It seems as if the internship environment is more competitive than ever, and as an editor at my college newspaper, I've devoted hours to helping my staffers stand out from the rest of the pack. We've pored over cover letters and resumes. We've gone through clips, carefully selecting the best ones. We've made phone calls and used search engines to find every available internship opportunity. We've put together hundreds of internship packets.
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But while this strategy has worked for some, many of my most promising staffers are still waiting around. An assistant sports editor who blogs during games, writes like a maniac and produces impressive sports page designs, for example, hasn't gotten a single call back. A sophomore reporter who writes wonderful in-depth and deadline stories is one of the most dependable workers I've ever seen. He is also still waiting around.
How can I keep my fellow students motivated when they're working their butts off and getting no attention from recruiters? How can I help them stand out? I know that editors would fall in love with many of my staffers, as I have, if they just gave them a chance.
Lisa 
Your group has gone far beyond what most do to help each other. So, before providing suggestions, I'd like to try to give you some perspective.
First, this is a very tough year for internships. There just aren't as many internship being offered this summer. Extrapolating from the American Society of Newspaper Editors'
employment census figures released March 27, we see that they found 200 fewer internships, from 2,795 in 2006 to 2,595 in 2007. Also,
J-school enrollment is up, says professor Lee Becker and his research team at the University of Georgia.
Some excellent internship candidates have had a harder time this year than they did before, when they had less experience.
The second piece of context: The efforts you and some others are undertaking at your school will pay off, but not as quickly as you hope. If your successors can sustain this, it will make a difference. This effort is new at your university and is starting to put it into contention with some universities that have very active career services departments. But it has to be sustained. It takes years, rather than semesters, to establish a reputation that helps pull people into jobs.
What would I do? Aim for the jobs that will be in high demand in the next 10 years: new media, copy editing and business reporting.
Coming Wednesday: This sophomore is happy to have landed an internship at a big newspaper, but he can't really work for nothing, and that's what they've offered.
A former intern at my paper got her internship by...
