Newspaper publishing

I don't know about the NYT specifically, but I can answer some questions generically.

1. Intern shifts will vary, anything from 4-8 hours in a day depending on the student's schedule. Maybe two shifts per week. A reporter will have a standard 8-hour shift but is considered a professional, so if conditions call for the individual to work early, stay late, or work a weekend, he will. The shift is only kind of a default. The work schedule will often be changed depending on what the person needs to do on a given day.

2. Interns occasionally get articles into the large urban daily in my hometown, though I'd be surprised to see it in the NYT. Maybe on the paper's Web site.

3. There is a reason why newspaper reporters end up publishing the occasional magazine article, showing up on TV, or writing a book. They don't get paid all that well and in a high-cost town like NYC, they're cutting it close on the budget. Probably worse now since the media is in an era of cutbacks. Spouse will certainly work fulltime.

4. Depends. Most articles are timely "news of the day" types of things and will show up in the next day's paper. Longer features could take anything from a few days to a few weeks. I know someone who teamed up with some colleagues for a great big feature that they worked on for months and it never saw the light of day.

5. No idea, but I bet you can Gooooooooooogle some photos.

6. Not sure specifically, but figure on dress shirt and tie for guys, particularly editors, and business casual for women. Sports guys and photographers don't dress professionally.

I can tell you that with budget/personnel cuts and declining circulation, the overall mood in most newsrooms is pretty poor these days.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

I've only ever visited a couple of newspaper offices in medium-sized cities, so I'm far from an expert, but as an outsider I'd definitely describe the atmosphere as frantic, a sort of controlled chaos. Too much work to get done and not enough hours in the day, which I think would be especially true in today's climate of cutbacks. They're running on pretty much skeleton crews. That said, most people I've met in publishing tend to be pretty laid-back, go with the flow types, so it takes a lot to get them rattled.