2025 Media Mayhem draws more than 100 recruiters to connect with students and recent grads

UC Berkeley Journalism’s 6th annual Media Mayhem Career and Networking event in March, co-hosted by the school’s National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) student chapter, connected more than 120 recruiters with students and recent graduates about jobs and internships across the news industry.

Recruiters came scouting for interns, fellows, freelancers, full-time hires and students to consider for future openings.

“The most exciting thing for me was how so many of the recruiters said they walked away with enthusiasm for our students and new hope for the industry,” Betsy Rate, director of career services said. “In some cases, recruiters made on-the-spot internship offers.”

Since the widespread adaptation of remote video conferencing during the COVID pandemic, Media Mayhem has been entirely virtual, saving recruiters the cost and time associated with travel and expanding the range of participating newsrooms.

Recruiters from newsrooms across the country participated in 891 scheduled interviews in 92 breakout rooms over four hours. Participants included members of Berkeley Journalism’s class of 2024, 2025 and 2026 as well as Berkeley undergraduate journalism minors.

As a professional school, making it a convenient and seamless process for industry professionals to participate has proven critical to the success of the annual event showcasing students expertly trained in cutting-edge audio, video, multimedia, photojournalism and documentary filmmaking, as well as those specializing in narrative writing and investigative reporting.

The event was organized by Rate and led by the tech team of Mark Ingles and Chris O’Dea, with support from staff volunteers Blaine Jones, Christine Schiavo, Lia Swindle, Mallory Newman, Michael Paz, Riah Gouvea and Massa Wells. Volunteers from NABJ included Cecile Egbele, Marion Apio, Daniel Ekonde, Audy McAfee, Skylla Mumana and Victor Ochieng, along with undergraduate student Anna Tran.

Many thanks to the participating news organizations including Bloomberg News, Reuters, USA Today, The Athletic, The Los Angeles Times and many more.

Media Mayhem was founded by the school’s NABJ chapter in 2019.
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