JOMC students interning halfway around the world

By Chris Roush

Many UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media students hold internships during the summer, honing the skills they learned in the classroom to better prepare them for the real world after graduation.

Kristen McAvoy, a senior from Rocky Mount, N.C., is just doing her internship on the other side of the globe.

McAvoy and doctoral student Oscar Guerra are working this summer at China.org.cn, an English-language news site based in Beijing. McAvoy is editing opinion pieces and writing some columns to get clips, while Guerra is teaching the staff how to shoot and edit video for the website.

“My experience at China.org.cn has been absolutely incredible,” said McAvoy. “I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to gain journalistic experience in a country that has such a rich history and culture. Everyone here has been so welcoming, and I will cherish this experience forever.”

The school has had a relationship with China.org.cn for the past six years, sending students and faculty to Beijing each summer. In return, the news organization sends reporters and editors to Chapel Hill to take classes as visiting scholars.

The exchange is beneficial to both. The students get professional experience in a foreign country, and the China.org.cn staffers learn skills that give them a competitive advantage in the growing Beijing media market.

Each year, one J-school faculty member travels to Beijing to hold training sessions with the China.org.cn staff. In 2011, lecturer Winston Cavin worked with staffers on basic story structures.

This year, I’m teaching business reporting techniques such as finding news in government filings and how to write CEO profile stories. The students have been timid at first, but now they’re opening up and asking questions.

For example, when we discussed writing executive compensation stories, one staffer asked why a CEO would want to be on the board of another company and get paid to do so. It’s a basic question that required a complex answer, and it helped everyone in the class understand the relationship that boards and CEOs have.

Moments like these in the classroom and in our students’ internships provide invaluable cultural experiences for everyone involved in this exchange program.??"Immersing yourself in a different culture is initially difficult, but the level of understanding you develop and the friends you meet along the way are well worth the challenges,” said McAvoy.

The China.org.cn representative for the relationship is Jozy Zhou, who coordinates the interns and the visiting professors and helps them adjust to life in Beijing. Former Carolina journalism dean Richard Cole started the program and coordinates it from the U.S. side.