A portfolio of published work is essential to landing a media job or internship. Here are several tips for getting some of your work published while still in college.

Interns have a tougher time than anyone else with cover letters because they arrive in such a flurry and because all the candidates have such similar backgrounds. But there’s hope—and help.

Imagine this: Pretend there are no internships. None. They don’t exist anymore. What would you do instead?

As documents have moved from pieces of paper to digital documents, they become easier to store, sort and handle. Many media companies maintain internal or Web-based databases of digital resumes.

The tech community is all a-Twitter with the story of a candidate who booted a new job with Cisco by Tweeting about how the commute — and the work — would be dreadful. You guessed it. Someone saw the post and the offer appears to have evaporated.