Writers get jobs on the strength of their skills and experience.

The problem for most beginning writers is that they are just that, beginning. A new writer’s skills need honing and he or she certainly lacks experience or even any way to prove to a potential employer that taking a chance on a newbie would be wise.

But don’t start lamenting just yet. What you need to do is start building a portfolio of "clips." Clips can be print or broadcast pieces you’ve had published or aired. There is a Catch-22 here, though. What editor will assign an unproven writer to produce a piece for them?

An editor with an intern, that’s who. Internships are often a new writer’s best introduction to their chosen career. Good internships generate clips and forge contacts with writers and editors who may later serve as references, give tips on jobs, or even, one day, hire the former intern.

People who are still in graduate school need not wait to start an internship. If your university has a public information office (sometime also called media relations), you might approach them about internships. Most universities will have a "media" link on their homepages. Contact information for science writers in the public information office will be listed there. Take one of them to coffee and learn about the job. They may tell you that they sometimes take interns, but you wouldn’t get paid. Normally I don’t recommend accepting unpaid work, but this is an exception. You need some writing samples to show to editors who are offering paid internships.

You may actually have an inside track on the people already working in the office. Ask all of your graduate student and post-doc friends about papers they have ready for publication. If a paper has been accepted, but not yet published, you have a golden opportunity to inform the public information staff about it, before they may have gotten wind of it.

Try your hand at a press release. Again, the media section of your university’s home page should have examples of press releases that you could use to learn style and format for your attempt. Most press officers are very busy and will be glad to have an extra set of fingers to bang out press releases. Even if they don’t use your release, you might at least get some free editing suggestions and make a contact who might give you references for other positions and get your foot in the door if they are looking for an intern later.

Campus newspapers and radio stations may also be looking for people to produce content for them. Most will be staffed by undergraduates majoring in journalism or English, so a life sciences graduate student could be a rare commodity. You’d be learning right along with other students so you needn’t feel self-conscious if you fumble a bit.

One great internship opportunity for people still in graduate school is the AAAS Mass Media fellowship. The fellowship, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science), sends scientists to work at media outlets for the summer. The purpose is to foster better understanding between scientists and the media, but it’s also a terrific way to learn whether science writing is really a career you want to pursue. (AAAS also takes two interns a year at Science and has a minority science writing internship. For more information, visit www.aaas.org/careercenter/internships/.)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where I work, hosts a Mass Media fellow each year. Fellows may also work at magazines, NPR outlets, newspapers and sometimes even TV stations around the country. The AAAS sends resumes of five to eight finalists to each media outlet. The outlet ranks the candidates and sends back a list of its top three. The AAAS coordinators then match the candidates with the media outlets in a process that is a mystery to me.

As someone who has been involved with selecting fellows, I look for people who have shown they are self-starters by taking jobs at campus papers or interning in the public information office. I also look for a conversational tone and strong active verbs. Don’t get caught in the passive voice that scientific papers are written in. I also like it when a prospective fellow includes good direct quotes from the researchers. It shows that the person is not afraid to get out and do interviews and recognizes a good turn of phrase.

I did my internships at the Dallas Morning News and at Science News. The Morning News no longer has a science section, so an internship there is not likely to focus science journalism any longer. Science News offers three internships each year. The magazine is located in Washington D.C., a science journalism hub, and many of the elite of the science journalism world are alumni of its internship program. It’s a great experience and you can make terrific contacts. www.sciencenews.org/pages/internships.asp.

Some internship opportunities are open only to people enrolled in science writing or journalism programs. Others just want good writers.

You can find a list of newspaper internships from the American Society of Newspaper Editors at www.asne.org/internships. California papers may list their internships with the California Newspaper Publishers Association at www.cnpa.com/outreach/interns. The New York University journalism program has an extensive list of internships at journalism.nyu.edu/careerservices/internships/postintern.html. I should stress that these are not science writing internships, for the most part, but general assignment positions. The Detroit Free Press also has a very good internship page with advice about preparing your resume and interviewing, etc. www.freep.com/legacy/jobspage/interns/index.htm

Science writing internship information is available to student members of the National Association of Science Writers. The organization also sponsors an internship fair each year at the AAAS annual meeting. NASW’s web site contains advice about getting started in science writing too. www.nasw.org/resource/beginning/

Some people do several internships to build skills in different fields, such as print, radio and web-based media. Boston has been a center for science documentary making and people interested in TV broadcasting or documentary style may have several internship opportunities available there (be warned if you’re from another part of the country: you face stiff competition from students in the Boston University and MIT science journalism programs for those positions.)

Once you land an internship, make the most of it. Write about as many different aspects of science as you can. It increases the number of jobs you’ll have suitable clips for and helps you get comfortable interviewing scientists in fields outside your area of expertise. You also learn to get up to speed quickly on something you knew nothing about. Take the opportunity to talk to the science writers and editors at your publication or broadcast outlet. Most are more than willing to share advice and help you improve your reporting and writing.

A cautionary word about what internships are not – they are not guarantees of a job working for the media outlet. They are intended as training programs, and as such, should provide you the opportunity to do real writing, reporting and fact checking. Interns should not be treated as gofers. Your job is to improve your portfolio, not fetch coffee or dry cleaning.

After a successful internship, you will have a portfolio that will help land you a staff job or a freelancing gig.