The piles of applications have been sorted and saved, having been considered by the various editors at the Daily Cal. We could only accept so many candidates, and it certainly isn’t fun to let fellow students know that they will not be working for the Daily Cal this semester. But the development editor’s position should not be to turn people away from working for the Daily Cal or away from the field of journalism.Instead, the development editor should help students produce the best application possible.Having looked through nearly half of the 200 applications received this semester and many of the 300 applications last semester, I would like to share a few impressions on what makes a strong, memorable application.

1. Write unique cover letters. If you have done something fun or unusual, if you have experienced something different from other people, include it! It does not matter if these experiences are directly related to journalism. Doing something out of the ordinary makes you a better journalist simply because you can relate to more people and have more to draw upon in your writing. Read the rest of this entry »

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The first sentence of the Daily Cal’s mission statement is as follows: “The Daily Californian exists and functions to provide an opportunity for the students of the University of California to receive training in journalism and all aspects of newspaper production.”

We take this role seriously. There is no undergraduate journalism program here at UC Berkeley, as Stephen wrote about earlier when introducing the Daily Cal DeCal, but that doesn’t mean there is no demand. The Journalism School offered five freshmen or sophomore seminars this semester, with spots for fewer than 100 students. We had enough interest in the Daily Cal DeCal to fill more than double our original capacity of 40 students.

But what makes us qualified to teach journalism? While the Daily Cal as an institution has been around since 1871, our most experienced editors have only been around for three or four years and may have no professional training experience. At the Daily Cal we treat this training as more of a cooperative experience. No one, in any position, pretends they know everything about their jobs, and we regularly seek out expert advice.
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The beginning of a semester is always a challenging time for the Daily Cal. There are more than 100 employees working in the editorial department, and because all of them are students, we have to overcome high turnover rates inherent to being a student-run organization.

For those interested in joining the Daily Cal, this means there are going to be opportunities available. The first two weeks beginning with Welcome Week is the most important time for our recruitment. We had our first recruitment meeting Aug. 24, and we’ll have our final one this Friday at 4 p.m. at our office.

This summer, development editor Bryan Thomas redesigned the application, which was part of a bigger plan to improve how we track the status of our applicants. The application deadline this fall is Sept. 5, giving editors time to review before the Sept. 14 hiring deadline.

While section editors will hire based on the current needs of their sections, we stress that it is OK not to have previous journalism experience. The Daily Cal is looking for responsible and dedicated individuals who are looking to improve.

“Prior experience is a plus, but we all realize when we get here that we have a lot to learn,” said Thomas, who interviews applicants for the news sections.

Good luck to all the students out there on the new semester! For more information about our recruitment process, please visit apply.dailycal.org.

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We’re a couple weeks away from the start of the fall semester, which is an important time for Daily Cal staff members as we prepare for the rigors of daily production.

But in addition to publishing a daily newspaper, The Daily Californian serves as a training institution for students interested in journalism. This is an especially important responsibility for us because UC Berkeley does not have an undergraduate journalism program.

Over the years, we’ve prepared many employees for careers in journalism. Currently, there are Daily Cal alumni working in places such as the Washington Post, Sports Illustrated and NBC. This summer, two of our graduated seniors—last year’s editor in chief Tiffany Hsu and former opinion page editor Amina Khan—landed internships at the Los Angeles Times. We’re very proud of their achievements, but we hope to do an even better job of training students in the future.

This fall we will debut The Daily Cal DeCal: Intro to the Practice of Journalism. It is an introductory journalism course aimed at providing students with practical experience to understand journalistic principles. Having a structured training program ensures students will get a view of the various components of a newsroom and how they work together. We will draw from the expertise of industry professionals, current editors and Daily Cal alumni for this course.
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