Interning at a Weekly Newspaper

By Michael Lee

My belated hunt for a summer internship was stressful, to say the least. My final semester was halfway over and I was relentlessly looking. I could hear Paul Schreiber, one of my journalism instructors at Stony Brook University, reminding our class that internships are essential to obtaining a career in journalism and that finding an internship is harder after you’ve graduated.

It just isn’t fair.

But as Schreiber says, “It is what it is.” If you’re starting late in your college career, your hunt will be harder.

So what about students who decide on journalism late in their college careers?

It also was stressful because I was missing three credits I needed to complete my upper-division college requirements. Some knucklehead-for-an-academic advisor told me during the fall semester that I was “good to go.” Then I got a letter, mid-spring, saying that I was not going to graduate. This graduation surprise was kind of a blessing in disguise. Since I was still recognized by the university as a student, and would receive credit for an internship, which many employers require, my chances seemed more likely to get an internship.

Originally, I wanted to pursue a magazine internship, like Rolling Stone. I had absolutely no interest in news reporting. But internships at these big magazines are harder to get because hundreds of other college students want them too.

That’s when I started aiming low in addition to aiming high. I went on the Internet and searched “weekly papers” in Nassau County, where I live, and found Anton Community Newspapers. I sent my resume via Yahoo! Mail, went in for the interview, and I got the internship.

One thing you’ve got to know about weeklies is that won’t get a lot of help in comparison with a large newspaper. If you want to intern at a big daily like Newsday, don’t be like me – apply for the internship as soon as possible. And it’s never too early to start planning how and when you will pursue your internship.

* * *

Anton Community Newspapers consists of 18 local newspapers in Nassau County. The bulk of the papers are based in Mineola. Everything is done there – even the printing. Anton is one of the few local chains on Long Island that has its own printing press.

Here’s what the weekly experience is like.

My editor, Margaret Whitely of New Hyde Park Illustrated, writes solely for her paper. “Each newspaper has its own editor and the editor is a jack of all trades,” Whitely said. “In essence they do the reporting, they cover the stories, take the photos and make sure they edit all the releases that come in.” Whitely said that she rarely misses a community meeting. “If I’m going away, I’ll schedule my vacations around the meetings.”

“Schools understand that we’re a one-man show and because of that, sometimes they will give us the information they want to get out to the public,” she said.

Whitely said that summer interns have more responsibilities than fall or spring interns. I figured that the fall intern would have more to cover because of varsity games, parent-teacher-association meetings and so forth. But Whitely said that news in the summer, while less than in the fall or spring, is pivotal for the following school year. It affects the faculty and residents, as boards of education prepare new school budgets for their respective districts.

Over the years, Whitely said, she has had 10 to 15 interns, and that some have continued to pursue careers in journalism. “One intern works for the Washington Post,” she said. “They’ve gone on to do really good things and they learned a lot. It launched themselves into going into journalism or public relations.”

I also reported to another editor, Joe Rizza, who writes for the Three Village Times and Mineola American. He suggests that interns shouldn’t listen to people who tell you that journalism is not a good career.

“If it’s something that interests you, you should go for it,” Rizza said. “There’s always a need for good writers. I think that a journalist is going to find out about the job that it’s about people and everyone has a story and that there are other things besides salary. For example, you do a story on someone who perished on 9/11 and the parents say you did a good job, that’s stuff that money can’t buy.”

Whitely wants interns who are reliable, enthusiastic and want to do the work. Although prospective interns can be high school students, she prefers college students because she feels they are more serious about the internship. She recalled one high school intern who was to cover a “really big story that would benefit him” at New Hyde Park Memorial High School. “He didn’t show up to the meeting, didn’t call. I never heard from him after that.”

Whitely recommends that interns strengthen their research methods. “Once you have a background on how to structure an article for a newspaper, you would be more valuable to a public relations company,” she said. “Many editors here have gone on to P.R. work, mainly because it pays more.” Rizza also recommends that interns become familiar with page design programs like QuarkXpress.

* * *

My first assignment was at the Manor Oaks elementary school in New Hyde Park. The board needed to reassess the school budget because the community had rejected it twice. The members discussed their options with about 60 community members. Whitely accompanied me to the meeting.

I’ve sat in on club meetings at Stony Brook and also club events, both of which are a little more fun, but this particular type of meeting was not fun at all. Nor was I expecting it to be. It’s the real world with real people with real issues. The conversations between residents got a little heated. I sat up front scribbling in my notebook trying to get every bit of information I could.

I was a little intimidated to write the article because I had those bitter residents in the back of my head and was thinking, “These people are going to read the article.” This isn’t Journalism 388 where Schreiber reads my feature and writes all over it with his blood-red pen and I can rewrite it for the next week. Plus, I didn’t know how my editor would evaluate my writing the first time out.

* * *

The more you’re in it, the more you know. The more you know, the more stories you can propose. I must confess that parents I was covering became downright frustrating to me this summer. For instance, there was a group of parents who complained about the school bus situation at the Center Street School in Herricks – that their houses missed the new measurement to qualify their kids a bus seat in the fall. The meeting, which was scheduled from 7 to 8:30 P.M., lasted until 10 P.M. because of their bickering. My editor asked me to write an article about it.

At the same time, there were Board of Education members who were retiring at the end of the 2005-2006 school year. More features, I thought.

I am particularly proud of my feature story on a paraplegic. I met him briefly at a community event because I had to take pictures of all the winners at the 28th Annual New Hyde Park Run. He was Peter Hawkins, 41, and he won in the wheelchair division. It wasn’t until the week when I was in the production office that Whitely told me the abridged version of his story.

She said that Hawkins, a high school jock, got into a fatal car accident back in high school because everyone, including the designated driver, had been drinking. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. After many years of self-loathing and guilt, Hawkins got back on his wheelchair and found his inner athlete through the wheelchair races. As Whitely told the story, she had a look on her face like it was the most tragic story ever. Well, I’ve got to write about it, I thought.

* * *

The biggest challenge as an intern for a weekly paper was to make the stories interesting. Board of Education meetings, while important, became increasingly boring to me. But I had to challenge myself and find some enthusiasm because this was my beat for most of the summer. If it’s any consolation to the future community newspaper intern, I became more open-minded about my community. Some residents attend every meeting. Their dedication kind of inspired me to write for them.

I always wrote with the community in mind as well as the “invisible people” who usually read the newspaper. When large amounts of money were involved, I made sure I put that in the first or second paragraph, especially if it had to do with the budget. When someone from the board was retiring, whether it was a trustee or a superintendent, I’d put it in the first paragraph.

* * *

Schreiber, my internship supervisor, also helped me out. I pestered him every week because of the many problems I ran into involving the methods of interviewing or the way I should write a story. It’s important to seek information from people with experience. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know until I got into the real world of journalism. That holds true for anyone in any field and it’s important to know.

At Anton there was a lot of down time. I remember having nothing to do for a week and a half. But that’s when I re-read my articles and proposed new features.

What you want to get out of the internship is up to you. Yes, I had to pay $630 because I took this internship for upper-division college credits, so I felt I had better learn something. Beyond that, and internship is a big step toward your future.

And I feel I got a lot out of it.

____________________________________

Michael Lee graduated from Stony
Brook University in 2005.

A local judge wanted my editor to have me write a feature about his law intern, a foreign exchange college student. My editor told me that the judge billed her as a prodigy. I was expecting a major story, but in the end the judge’s intern was no different than any other foreign exchange student trying to fit in and work as hard as possible to adapt to the American school system. The story was probably the most difficult to write because I had to work around my expectations. One point: Question authority. Another: Almost everybody or everything can be a story if you look for it.

It’s polite. Secondly, they’re going to know your face because you’re attending meetings every week. These people are valuable when you need to check facts. I didn’t properly introduce myself to a superintendent at one of the school budget meetings and when I called his office to fact-check, he said, “You were at the meeting? I didn’t see you – let’s get acquainted next time.” Of course, there wasn’t a next time. I wanted to write a feature on him because he was retiring, but after three weeks of calling his office, leaving messages with his secretary, he never called back. Would it have been different if I had introduced myself?

You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “The answers you receive are as good as the questions you ask.” Now this is just my personal opinion, but I’ve done four features at Anton and it could have been the questions I asked, but I noticed that people’s personalities played a large part in the answers they gave me. Some people are closed off, but some are open. For instance, the feature on Peter Hawkins, the wheelchair athlete, went rather well – he was open to anything I asked. On the other hand, I did a feature on a retiring assistant superintendent in another district. He didn’t want to reveal his age, gave blunt answers to personal questions, and only was open to talk about his work. As for the foreign exchange student, it was difficult to decipher what she wanted to get across to me. For example, she said that as an intern she wrote the judge’s decisions in court cases. Thankfully, I checked with the judge, who said, “I wouldn’t put in your article that my interns write my decisions for me!” Don’t feel bad if someone just doesn’t cooperate. It’s not your fault. It’s just how the person is. Maybe they have a grudge against the newspaper you write for.

Sometimes stories may get personal, especially for someone of an ethnic background writing about someone of the same ethnicity. In the case of the judge’s intern, I worried that my ethnicity would play in the minds of readers because she was Asian, too. Since there was nothing particularly special about her, was I writing this story because of her ethnicity rather than finding the “best “ intern story? In the end, I reported and wrote the story, just as I would any other story. So don’t think in terms of your ethnicity if it comes into play. It doesn’t help you at deadline time.

Don’t be afraid to propose a feature story. Making work for yourself helps you in an internship. Don’t be lazy and do the least amount possible, as in getting your assignment, doing it and that’s it. Anton, as with most weekly papers, had slow news weeks in the summer. And when they didn’t have any meetings, that left me with no assignments from my editor. If you are focused on what is said at meetings – even if it seems boring at the time – you can use that to propose features later on. I’d say I created made 30 percent of my work that way this summer. And beyond getting the experience and a byline, it’s nice to hear from the people you featured say something along the lines of “Good job” or “I really liked your article.”

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