You should attempt to arrange an interview at your hometown paper or a paper where you might be visiting during a school break. Call ahead or write to ask for an interview. Walk- in interviews rarely result in an opportunity to talk to the editors who do the hiring. A job fair also is a good place to meet recruiters from different news organizations. Your best immediate prospects may be at smaller newspapers.
Larger papers like to track promising beginners for a few years.
Make arrangements to stay in touch and send samples of your work to a larger paper that interests you. At a job fair, you can talk to editors from larger papers and learn about their requirements and expectations. This will give you an opportunity to think about long-term goals. Ask recruiters what you need to do to become competitive for a job. Discuss the comparative rewards of different newspaper career paths.