HNN

Intern Guidelines

Helpful Links

Welcome to HNN's Intern Program

If you are reading this page you have probably been accepted into our intern program. Congratulations! Only students who meet our high qualifications are admitted.

This page lists your responsibilities.

The first thing you should do upon enrolling in the program is to familiarize yourself with HNN. The website is divided into numerous different departments. The main departments are listed in a row at the top of every page. This is a list of our main departments:

News This department features news about historians and news about history. For the sake of simplicity, we divide news into two categories: Historians in the News and Breaking News. You can access this department from the drop down menu at the top row of buttons or from the news widget on the right-hand rail.

U.S. This department features op eds written by professional historians on topics concerning News at Home. Most of these pieces are written expressly for HNN. The op eds appear on HNN's homepage. (What's an op ed? It's an essay of about 1,000 words that takes a clear point of view. It's called an "op ed" because essays of this sort appear in the New York Times print edition opposite the editorial page. The Times's convention has become an industry standard.)

World This department features op eds written by professional historians concerning News Abroad. Once again, most of these pieces are written expressly for HNN. These op eds also appear on HNN's homepage.

History This department features op eds written by professional historians concerning particular topics in history. Historians like to argue about history. This is where we track debates that are currently taking place.

Features This department is a collection of a rich variety of special pages devoted to various subjects, including famous quotes about history, questions people are Googling, and hot topics.

Books This department features book reviews written by professional historians expressly for HNN.

Roundup This department features content found on other websites about subjects in the news. As we like to say at HNN, we surf the web so our readers don't have to. The department features excerpts from articles with links back to the original sources. Click here to read more about this department.

Blogs This department features a variety of blogs run by professional historians. Blogs gives readers the opportunity to commune with some of their favorite historians.

Intern Position

We offer interns an opportunity to show their stuff in a variety of ways, as you can see below. But the primary job of every intern is to promote HNN content on social media.

Every Friday you should send in a report reviewing your activities. Use a bullet format and be brief. All we need is an email, not an attachment. Send your reports to: editor@hnn.us.

Social Media

Pages we have a presence on:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Editorial Tasks

Interns may volunteer to solicit articles from historians (here is an example of how to write to historians), work with authors to improve articles, doing copyediting and proofreading. This work requires excellent judgment, strong writing and editing skills, and Web savvy.

Features

All interns are welcome to write features. These may include profiles of historians, cataloging the historical gaffes of politicians, or writing short fact sheets on topics in the news. Good judgment and writing skills are a must!

Thanks for your interest!

Rick

Rick Shenkman/Editor