Editor’s Note

This week, the Tucson Weekly is welcoming five new interns into the fold.

In the coming months, Weekly readers will get to enjoy the work of student-journalists Janice Biancavilla, Britain Eakin, Tim Glass, Debbie Hadley and Kellie Mejdrich. They’ll be following up on the fine efforts of our summer intern crew: Celia Ampel, Katie Cunningham, Ariel Flowers and Allie Leach.

It’s interesting that eight of these nine interns are women. These days—when actual journalism jobs are fewer and farther between, yet journalism schools keep on pumping out graduates—it’s common for college-journalism programs to be dominated by women.

In the spring—when, somewhat shockingly, only two of our five interns were women—I asked some of those interns why they thought eight of the Weekly‘s nine incoming interns were women. Tyler Kurbat jokingly speculated that male interns were afraid to follow in the awesome footsteps of the male spring-intern crew. Ahem.

Then Shain Bergan—a talented chap who actually managed to nab a job with the Northwest Arkansas Times shortly after his Weekly stint—half-jokingly theorized that the intern gender disparity has something to do with the relative laziness of dudes in college: Why would a male college student want an internship that includes work, as the internships at the Weekly do?

Despite the theorizing by Tyler and Shain, I still have no idea why journalism schools, and therefore internships, are attracting so many more young women than young men. In any case, please welcome Janice, Britain, Debbie, Kellie and that rebel, Tim.

This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2011.