Student Wins Copy Editing Internship from Dow Jones

From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 10:42:09 EDT

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    May 21, 2003 == MEDIA ADVISORY

    Cathy Guiles has a predilection for proofreading, and it's taking her to Huntsville, Alabama this summer.

    Guiles, who will graduate from Calvin this weekend with a major in English and a minor in journalism, has landed a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund (DJNF) copy editing internship at The Huntsville (Alabama) Times. She is one from a pool of 108 college grads and undergrads who will be interning at 79 news organizations nationwide as part of the DJNF's summer internship program.

    To earn her DJNF berth, Guiles had to pass an editing test (administered by Calvin professor Don Hettinga), edit and write headlines for two articles and submit an essay and transcript. After graduation she will leave for two weeks training in copy editing at the University of Missouri before reporting for 10 weeks of work in Huntsville on the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift at the Times, an afternoon paper.

    Hettinga, who teaches English and journalism, says being accepted to the DJNF program is a coup for Guiles. "It's a nationally-competitive, quite prestigious award," he says.

    Guiles began copy editing on her high school newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland, and then brought her knack for grammatical nitpicking to Calvin. "I heard about it (Calvin) at a Christian College Fair," she says. "I wanted to go to a school that had good academics and a strong Christian orientation in the classroom."

    After serving on the staff of Chimes (the Calvin student newspaper) as a section editor last year, Guiles talked her way into a head copy editing position on the newspaper this year. "It's just like being a section editor, but you have people working under you ¯ quote, unquote," she says. "I like getting to getting to read everything before it comes out in print and getting to write headlines and captions ¯ that's fun."

    Last summer Guiles was part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) Summer Institute for Journalism and served as a Washington correspondent for The Carroll County Times in Maryland.

    Hettinga says the future is bright for Guiles. "She's a really diligent, hardworking student," he says. "She's worked at Chimes and has done the Washington program. I think this (summer internship) is a terrific stepping stone for her to a job at a newspaper."

    After completing her internship, Guiles hopes to spend a couple of years in journalism. Eventually, she'd like to attend graduate school for English, serve in the Peace Corps or go to seminary.

    ~written by media relations staff writer Myrna Anderson

    -end-



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