The Dean Rea Internship Program offers students at the University of Oregon and Lane Community College the opportunity to gain practical experience through a months-long internship program at Lookout Eugene-Springfield. These paid positions will focus mainly on aspiring journalists, as well as creating opportunities for marketing, business and IT students.  Instead of the old model of finding a student and then figuring out how to use them, this program has pre-defined channels that allow us to attract the best talent at the UO and entice them into the program through a path that meets their interests and expertise.

We aim to raise $50,000 to support five seven-to-nine-month paid internships for local students.

We will welcome, involve and train this next generation of news business people right in our newsroom at 771 Willamette in downtown Eugene. Our newsroom of 16 – the largest Oregon news staff outside of Portland – will work closely with these students.  We will seek ambitious interns who are committed to working alongside our team, to both build our community impact and their own skills. 

Overall, we will build a new program that recognizes the journalistic drive and teaching of long-time Eugene journalist and professor Dean Rea. Dean is a local treasure, as he works with Lookout into his tenth decade. Between his tenure teaching journalism students at the UO School of Journalism and Communications and his days as an editor at the Register-Guard, he has made so much of Oregon’s best journalism possible. He is a teacher, a mentor and a lifelong committed journalist, in all the best senses of that word. For more than 50 years, Dean Rea mentored hundreds of Oregon journalists. He was inducted into the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication Hall of Achievement in 2006, the same year he was named the school’s Adjunct Teacher of the Year.

How to support the program:

You can support this vital new program with any-sized donation, and all support is tax-deductible. 

Any gifts of less than $5000 are best made here: https://givebutter.com/lookout-eugene-springfield

There, you can make your gift securely online by hitting the donate button. Just click on donate, pick an amount and then you’ll see a dropdown where you can pick the Dean Rea program to support. Thanks in advance! 

(Or you can send a check made out to our nonprofit partner, Local Media Foundation. Checks should include “Lookout Eugene-Springfield Dean Rea Internship Program” on the memo line. Checks can be mailed to Local Media Foundation, P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689-5033.)

For gifts of $5000 or more, please contact us or The Lenfest Institute, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, our fiscal sponsor, by writing Charles Jun at Lenfest: charles@lenfestinstitute.org

We’re glad to answer any questions on the program. For more information on how to support the new program, please contact Dann Miller or Ken Doctor.