Samantha Hildebrandt turned the channel to Fox 5 New York in high school and marveled over the glamorous, well-spoken anchors on her screen.

“Wow, that is the coolest job,” she said she remembers thinking.

After graduating from Stockton University this past May, Hildebrandt landed her dream job at the very same station. She said it's thanks to her work ethic, networking skills and the clips she published when she interned for Stockton University’s news partner, .

“Press of AC really did help me,” she said. “It gave me confidence in my writing and communication skills.”

A handful of students — “maybe two or three a semester” — intern with Press of Atlantic City, said Toby Rosenthal, a professor and Center for Community News Faculty Champion at Stockton University. The students are trained, get paid for their work and are often invited back for another internship by the editor of the newspaper, Buzz Keough.

Samantha Hildebrandt poses for a selfie with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he visited Stockton University in March, 2023. Photo courtesy Samantha Hildebrandt.

Hildebrandt was one such intern. She wrote more than 60 articles for Keough and even filmed a , despite Press of Atlantic City’s focus on written news.

“I did a weather report and it was so much fun,” she said, and added later, “Applying to places in the future, I wanted to show that I'm confident on camera.”

Hildebrandt’s internship, housed in the Communication Studies program at Stockton University, is just one of many local news initiatives at the university.

Another is the , which launched in 2022 and offers students a dedicated space to work on their stories, use reporting equipment and hear from journalists who are invited to give guest talks.

Rosenthal also teaches a practicum class wherein students write and publish stories for , a collaborative digital news project founded in 2018 that aims to supplement meaningful reporting in the area, Rosenthal said. She’s the director of the project.

“We’re not just going to tell a story. We’re moving away from, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’” Rosenthal said, referring to how omnipresent crime coverage can be. Stories of Atlantic City mostly runs community profiles and narrative-driven stories, she said.

The practicum helps students get the basic training they need to report and write a story in the community while breaking down barriers and assumptions in Atlantic City, Rosenthal said. Students get course credit and a stipend for the work that they get published.

“I also want to plant the seed that you should get paid for your work,” she said.

Hildebrandt knows getting paid for your work in journalism can be hard. It’s why, in 2020, she chose nursing first. She enrolled in a 10-month nursing program during the pandemic, passed her nursing certification and snagged a stable job so she could move out of her parent’s place.

“Within nursing, there’s job security,” she said.

Hildebrandt worked as a nurse for two years — and even continued part time when she enrolled at Stockton University — but it wasn’t what she wanted.

At the time, she said to herself, “I gotta go back to school and follow my dream.”

And two years later, she’s caught up to it.