Når Mackenzie Weinger til sommer får sin bachelorgrad i historie fra University of California, Santa Barbara, får hun trods sit flerårige arbejde som assisterende redaktør på universitetsavisen The Daily Nexus svært ved at få en journalistisk praktikplads.

Ah, the dreams of a future journalist. Just a few months ago I was excited about graduating in a year and leaving my university newspaper behind for the ’real world’ of journalism. Yes, the world of countless layoffs, disappearing local papers and not too many opportunities and internships for cynical aspiring journalists still appealed to me – that is, until reality began to strike a few weeks ago.

Now, thirteen internship applications later and not one ’yes,’ I’m starting to regret the fact that I have not been maintaining a blog bemoaning the media’s present state or a YouTube.com account with videos of my expert opinion on American life. It’s just not my cup of tea, really. So I’m starting to wonder - where is this field going, and will I be able to figure it out before some blogging, podcasting, html aficionado renders all my writing and reporting skills entirely obsolete?

I’ve heard all the trendy words to describe journalism’s (currently spiraling) future – the importance of ’new media’ (although isn’t all media somewhat inherently new, and thus this term is dumb?), ’networked journalism,’ and my personal favorite, ’dead.’ Now, of course, I do not adhere to the ’dead’ philosophy, but neither do I think that journalism should be relegated to simply being found online or that news should always be bottom up experiences with journalists simply serving as moderators rather than creators.

But, obviously, it doesn’t matter too much of what I think since my thirteen applications have come up empty for me. I’ve applied to it all – from my local paper, which unfortunately is a huge, metropolitan paper, The Los Angeles Times, to papers in the middle of America (not the most exciting, or even livable, place). There’s a sense of desperation coming in, but I’m not about to start a blog just to show I understand new media, and know how to whine on the Internet to anyone interested.

Even though at the moment it seems I’m not what America’s newspapers are looking for, I’m not going to be giving up on my media dreams. I will be taking advice I’d rather not have had to do if newspapers weren’t in such a terrible financial state – I’m going to start applying to television and online news and sell myself without any shame.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and swing an internship, or maybe I’ll have to resort to Youtube.com. In the end, I won’t mind because I just love the news. So, excuse me, I have to go fill out that fourteenth application and develop my online presence.

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