felt prepared going in.”—Clay Morris

“The most intimidating portion of the application is the editing component because it’s timed,” said Clay. ”But, having taken classes with great professors in the MEJO school, and in particularly having taken MEJO 153 [Writing and Reporting] with Finn Cohen and editing at Coulture and The Daily Tar Heel, I felt prepared going in.”

2022 DJNF Intern Krista Nichols  |  UNC Hussman senior Krista Nichols, who has served as copy chief of student-run daily newspaper The Daily Tar Heel since December of 2020, travels to New York City in June for her internship with the Times, where she’ll be on the flex desk editing material from any department in the newsroom. Nichols was encouraged to apply to the internship program by j-school graduates Brandon Standley ’21 (multiplatform editor at The Washington Post) and Molly Weisner ’20 (audience growth producer at The Charlotte Observer and a DJFN alum).

“Working at The Daily Tar Heel has definitely helped me prepare for this,” said Nichols. “I started out as a staffer on the copy desk during my first semester at UNC in fall 2019 — I was a transfer student and had no prior journalism experience. Working there has been a great way for me to apply what I’ve learned in my classes at Hussman, and I’ve met so many great people who have helped me grow.”

“I highly recommend Andy Bechtel’s News Editing class. I took it two years ago and still think back to it all the time while I edit.”—Krista Nichols

Nichols, who is seeking a full-time copy-editing position after graduation next month, added that all of her courses at UNC Hussman also helped prepare her for the rigorous  application process. She said, “I even found myself recalling things I learned in MEJO 153 while I took the DJNF editing test! For students interested in editing specifically, I highly recommend Andy Bechtel’s News Editing class. I took it two years ago and still think back to it all the time while I edit.”

Both UNC Hussman undergraduate students are very much looking forward to their summer internships at the Times, which Morris aptly describes as “the opportunity of a lifetime.“ 

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Morris and Nichols are the most recent in a long line of Dow Jones News Fund interns from Carolina (records show 113 going back to 1971). Recent DJNF interns from UNC Hussman include: 2021 interns Korie Dean (now service journalism Reporter at The News & Observer), Kayla Guilliams (a 2022 master’s student of Media and Communication, Environment and Science Communication at Carolina) and Amena Saad (now an equity research data analyst at Bloomberg LP); 2020 intern Molly Weisner (now an audience growth producer at The Charlotte Observer); 2019 interns Hannah Lang (now a banking and economic equity reporter with The Charlotte Observer) and Payne Lubbers (now an FX/Rates reporter at Bloomberg News); and 2018 interns Danielle Chemtob (now an investigative reporter at Axios Charlotte), Brooke Fisher (now a developer professor at HubSpot), Ana Irizarry (now a senior reporter at The Financial Times’ MandateWire), Trevor Lenzmeier (now an assistant features editor at The Seattle Times) and Harrison Miller (now a journalist covering business, finance, economics, technology and sports; and Forbes Money contributor).