Why internships matter

By Jake Strautmann | Published June 2026

Maddie Malhotra (COM’19) always knew she wanted to turn her interest in photojournalism into a career. She also knew that getting internships would be her bridge. So, from her first year at BU, she focused on finding one.

Malhotra wanted an internship to supplement her classwork at BU, so she “wasn’t learning about photography in a vacuum,” she says. Having her work “live and breathe” out in the world was key to her development. Shooting hockey for The Daily Free Press, or Freep—learning how to cover a single team throughout a season—was one way to achieve that; interning as a food photographer at the Improper Bostonian was another.

But when Malhotra’s peers at COM and the Freep nudged her toward a photography internship with the Boston Red Sox, she thought its storytelling possibilities sounded perfect. And when a professor gave her the name of a former student who was then the team photographer, she had a contact to help with this critical next step.

So she was crushed, she says, when she applied for the first time in 2018 and didn’t get the role.

As it turned out, though, “that rejection was one of the best things to happen to me,” Malhotra says. “It lit a fire in me to assess why I wanted to work for the Red Sox specifically, and I got powerful feedback from the manager of photography.” The next summer, she got the coveted spot.

That internship ended in 2020—because the Red Sox hired her as a staff photographer. Today, Malhotra is the manager of photography, conceptualizing and executing photo shoots for Boston Red Sox publications. She also hires summer interns.

“From day one, this was the real thing. These were photos that were going to be logged into the history of the Red Sox.”

It’s important to get an internship early on in college, Malhotra says, because it teaches you how to work as a member of a team. “It immediately felt different working with four or five photographers, trying to complement what the other person was shooting,” she recalls, noting that it also expanded her idea of what she could do as a photojournalist and how she could apply her journalism degree.

“Being exposed to internships early on opens your eyes to the many paths you can take,” she says. “I never wanted to be a food photographer, but it still informs what I do at the Red Sox—taking photos of Fenway Franks, for example. Especially early on, you might not get your dream internship, but those smaller internships can really educate your process in ways you wouldn’t expect.”