I am a high school junior hoping to obtain an internship in journalism. How can I write a convincing cover letter without having any prior experience?
To tell you the truth, your chances of getting an “internship” in journalism as a high school student are slim. You may be better off writing for a blog. If you have interests in sports, SB Nation allows readers to submit stories and will sometimes publish them… a decent number of people get their starts that way. Alternatively, you could find civic-oriented blogs in your area and start writing for them. For example, there are many outlets available for someone who would go to a local government meeting and writing about a contentious topic (maybe the local zoning board is having a hearing about tearing down a historic building or something along those lines).
If your high school has a student newspaper, consider writing for that. Some schools have excellent student papers and really give great experience!
Granted, I am not a journalist, so I could be off base here, but I think your best bet to get into journalism is to research what good journalism is and then to start doing it, rather than looking for an “internship” to bolster a resume.
@chrisw
I’m actually not looking into becoming a journalist in the future, I just really like to write, and am trying to find an internship opportunity so that I can actually do something useful with my writing and gain some experience. It’s not really something that I’m trying to do just to bolster my resume.
I’ve recently applied and have been accepted as a writer for hirewriters.com (it’s basically a ghostwriting network) - it’s not exactly an internship, but I think I’m going to start off with that to start. I don’t really know where I’m gonna go from there Lol