2017 Center for Editing Excellence

Eleven college students and recent college graduates are headed to copy editing internships after completing 10 days of intensive preparation at The University of Texas at Austin.

The interns are among a group of undergraduate and graduate students placed in internships in copy editing, sports copy editing, business reporting and digital journalism.

The highly competitive national program is operated by the Dow Jones News Fund. The more than 750 applicants had to take a test and complete an extensive application before being considered.

Newspaper professionals, visiting faculty and UT journalism faculty moderated the sessions in this 20th residency program at UT-Austin.

In the latter half of the pre-internship training, participants produced three issues of a model newspaper, the Southwest Journalist, as well as a companion online product, swjournalist.com.

The UT-News Fund interns serve internships of 10 to 12 weeks.

Grants from the News Fund and contributions from participating news organizations cover the participants’ training, including housing, meals, transportation and instruction.

Participating newspapers also pay interns a weekly wage for their internship work. Students returning to their universities after the internships are eligible for a $1,000 scholarship provided by the News Fund.

Beth Butler and Bradley Wilson served as co-directors of the workshop with assistance from Lourdes Jones, senior administrative associate of the UT School of Journalism.

Faculty included George Sylvie, associate professor at UT-Austin; Mark Grabowski, associate professor at Adelphi University; and Linda Shockley, managing director of the News Fund in Princeton, New Jersey.

Students also had the opportunity to visit with Dan Cunningham, senior editor of the Houston Chronicle; and Will Weisert, administrative correspondent at the Austin Bureau of the Associated Press.

The 2017 interns were:

• Jon Allsop, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, BuzzFeed
• Kyle Brown, University of Missouri-Columbia, Kansas City Star
• Charlotte Carroll, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Denver Post
• Matthew Clough, University of Kansas, Kansas City Star
• Emma Freer, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, GateHouse Media
• Core Keenan, East Carolina University, The Denver Post
• Orlaith McCaffrey, Binghamton University, Omaha World-Herald
• Faith Miller, Arizona State University, Los Angeles Times
• James (Payton) Potter, Louisiana Tech University, Beaumont Enterprise
• Mariah Schaefer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Houston Chronicle
• Lily Stephens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Bay Area News Group

Follow the links below to view the 2017 issues of the Southwest Journalist and other material.

• CLICK HERE to visit The Southwest Journalist online.
• CLICK HERE to see the May 31, 2017 issue.
• CLICK HERE to see the June 1, 2017 issue.
• CLICK HERE to see the June 2, 2017 issue.

CLICK HERE to view the photo gallery from 2017.