The reputation of a newspaper often is associated with the number of journalism awards the newspaper has won over the years. In New Jersey, for example, the state press association's Better Newspaper Contest honors each year's best journalistic performances at its member daily and weekly papers. It's no secret that the depth of experience an intern will receive varies from paper to paper and that dailies give students somewhat different experiences than weeklies offer. That may mean covering a school board meeting one night and writing about a traffic accident the next afternoon. Also, many large dailies ask their interns to help veteran reporters gather background information for articles.
Some papers hire interns to work exclusively as copy editors, photographers or graphic artists.
Interns at large papers, especially dailies, are likely to have their articles edited by several people before they appear in print. Weeklies and small dailies depend heavily on their interns to produce a large quantity of articles on every topic. It isn't unusual for an intern at a weekly to receive front-page bylines immediately after starting to work and to write dozens of articles in every issue. In addition to reporting and writing news and feature articles, interns at small dailies and weeklies may be asked to take photos to accompany their articles, do some copy editing or to help with laying out the paper. The quality of the experience during an internship or first job after graduation will depend on the commitment of the newspaper to help prepare a student for his or her future in a newspaper career.