The University of Rhode Island
Department of Journalism

Our intrepid intern's summer with 'Today'
Nov. 4 , 2003 -- Senior Ryan Sloane shares the tales of his "summer vacation":

Allow me to start by saying that when it comes to internships, I am a veteran. I've done an internship somewhere for every year I was in school. The summer of my freshman year, I worked as a copy editor and layout assistant at the largest chain of local newspapers on Long Island. Two years ago, I worked out of the United Nations for CNN in New York. And this past summer I got another "promotion" of sorts. I worked as an intern for NBC's "Today Show," the No. 1 morning news show for the No. 1 network in the country. Truth be told, I would have liked to have gone to the beach a little more.I should start by saying I did have an "in." I have an aunt who was a producer for Phil Donahue when he had his NBC talk show in New York about 15 years ago, and I originally applied to his show on MSNBC. I updated my resume and was about to mail it when the show was cancelled. I didn't even get the stamp on the envelope.

I realized I needed a job, so I played phone tag through the NBC interoffice system until I got someone at the "Today Show." I couldn't get anyone else to return my phone calls, so I applied for a job at the Today Show, a lofty goal, yes, but if I didn't get the job there, I'd still have gainful summer employment working in my parents' store in the stockroom.

So I mailed the "Today Show" a copy of my resume and a letter saying how much experience I have and how much more I could get if I had the opportunity to spend four months with them. A few weeks later -- on a Wednesday -- I got a phone call asking if I could come for an interview. I told them I could be there on Friday. I drove home to New York and took the train into Manhattan for the interview.

The commute took a half hour, and the interview was about half that. The woman I interviewed with told me she gets about 200 resumes and applications a year and she only interviews about 20 people for the intern job. And of the 20 interviewees, only eight get hired. A month after the interview, I got a phone call from the show telling me I got the job.

Fast forward to the first day of work. I met the other interns and all the producers at "Today." We got a whirlwind 15-minute tour of the studio and the five floors that make up NBC News. After we got our security clearance passes, we sat at our desks and waited for something to happen. I found a desk and I was about to check my e-mail when an associate producer came up to me and asked me to help him with a story -- a feature on Paul Shaffer, the bandleader for David Letterman's show. He gave me a box of about 50 tapes of old Letterman shows and told me to watch them all and look for anything fun or interesting he can put in the story. That was when I realized I had the greatest job in the world.

The rest of my time there wasn't all like that. There was a lot of really fun stuff, but there were also a lot of crap jobs. And I mean a lot of crap jobs. But with all my internship experience, I found that if you do a good job on the lousy assignments, when something fun comes down the pike, the person working on it will immediately think of how great a job you did on that other story that was no fun at all.

So I researched and logged all the tapes for Katie Couric's interview with Hillary Clinton about her new book. I was the fact checker and researcher for the Bob Hope birthday special. I worked on stories on the 100th anniversary of flight and the 50th anniversary of "Playboy" magazine. But the highlight of my summer was when I was the associate producer and researcher for Jimmy Buffett's performance at the "Today Show Summer Concert Series."

And yes, I did get to meet Katie, and yes, she is as sweet in person as she appears on television.

Aside from the experience I got on the production side of the show, I also had the opportunity to sit at Ann Curry's news desk and make an audition tape. But none of that was even close to what happened to me as I came to the end of my time at "Today."

It was my second to last day there and I didn't want to take on any new assignments. I didn't think it would be fair to leave a producer in the lurch when I left for school. So I was sitting at the front desk sorting the mail, typical intern grunt work, when all of a sudden the power went out. And it didn't come back on. I was stuck in New York at the "Today Show" during the Blackout of '03.

30 Rock was evacuated, and everyone on the "Today" staff was told they could go home, but the show was going to need people to stay for the night and put together an entirely new show from scratch. So while professional television producers and production assistants decided to go home for the night, I stuck around the office. Partly because the Long Island Railroad wasn't running, and I had no place else to go, but mainly I stayed because I am an idiot.

We wrote the entire three-hour show longhand, by candlelight. In the blink of an eye, we became Amish Network News. We got those candles, by the way, along with other supplies of food, water etc. by bartering "Today Show" T-shirts with the people at the pizzeria and the corner souvenir shop because they decided to jack up their prices. No one at the office had any cash on them, and we had a feeling no one would take a check.

I stayed at the office all night and worked the phones, calling the police departments of the other cities affected by the blackout to see what they knew and what they were doing. I worked straight through the night and left about 1 p.m.on Friday afternoon. I've been in touch with the producers of the show since I've left and they've all told me the same thing. They said I should be proud of the job I did over the summer, and especially during the Blackout. They all said I set an intern record with the longest last day in intern history, and a few of them even went so far as to write me very nice reference letters.

I keep in touch with all of them because in several months I'm going to need a job. I only say that half jokingly. I will need a job when I graduate, but the real reason I keep in touch is because they're all the most incredibly knowledgeable, professional and overall nicest people I've ever had the opportunity of working with. Even if I didn't get to beach this summer.