If you’re a student journalist looking for a great opportunity (plus a free trip to Houston!), check out AAJA’s Voices program! What is it you ask? Here’s a brief description from AAJA’s website:
AAJA Voices is a summer-long journalism training fellowship for undergraduate and graduate students. Now in its 28th year, Voices provides aspiring journalists with career-ready skills to succeed in the continually-evolving media landscape and mid-career journalists management opportunities. By nurturing relationships between students and professional volunteers, Voices also gives students the opportunity to tap into mentors’ networks and begin their own long-lasting relationships.
We are looking for students who are interested in spending the summer producing a long-form, in-depth news project over the course of the summer. We want students who are excellent storytellers and who are interested in new technologies and story forms. Reporters, social media strategists, designers, developers, data engineers, podcasters, broadcasters, bloggers are all welcome to apply.
We are also looking for professionals who are interested in mentoring our students in their news project over the course of the summer. We are looking for professionals who are interested in growing as managers, training students, editing, and helping students network.
Students this year can expect to:
- Work in groups to complete a long-form news project or product that demonstrates their ability to do meaningful and in-depth work beyond what they would normally work on at a school paper or internship.
- Attend 10 remote trainings throughout the summer focusing on technical skills, reporting, design and development, networking, industry engagement, and more.
- Give a presentation of the student project to the AAJA membership at the AAJA National Convention in Houston. Check out last year’s here.
- Write short-form blog posts and manage the digital distribution of their projects.
- Develop their collaboration skills in order to thrive in a modern newsroom.
- Develop a deep and lasting relationship with their editors, their mentors, and their class.
- Attend recruiting events and have the opportunity to meet with professional journalists during intimate lunches and conversations.
Voices will be celebrating its 28th anniversary during the Houston convention. The program represents hundreds of successful alumni that have advanced into newsrooms around the globe and outside the media industry. Former Voices students have become Pulitzer Prize-winners, documentarians, public relations professionals, broadcast anchors and newsroom editors.
The 2018 Voices program will take place August 5-11, 2018 at the Marriott Marquis Houston in Houston, Texas. All selected participants must be available for travel (from within the U.S.) during those dates. The deadline to apply is Sunday, March 25 at 11:59 PM PST.
