Day 1 at the Times

I just finished my first day as an intern with the NWI Times, and I am over-the-top impressed with the paper! I started off the morning by meeting with the Times' Managing Editor, Paul Mullaney, and he went over the inner workings of the newspaper. Something that I found interesting was the fact that they call their newsroom a "media center," so I was very conscious of that all day, because I grew up calling it a newsroom. He then took me on a tour of the entire branch, including the different sections, departments and production area. Paul then passed me off to Olga, who is the editor of the Enterprises stories and their free Latino edition called Viva. She explained their system to me and explained the meaning of Enterprises stories, which are stories that are anything but spot news. She then let me sit in on a weekly meeting with all of the other editors where they discuss the big stories they are working on right now that will run in the weekend issues of their paper. Olga took me out to lunch, then handed me off to one of her reporters so I could shaddow her on an interview. Carmen was a great person to shadow. She's an excellent interviewer and knows how to make contacts with people so she can call them if she needs to quote them for another story. She actually keeps a "Little Black Book," if you will, of all of her contacts! My last task of the day was to sit in on a training session for the reporters on how to use the Times' new online Content Management System (CMS) for their website, since I will spend my last week working with the online team.

I was SO impressed with how the paper is run. The editors work very hard to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as it can. They have very specific ways for making sure that every story is edited at least twice, three times when it is published on the web. From everyone I met today, I could sense that they all expect everyone to be 100% committed to their jobs and to do the best job possible. They also expect everyone to work together as a team; people are willing to share stories, ideas and responsibilities with everyone else.

Tomorrow, I will meet with Paul again in the morning to visit the Human Resources department and get some of the logistics of my internship worked out, like creating a username and password for myself for their system and an e-mail address. After that, I will visit their other branches in Crown Point, Valparaiso and Portage. These branches are much smaller than the Munster branch, but they often have their own sets of reporters to create the four different editions of the paper (Southern Lake County Edition, Nothern Lake County Edition, Portage Edition and Valparaiso Edition).

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I will be doing some actual reporting, which I am really excited about. I will post again tomorrow after my shift.