Growing up in Central New Jersey, I experienced no shortage of access to major cities. Manhattan was a 45-minute train ride away; Boston and D.C., only four hours north and south, respectively. And for making the transition from intern to a professional in the news and media industries, there probably is no better place to be. Except maybe living in New York City itself.

Travel two hours outside the Tri-state area and job opportunities and internships drop significantly. Yet on the tiny island of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs, media jobs reign.

A friend of mine from Indiana recently shared her media job struggles on Facebook. My immediate thought was, “Well how many jobs are even out there?” Read more

As we all know, every career — media based or otherwise — begins at the bottom of the rung. But while you toil away at data entry work, research or transcribing interviews, it’s important to remember that your time spent as an intern could be your launching pad — so it’s imperative to make a lasting impression.

One of the first things interns should understand is what their priorities are. It’s great if a media job allows its interns to regularly pitch content and story ideas, but those opportunities should be secondary. Taylor Trudon, editor of Huffington Post Teen had this to say:

It’s not to discourage or dissuade anyone from writing about what they’re passionate about or taking a side project. But it’s also important to keep your editor’s priorities in mind.

You should also be open to being mentored by your supervisor or colleagues. Don’t just listen to your boss, really take in and implement what they are trying to teach you. Mandy Stadtmiller, deputy editor of xoJane, appreciates when she sees her suggestions being used:

I really notice when someone actually takes action and doesn’t just say, ‘Oh, thanks for the good advice.’

For more internship tips from editors, read: 8 Ways to Succeed at an Editorial Internship.

Technology has made it possible to produce an entire article from the palm of your hand with a click-worthy headline and tweetable content. Countless professionals have continually told me that my (millennial) generation can’t specialize in just one particular medium anymore like professionals did 20 years ago. We’re supposed to be one-man bands.

This is a little troubling for me. While I love writing and photography, my talents as a videographer aren’t as strong as I’d like them to be. Recent journalism graduates and current students don’t always have the time or opportunity to learn different technologies and specialties while in school. A lot of schools are struggling with trying to integrate these lessons into their curricula, so those of us with freshly earned bachelor’s degrees are scrambling to pick up extra skills in our spare time.

It’s a multimedia world, so by the time graduation rolls around students’ resumes should include skills in photography, videography, Photoshop, Soundslides, html coding and more. The problem isn’t that we aren’t willing to learn all of these skills; it’s that these courses can’t be squeezed into a mere four years of college. And journalism jobs often don’t pay enough for the extra cost of attending graduate school to further our education. My school had one photojournalism class and one multimedia journalism class that was only started a couple of years ago. The rest of the courses I was expected to take were on different writing styles, principles and ethics. Photoshop was a class meant for those in advertising and marketing. Videography was for the film majors, photography for the fine arts majors, and coding for all seven of the computer science majors.

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I graduated from college more than a month ago, and in that time, I’ve watched more than half of my friends go on to land full-time positions in their field. I, however, am working two internships – one at Mediabistro and the other at Guideposts magazine – that have an expiration date at the end of August.

When you tell people after four years of hard work, dedication and thousands of your parents’ money that all you have to show for it is an internship — or worse yet, unemployment — they might give you that universal sympathetic look before saying, “Don’t worry, something will come along.”

In my case, though, I couldn’t be happier to have landed two internships in the field of journalism because I didn’t even major in it. About halfway through school, nearly finished with my BA in creative writing, I decided I really didn’t like it. I loved writing, but I had no time or dedication to think of plotlines or characters or read another thing by Nathaniel Hawthorne. So, I moved on to nonfiction. In news writing, the details, characters and motives are all there; all you need to do is put the facts into a cohesive whole. Another thing I love about the news is that you know what you write will be important to someone. Whether you’re covering the small-town high school prom or world conflicts, someone is interested in it, and that makes it important.

Since I changed my mind late in the game, I found myself close to graduating with only enough time to take the courses needed for a journalism minor and a few free electives to fill up with some multimedia classes. So I’m at Mediabistro and Guideposts to learn and grow. Read more