New BINJ intern track makes it easier than ever for muckrakers-in-training to work with HorizonMass
Amazingly, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism’s independent news outlet, Horizon Mass, is well into its second year; so fast did its first year go by. From its inception, fellow BINJ principals Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and I have been clear that we view the publication as “student-driven.” Which is why we linked our lively year-round internship program to it and why every reporting intern that we recruit writes (and/or creates multimedia assets) for it.
However, as a biweekly, statewide, general-interest, digital magazine, HorizonMass can definitely use more content. And BINJ has the capacity to edit and publish more articles … and, best of all, after months of furious fundraising, we have money stocked up to pay lots of student talent $100 a pop to help produce it.
So over the summer, we realized that we needed to add a second path to our internship program aimed at enterprising student scribes on the go. Since we call our existing path of contacting us (typically via email or Handshake), getting interviewed by me, and (by displaying talent and game) becoming one of our interns the “original” internship track, we decided to call our new path the “extra spicy” track.
And who is our “extra spicy” internship track aimed at? Student reporters who are already cranking out content for school newspapers or many other kinds of news outlets in and around their campuses—up to and including professional news outlets.
HorizonMass covers our entire state. We’re known for deep dives into government transparency, prisons, law enforcement malfeasance, environment, and several other key beats. But we, and the many communities we serve, are interested in everything going on from Provincetown to North Adams, from Great Barrington to Newburyport, and every point in between.
BINJ syndicates every article HorizonMass produces to community news outlets around the state (and sometimes beyond) via our MassWire news service. And the more interesting the pieces our interns produce, the more likely their work will be run in multiple outlets.
Through our new internship track, we’re offering every student (and recent student) reporter hungry for professional clips a chance to not only publish with us and pick up a fast paycheck, but also to do the kind of hard-hitting, risk-taking, extremely original, three-dimensional stories that most of you won’t have a chance of working on anywhere else until you manage to establish yourselves in today’s very competitive and unforgiving journalism market. Which could otherwise happen years down the line … or never.
Foreign students who can’t work for pay in the US are always welcome to intern with us, too, of course (though, for the record, we think it’s stupid that our government won’t let young talent from many countries make a living while they’re in school here).
All you have to do to have a shot at joining our internship program and publishing with us is to pitch us. So pitch us! Just email us at internships@binj.news with the following: An intro paragraph about yourself, a paragraph or two laying out one story you’d like to write for HorizonMass, and links to your resume and three published clips (obviously, student publications are totally fine). And put “EXTRA SPICY PITCH” in the subject line to make sure I see it. We’re looking for short features, short documentaries, interviews, advance pieces, and more.
That’s it! That’s all you have to do to apply. If my colleagues and I don’t like your pitch, we’ll reply with suggestions about how to improve it (as part of our mission to help train the next generation of journalists). But if we like the pitch, we’ll immediately accept you into the BINJ internship program. Best of all, when you write up your piece and we publish it, you’ll get added to the HorizonMass masthead as a reporter—another notch for your proverbial career belt.
Hope to hear from a bunch of student reporters soon. And pass this editorial on to your friends. The more the merrier!
