Sophie Young, ’23, a senior in the School of Media and Journalism, has always admired the New York Times and everything about it (including the Wordle).
“It’s a lot of what I consume,” she says. “I get three different New York Times emails in my Inbox every day, and I’ve been reading them for a long time.”
So, the opportunity to be part of it is something she considered “absolutely unreal” — but it will soon be a reality as she prepares for a summer internship as a Multi-Platform Editor at the New York Times.
As part of her Editing class last fall, she took a test and applied for the competitive Dow Jones News Fund internships, a program that places top journalism students in internships at some of the nation’s top media companies. For Young, this turned into an interview with the New York Times, and she secured the internship.
As part of the Dow Jones News Fund internship program, Young will complete an immersive pre-internship training with other Dow Jones interns, focused on headline writing, search engine optimization, news judgment and visual design. Then, she’ll move to New York City for the summer, where she’ll edit content across the New York Times platforms, from social media to printed pieces.
Young says she enjoys many parts of journalism but has a special love for editing. This semester, she’s editor-in-chief of The Burr, Kent State’s longest running student magazine.
“I have a staff of about 20 and I view myself as a mentor and also a peer to them,” she said. “It’s been a great experience. … Our theme is ‘the community issue.’ We did this because we want to talk about how the communities that we’re a part of make up our identity and how we can create a shared space and a support system for each other. We have a variety of different people from different communities writing for us this semester. I think that the combination of that in one issue of our magazine is going to be great for a variety of people.”
This experience, other jobs she’s held in Kent State Student Media and a previous internship at the Dayton Daily News, have all prepared her for her internship at the New York Times.
“I definitely couldn’t have done it without Student Media,” she said. “I started out in Student Media in three jobs last year, and I think all of those helped prepare me.”