Jillian- Fifth (and last) Post

Hard to believe this is the last post!

My internship ends on Friday, and the last two weeks have been sort of bittersweet. On the one hand, I am kind of glad it’s over, because it wasn’t what I expected and I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I would. But on the other hand, I learned a lot about my writing and my goals, so that is really important, a worthwhile endeavor.

Plus, my Ireland article made the front page this week. That in itself was pretty awesome.

I spent most of my time the last two weeks organizing briefs and writing them up. One thing I actually hate here is the system of organization—they use folders for the briefs labeled “Future” and then a few with specific issue numbers. Then there is a third folder that is basically just another “Future” folder, and it is a serious pain in the ass when writing to see three press releases on the same thing in all three folders.

On the one hand, putting the same thing in three places ensures that it won’t be overlooked, so from a PR perspective, it works. But from the point of view of the person entrusted to not only organize but write-up the briefs, it is rather annoying. On Tuesday I was writing some for this week’s issue and in all three folders, certain briefs had different information, so that required extra fact checking, and when I would call to ask, these people would say that they had sent an e-mail with the most recent information and told the papers to disregard previous messages.

Not the most productive way for the other organizations to conduct themselves, but it would be so easy to avoid that kind of delay on my end if there was a better system. Like maybe flag an e-mail as soon as it come in and throw it immediately into the correct folder. Or mark something as already received, so that if you get another message from the same source, you can go through the folder and trash the other information that is no longer relevant.

A big thing I noticed this week is the level of computer literacy. After myself and the other intern, who is the editor’s son, there is one writer who is in his late twenties, then after that there is at least a ten-year age gap between him and the other workers. Maybe this is just my age talking, but it seems so much simpler to organize things on computers as opposed to by hand. On Tuesday nights—the night we go to print—much of the staff is here until after midnight working on the paper, and a part of me wonders if it wouldn’t be simpler to put all the articles and ads in place on a digital document and make changes that way as opposed to using highlighters and stickynotes on a physical copy.

So maybe my feelings are a little more bitter than sweet, actually. I am looking forward to having this done, and it has given me a lot to think about regarding my own plans for the future, but that’s what an internship is supposed to do, so I guess in that respect, mine was definitely a success.