The
University of Rhode Island
Department of Journalism
Spotlight:
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The staff was
friendly, helpful and insightful. They did not treat me as an inferior, nor
did they treat me as an outsider. I was given good stories to cover and everyone
was very forthcoming with suggestions, praise, and criticism.
This environment helped me feel right at home in the newsroom and allowed me to develop as a writer and as a person. I learned responsibility; no one checks up on you to make sure you are doing your work. The paper needs to get put out every week, and if that requires people to stay extra-late some nights, well that's what has to happen.
Working at a weekly newspaper made me question my career, which is something I am very happy about. I did not want to graduate and just take whatever job I could get. Now that I have a feel for what it is like to work full time at a newspaper, I want to explore more options and make sure that is what I really want to do before I commit myself.
Not that I have anything against the profession or the paper in particular, but it did open my eyes up to some of the other careers that I could pursue. One of the subjects I wrote a story on actually offered me an internship in the public relations department when I graduate, and that is something I will investigate.
In the end, I could not be more grateful to Kristen Cyr for allowing me to come in and develop my reporting techniques under her supervision. She is running a business, and for her to take her time to "show me the ropes" really means a lot to me. Everyone at the paper was helpful and contributed to my overall satisfaction with the internship as a whole. I feel like I have a whole new outlook on journalism and what it takes to be a good reporter, which is something you can only learn through first-hand experience. .