Great Mentorship and Learning OpportunitiesThe good thingsGreat internship and learning opportunities. People there in smaller departments are very willing to guide you and help you along to better your own writing and interviewing/journalistic skills, and send you for assignments to practice putting these skills to use. In my department, there were also often review sessions to learn more in-depth about the different nuances the job requires, which will greatly help if you want to pursue a journalistic career in the future. Furthermore, most of the hours are extremely flexible as long as you get your work done, and you get to pitch your article ideas when you have any and see them on the papers daily.
The challengesSome departments may not focus as much on their interns, and throw them out into big assignments such as murder cases right when they start, so the learning curve might be steep, but people are very willing to help out when necessary. However, making mistakes in the actual, published article too often may result in a bad impression of you, or you might even get fired to preserve the journalistic integrity of the firm.