• Real work experience

  Meredith Corporation partners with Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication to create new programs.

• This isn't your typical internship program.
  
  First of all, you shouldn’t call what the Meredith Corporation and the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication have developed an internship.
  
  "The students are apprentices with Meredith, which are virtually equivalent to a staff position," said Michael Bugeja, professor and director of the Greenlee School.
  
  Five Greenlee students are the first participants in the Meredith Corporation's Apprentice Program. The students work up to 20 hours a week at Meredith's international headquarters in Des Moines. The internships are yearlong assignments and are modeled after a similar program that Meredith has with Drake University.
  
  Having the students for more than just a summer or a semester makes the program unique. It's also a major selling point for Meredith.
  
  "A few years ago we were looking at our internship program at Meredith and decided we needed to make it better," said Art Slusark, vice president of corporate communications and government relations for Meredith. "We just didn't have the students here long enough. As soon as their supervisors would become comfortable with them, their internships would be completed."
  
  That's changed with the new Iowa State program.
  
  "By keeping the students around here for a longer time period, it not only gets them real work experience, but their supervisors know they are going to be there and do the job," Slusark said.
  
  The Meredith executive says the Greenlee apprentices work on Meredith publications in a closely supervised program during which they are paid standard internship rates and earn up to four hours of credit over the course of the two semesters. An additional hour of credit is available through a weekly seminar course taught on the Iowa State campus.
  
  Meredith is the publisher of some of the world’s best-known magazines including Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies' Home Journal, Successful Farming and American Baby. The corporation employs 2,800 people nationwide in magazine and book publishing, broadcasting, interactive media and marketing-related services.
  
  "This is real work that the students are doing," Slusark said. "We're giving them projects and holding them accountable as well. This has a tremendous value to Meredith, getting real contributions from these students."
  
  Some of those real contributions have come from Kelly Kunkel, a senior print media, magazine track major, who has joined the Better Homes and Gardens staff. In the short time she has been a staff apprentice, she has worked on several pieces for upcoming issues.
  
  In the April issue she will have a major spread, for which she wrote the copy, on a retired couple from Washington state and their backyard garden.
  
  It took a while however for Kunkel to become comfortable as a Meredith apprentice.
  
  "It was so nerve racking," she said. "They trust you with a lot of responsibility and I just want to do a good job."
  
  In addition to Kunkel, the four other Meredith apprentices are Alicia Clancy, Successful Farming; Emily Oliver, Better Homes and Gardens Online Interactive Media; Dana Schmidt, Creative Collection; and Sarah Sinclair, Family Food Collection.
  
  Like Kunkel, Clancy has already had some great experiences as a Meredith apprentice.
  
  "I knew that I wanted to work in agricultural journalism, and Successful Farming is the best agriculture publication there is," she said.
  
  In her apprenticeship, Clancy has been writing for the magazine and publication's web site on a daily basis. And she says her editors have given her a free hand.
  
  "They pretty much say 'here's your project, now run with it,'" she said. "They really do let me take part in the whole process."
  
  "It's really a student’s dream to come out of college with these kinds of clips and contacts," said Deb Gibson, the program's coordinator at the Greenlee School.
  
  Gibson, whose position is funded by Meredith, and Marcia Prior-Miller, associate professor and magazine emphasis head in the Greenlee School, meet with the students during a seminar every Tuesday morning. Gibson also travels to Des Moines to meet individually with the students and their supervisors on a weekly basis.
  
  "The seminar is proving to be an incredible environment to work with the students," Prior-Miller said. "It's a great opportunity for them to ask questions - not only questions about the type of work they are doing, but normal, everyday, on-the-job questions."
  
  The apprenticeship program is just one component of the partnership between Meredith and the Greenlee School. Meredith has provided funds to renovate the magazine space in Hamilton Hall for the future home of "The Meredith Center for the Magazine."
  
  The two entities are also developing the Meredith-Greenlee PEER (Production, Editing and Electronic Research) Program.
  
  Gibson will supervise an editorial outsourcing service staffed by five to 10 students who have excelled in courses with applicable content. Students also will be paid standard hourly internship rates and those that log 225 hours in the PEER Program will receive two college internship credits.
  
  "The PEER Program will also be unique to journalism programs," Bugeja said. "Our preliminary research shows that no other journalism school in the nation has a student-based outsourcing service."
  
  PEER will again benefit both Greenlee students and the Meredith Corporation. Meredith typically uses freelancers, not only to write articles that appear in their publications, but also to serve as background researchers and copy editors.
  
  PEER will allow Greenlee students to gain those types of real world experiences.
  
  Eventually, the PEER Program and the apprenticeship program will work hand in hand. Students will become apprentices in their junior year and then move into the PEER Program.
  
  "This is a model we would like to see other Greenlee students have the opportunity for in other emphases in the School," Bugeja said. "You can't get better prepared for a career in journalism than to start out with an apprenticeship in a world-class, professional organization like the Meredith Corporation."

Meredith apprentices Emily Oliver, Kelly Kunkel, Alicia Clancy, Dana Schmidt, Sarah Sinclair.

Kelly Kunkel with Better Homes and Gardens deputy features editor Stephen George.

Alicia Clancy interviews an Iowa State faculty member during a presentation at the C6 virtual reality system.

Around LAS
December 6-19, 2004