Three University of Nebraska-Lincoln students have been selected for The Dow Jones News Fund intern program.
DJNF will train the three College of Journalism and Mass Communications' students and send them to work as news and sports copy editors at news organizations across the country this summer.
The students are Brandon Olson, Courtney Pitts and Christine Scalora. The three were selected from among 600 applicants for the prestigious paid internships.
Brandon Olson will intern at the White Plains (N.Y.) Journal; Courtney Pitts will intern with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune; and Christine Scalora will intern with the Kankakee (Illinois) Daily Journal.
Brandon Olson of Lincoln is a senior news-editorial journalism major with concentrations in English, history and political science. He has worked as a sports clerk for the Lincoln Journal Star; moderated live Web-based sports chats for the Lincoln Journal Star; and worked for the Daily Nebraskan. He plans to graduate in December 2012.
Courtney Pitts graduated in May. For the past two years she was a UCARE research assistant and worked with Professor Sue Bullard on her digital editing textbook. She held a copy editing internship with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and a news reporting internship at the Norfolk Daily News. Last year Pitts was the managing editor of the Daily Nebraskan. She is a member of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) and Investigative Reporters and Editors. Pitts won a first-place Nebraska Press Association award in feature reporting for a three-day series on the state's Sex Offender Treatment Program.
Christine Scalora of Lincoln is a junior news-editorial journalism major with concentrations in political science and history. She has previously worked for the Daily Nebraskan and for the Office of Undergraduate Studies at UNL. Scalora is a member of Kappa Tau Alpha honor society, the Honors Program at UNL and is on the Dean's Honor Roll. In the future, she would like to work as a government and politics reporter.
The copy editing center at UNL is one of seven DJNF training sites. Dr. Charlyne Berens will train sports editing interns beginning in May. She is a professor and associate dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
ABOUT DJNF
The News Fund is a national foundation supported by Dow Jones & Co., Inc., Dow Jones Foundation and others within the news industry with an emphasis on education for students and educators to promote careers in journalism. DJNF partners with the top journalism schools and provides paid summer internships in business reporting, news, multimedia and sports copy editing for juniors, seniors and graduate students. Each student will attend a Center for Editing Excellence prior to the internship. Interns work a minimum of 10 weeks and those returning to college will receive $1,000 scholarships. The paid summer internship program began in 1962.
Brandon Olson
Courtney Pitts
Christine Scalora