To be completely honest, I’ve been a little disappointed in
myself in terms of the amount of work I got done.
The Reader allows interns to pitch stories as much as we’d
like but they still need to be up to the Reader’s standards. I found pitching
to be incredibly hard. Not only is the Reader a weekly paper, meaning they don’t
do breaking news like a daily newspaper, they are also alternative, meaning
there is a different voice and tone to their stories from the typical news
story.
I had trouble getting a hold on both sides of this. Because
I’m an intern, I wasn’t able and didn’t have the time to do a full feature of
any kind but because it’s a weekly paper I also wasn’t able to just do the
quick breaking news write-ups an intern might do at the Sun-Times, for example.
Additionally, when I did turn in work it was usually cut up pretty good because
I wasn’t used to the writing style. Actually, after talking with Mick, it
turned out that I was trying too hard to match the style and it was harmful to
the clarity of my writing.
Mick and I talked about the work I was doing and he said
that my reporting was still solid and that’s what was important. I’m still proud
of the few clips I did write, they are indeed solid bits of reporting and I
learned a lot in the process of putting those stories together.
In the future, I think I’m going to just go with any idea I
have and not tie myself down with trying to find perfect ideas. I’ve learned
that editors are very receptive and happy to help adjust an idea into something
workable if you give them a starting point.
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