Graduating senior Journalism major Tori DeJournett is one of only 86 college students chosen nationwide this summer to serve in a paid Dow Jones News Fund internship.
DeJournett is among the 13 of those interns who also will attend complementary digital-media training at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.
“Tori exemplifies the ambitions, talents and grit of our graduates,” said Journalism Program Director Brett Oppegaard. “She has taken advantage of the many, many opportunities we offer our Journalism students, and she has made the most of those.”
DeJournett earned her associate’s degree from Windward Community College in 2022 before transferring to UH Mānoa and joining the Journalism program. She quickly earned internships developing her skills in television news (Hawai’i News Now) as well as in writing for a newspaper (The Honolulu Star-Advertiser) and for a magazine (Hawai’i Business Magazine). She also has been a regular contributor to the university’s newspaper, Ka Leo, and has had her pieces published in other venues, including for Civil Beat.
“I am very grateful for all the opportunities that I have been able to partake in through UH Mānoa’s journalism program,” DeJournett said. “The skills and knowledge that I have gained from the professors and mentors in the journalism program will serve me well throughout my career.”
More than 1,000 students applied for the Dow Jones News Fund internship program this year, including students from major public universities, the Ivy Leagues, historically Black universities and Hispanic-serving institutions. More than 70 percent of the chosen interns are women.
The ASU residency that DeJournett will attend will be led by Michael Wong, a veteran journalist and a former Cronkite career services director, and Shelby Slade, an editor at The Arizona Republic. After that training, DeJournett will have a paid residency in the newsroom of Hawai’i Public Radio through the rest of the summer.
Even though typically fewer than 10 percent of applicants nationwide get accepted into this Dow Jones News Fund program, UH Mānoa’s Journalism students have earned spots each of the past three years, with Keya Rivera getting placed by DJNF with Pacific Business News in 2023 and Krista Rados, at Hawai’i News Now, and Nate Bek, at Geekwire, in 2022.
“These achievements show what UH students can do, toe to toe with the best students in the nation,” Oppegaard said. “If you want to study Journalism, and you want to do that in Hawai’i, you can get a great, nationally competitive education in this field. We also are home-growing in Mānoa the next generation of our communityʻs most-trusted storytellers and truth tellers.”
