Dow Jones News Fund Names King’s a Top Sending School for National Internship Program

Since King’s expanded its major offerings to include Journalism, Culture & Society in 2017, both the faculty and students involved in the program have brought national recognition to the College’s strength in teaching multidisciplinary news reporting and writing.

Since 2016, several King’s students have been selected for the Dow Jones News Fund internship program, one of the most prestigious paid journalism programs in the nation. Each year, hundreds of students compete for around 80 slots, and this year 3 students joined the string of King’s alumni who have secured an internship through DJNF. King’s faculty who teach journalism classes include Paul Glader, Clemente Lisi, Alissa Wilkinson, and Dr. Robert Carle. Special adjuncts have included photojournalist Chelsea Matiash of The New York Times and legendary news designer Mario Garcia.

For the third consecutive year, Glader has received a grant to lead the DJNF business reporting program and two week-long training intensives at New York University for 27 of the DJNF interns. Among others, he accepted Anne Sraders (MCA ’19), Anastassia Gliadkovskaya (MCA Dec. ’18), and Natallie Rocha (Spring 2019 alumna of the NYC Semester in Journalism) into his business reporting program. Following the skill-building intensive at NYU, Sraders and Rocha began an internship with Fortune, and Gliadkovskaya started hers with Industry Dive in Washington, D.C. As part of their training, interns learned practical skills, from using Microsoft Excel to reading SEC filings. Gliadkovskaya says that the training was thorough and relevant; during her first week on the higher education beat, one of her projects involved analyzing trends in the latest quarterly earnings reports of for-profit colleges. Her later assignments incorporated other skills honed by her DJNF training, including filing Freedom of Information Act requests, developing new sources, and managing Industry Dive’s social media.

Another King’s student, Bernadette Berdychowski (JCS Dec. ’19), was placed in an internship at Financial Planning through the DJNF digital media program. She spent a week training with industry experts in Arizona to learn the finer points of multimedia storytelling, and now she reports alongside King’s alumna Jessica Matthews (Business Administration ’18), who is an associate editor for Financial Planning.

These Dow Jones News Fund fellows credit Professors Glader and Clemente Lisi for their mentorship, encouragement, and professionalism in preparation for their DJNF internships. Gliadkovskaya says, “Professor Glader was committed to engaging students both in and outside of the classroom, from hands-on reporting assignments with serious responsibilities and encouraging students to join the on-campus paper to helping his students land internships starting their very first year.”

Berdychowski adds, “Both Professor Glader and Professor Lisi have brought in great guests who have shaped my thoughts on the journalism industry. I will use those ideas and concepts in my job to maintain the integrity of journalism. In addition, the staff has also taught me that journalism is more than just being a good reporter but a good person in general.”

A number of King’s students interned through the DJNF program in previous years: Michael Sheetz (PPE ’17) interned at TheStreet.com in 2016 (he now works at CNBC) and Jess Mathews interned at Financial Planning in 2018, where she now works. NYCJ alumni Nate DiCamillo (Olivet Nazarene University), Blake Alsup (University of Mississippi), and Annabelle Blair (Taylor University) participated in DJNF internships in 2017 and in 2018 and are all now employed in newsrooms full time.

King’s ranked number five in the DJNF’s roster of top sending schools In 2018-2019, tied with Columbia University and alongside other state colleges with huge journalism programs. Glader adds: “If you include the NYCJ students we rank even higher. It shows that we are a top program nationwide pound for pound.”