Now back at Columbia, where she expects to earn a master’s degree in December, Sarah isn’t sure what her next move will be. Her unpaid internship at the Sun-Times brought her a lot of recognition and a talk with Editor Don Hayner, but no job offer.
The clips that helped her with the Headline Club’s stipend came from a tiny community newspaper in northern California, where Sarah started as a volunteer and ended up as news editor after two years.
But the Connecticut native and Smith College graduate hopes to stay in Chicago, where she worked as a fundraiser for off-Loop theaters for several years before she moved to California.
She’s currently reporting for a hyper-local website that one of her professors at Columbia started, covering the Austin neighborhood.
The Headline Club gives $2,500 grants to student who has accepted unpaid internships. One grant is available for an intern working primarily in print or editing and another for a broadcasting intern. Only one award was given in 2010 because there were no applicants for the broadcast grant.