Last summer, Wilkinson College student Kiana Kalahele (24′ B.S. Business Administration Marketing, B.A. English Journalism) interned at Hawaii News Now, having been selected to participate in the prestigious Dow Jones News Internship Program.

“I was able to cover and report on stories of my own interest, which was a lot of fun,” Kalahele said. “One in particular that I really enjoyed working on was about the Native Hawaiian cultural significance associated with a new public transportation system in Hawaii.”

Other stories include Kalahele’s piece on a Hawaii Cat Cafe, and architecture at Honolulu’s Skyline rail system stations. Hawaii News Now is the largest multimedia news organization for the state, consisting of television stations KGMB (CBS), KHNL (NBC) and K5.

“Working at Hawaii News Now was also such an incredible experience for me because my family and I had grown up watching it every day,” she said. “Being able to actually work at a place that I had such close childhood ties to was such an incredible experience and I even got to meet and work alongside a lot of the reporters that I had grown up watching.”

The Dow Jones News Internship program, which dates back to 1960, matches nearly 100 students with paid summer internships in different news publications across the United States. These newsrooms include the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Kiana Kalahele (right) at the news desk at Hawaii News Now.

Applicants are placed into five different cohorts that determine where they will intern: business reporting, data journalism, digital media, audience engagement and multi-platform editing.

Kalahele was placed in the digital media cohort for the Dow Jones News Fund. Before starting her internship in Hawaii, she spent a week training at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

“Having training at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at ASU was truly such a great time,” she said.

At ASU, Kalahele worked with other student journalists within the digital media cohort and learned a myriad of digital media skills. These included taking videos, creating newsletters, podcasting, coding, product management, SEO headline writing and graphic design.

At Hawaii News Now, she worked as a digital media intern. This position allowed her to write daily news stories that were published on the web.

Not only did she create graphics and reels to post on social media and help work on the Hawaii News Now noon podcast, but she also went out in the field with reporters to conduct interviews, take pictures, and write stories for Hawaii News Now’s TV broadcast.

Kalahele, now a Dow Jones News Fund alumnus, encourages students that are interested in journalism to apply to the internship program.

“Especially if you’re someone very interested in pursuing a journalism career in the future, I think participating in Dow Jones is a wonderful way to get your feet wet and really see if it’s something that you’re interested in pursuing as a career,” she said.

The application for the 2024 Dow Jones News Fund Internship is open now until November 16, 2023.

“The Dow Jones internship is something I am so proud and grateful to have been a part of,” Kalahele said.