{"id":30256,"date":"2026-06-23T12:17:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/?p=30256"},"modified":"2026-06-24T11:24:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T15:24:30","slug":"blog-why-internships-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/2026\/06\/23\/blog-why-internships-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why internships matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Strautmann<\/em> | Published June 2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Maddie Malhotra (COM\u201919)<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Malhotra wanted an internship to supplement her classwork at BU, so she \u201cwasn\u2019t learning about photography in a vacuum,\u201d she says. Having her work \u201clive and breathe\u201d out in the world was key to her development. Shooting hockey for The Daily Free Press<\/em>, or Freep<\/em>\u2014learning how to cover a single team throughout a season\u2014was one way to achieve that; interning as a food photographer at the Improper Bostonian<\/em> was another.<\/p>\n

But when Malhotra\u2019s peers at COM and the Freep<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

So she was crushed, she says, when she applied for the first time in 2018 and didn\u2019t get the role.<\/p>\n

\"MaddieAs it turned out, though, \u201cthat rejection was one of the best things to happen to me,\u201d Malhotra says. \u201cIt 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.\u201d The next summer, she got the coveted spot.<\/p>\n

That internship ended in 2020\u2014because 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom day one, this was the real thing. These were photos that were going to be logged into the history of the Red Sox.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s important to get an internship early on in college, Malhotra says, because it teaches you how to work as a member of a team. \u201cIt immediately felt different working with four or five photographers, trying to complement what the other person was shooting,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing exposed to internships early on opens your eyes to the many paths you can take,\u201d she says. \u201cI never wanted to be a food photographer, but it still informs what I do at the Red Sox\u2014taking 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\u2019t expect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Boston Red Sox photographer shares her journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25867,"featured_media":30263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,5],"tags":[95,829,594],"featured_img":"\/alumni\/files\/2026\/06\/Maddie-Malhotra-thumbnail.png","agg_excerpt":"A Boston Red Sox photographer shares her journey.","agg_title":"Why internships matter","media_icon":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30256"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30269,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30256\/revisions\/30269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}