Internships

All about interning at Outside Media Group.

First of all, we’re a small company with a skeleton crew. Don’t expect a fancy office with free lattés every morning. We work hard and we put out quality publications, but nobody’s getting rich (yet). Nope, we’re all overworked and underpaid. But we’re making magazines! That’s a fun job, no matter how you slice it.

Outside Media Group consists of six primary publications / media platforms: Outside Bozeman magazine, the Cast fishing guide, the Blue Light Guide, the Stalk hunting guide, Montana  Fly Fishing Magazine, and outsidebozeman.com. All of these involve a ton of work, with Outside Bozeman being the biggest and most labor-intensive. There’s no shortage of work to do or cool projects to get involved in.

We offer formal and informal internships. The former is where you get school credit; the latter is for fun and/or professional development. The choice is yours. Either way, do a good job and you’ll get resume-enhancing experience, great fringe bennies, and a letter of reference. The only thing you won’t get is a paycheck—our internships are unpaid. (We do offer fellowships for more qualified candidates, which are longer, more involved, and include a small stipend; ask us for details.)

An internship is not a job; it’s an education. An opportunity for you to learn. Teaching takes time and effort, so in exchange for our instruction, we expect you to reciprocate by performing some amount of gruntwork—basically the tedious stuff we don’t have time to do, yet still needs to get done. Some isn’t so bad; some of it sucks. But that, friend, is the lot of the intern.

We are human, though, with a modicum of compassion; and so we compensate interns in other, creative ways: gear, gift certificates, ski passes, free trips and courses, etc. Your level of compensation, and the overall value of your internship, depends on you. If you’re ambitious, communicative, and work hard, we’ll take good care of you and give you fun projects. If you’re flakey and unmotivated, we’ll make you vacuum the office and do data-entry until your fingers fall off.

Also keep in mind that the O/B crew is an irreverent bunch. Banter, ribbings, cussing, sexual innuendos, and political incorrectness abound. If you make a really stupid mistake, expect to get made fun of—by everyone. It’s a no-nonsense, tough-love environment and you gotta toe the line. That said, if you do a good job, you might just have more fun and find more professional fulfillment than anywhere you’ve ever been. And you’ll leave here with an enhanced resume and an enviable stockpile of outdoor gear.

There are seven different internships at Outside Media Group; here’s a brief overview of each position’s duties:

• Editorial/Writing. Writing stories, researching, proofreading, fact-checking, uploading articles to the website, updating editorial documents, writing ad copy, editing other writers’ work, helping the marketing department with copywriting, researching suitable reprints, data entry, and assisting the editors in various ways.
• Photography. Taking photos, scanning, editing, archiving, updating image libraries, updating photo-related documents, maintaining equipment, assisting the photo editor in various ways.
• Marketing. Helping conceive, prepare, and manage the following: promotions, contests, radio and print advertising, marketing flyers, subscription initiatives, and house ads. Also manage social media, event sponsorships, market research, and various other tasks.
• Design. Assisting the art director with ad design, magazine layout, idea generation, sales & marketing materials, subscription cards, house ads, and various other projects.
• Sales. Supporting the sales staff by preparing sales materials, organizing the client list, researching potential accounts, coordinating ad design between clients and designers, making preliminary sales calls, developing sales presentations, and various other tasks.
• Accounting. Data entry, invoicing, statement generation, A/P & A/R, and various other QuickBooks tasks. Also producing management reports and break-even analyses.
• Web/Video. Updating the website; creating videos of gear reviews, outdoor adventures, and house promotions; updating the YouTube channel; using social media to promote O/B videos and extend our reach.

Make no mistake: internships at Outside Media Group are not easy. We will expect a lot from you. But the overall experience is fun and rewarding—as long as you work hard and devote yourself to the job, that is. We’ve been in your shoes and we know exactly why you’re reading this. But we’re also very busy and the fact is, we don’t really need you. If you need us, we’ll respect that and reward both your ambition and your effort. But we’ll also give you the boot without hesitation if you’re not contributing. This is Montana, by God: no place for pansies, or for those who don’t carry their weight. The rest of us have earned the right to party.

If you think you might fit in here and like the experience, shoot us an email with a resume, samples of your work, and a short paragraph on what you most like about Outside Bozeman; and we’ll go from there.

—The crew at Outside Media Group

"I learned more from my internship at O/B than I did from my last semester at school." —Megan, photo intern, summer '22

Check out a very frank report from our most recent intern here.