Most people I know who were Ivy League undergrad would have applied for internships where ever in the country (LA, NY, Washington) and would have worked in those cities for three months over the summer.
Unlike the Mitchum internship, many newspaper internships ARE paid. I worked two summers at my hometown paper and because it was unionized I was paid a starting reporter's salary, which I easily lived off of for the summer.
Yes, my point is, the writers had it right and Rory had it wrong. Further, it's expected that you have internships. You need the cliips (printed articles) from those newspaper internships to get your first job. Most papers aren't going to give you your first job just from what you did in college. It's really unheard of.
The online mag was more realistic because she worked her connections to get that.
But for the traditional newspaper route, it works this way: 1) college paper 2) college editorship 3) summer internships after sophomore and junior years, which provide you with professional clips to get..... 4) first job or journalism graduate school.
Yes, it didn't make any sense she got the editorship (or even graduate on time for that matter) missing that whole semester. It seemed like a desperation move, on the other editors' parts, after the Paris fiasco.