The End!

My internship with the Times came to an end on Friday, July 17. I spent the final week of my internship with the Online Team. As has been the situation almost my entire internship, I came on board at a great time.

Lee Enterprises, the company that owns the Times, mandated that the company change the content management system for their web site, so when I began my time with the Online Team they were just getting the hang of the system. I really enjoyed working with them because they worked together as a team really well. We all bounded ideas off of each other, and any time we found something new we stopped to show others how to do it. I felt like I learned a lot this week that will help my students when they begin their web site next school year. Robert, the online editor, and I talked about how the newspaper is working to make sure the web site doesn't overpower the newspaper. Instead, they two play off of each other. Many of the stories in the newspaper, for example, include a refer that ask readers to go onlione for more information, latest updates, video, etc.

During this week, I was also able to spend a day with one of the staff photographers and go with him on two assignments. Both required that he not only take pictures, but take video as well. This was a great example for me to take back to my classroom on how journalists are expected to know how to do more than one thing in the field. Our first assignment was to shoot a weekend events video in which the Times' magazine, Shore Magazine, editors talked about different options for fun things to do over the upcoming weekend. Our next assignment was to shoot video of sailing lessons being offered through the East Chicago Marina on Lake Michigan. This was a really cool assignment. We talked to some of the people taking the lessons, and we found out that the people taking the class are students at East Chicago Central High School, and they are taking the class in order to get extra credits in school and either graduate on time or early. East Chicago can be a rough city, so I was excited to see how well the kids did on the boat. The instructor used all sailing lingo, and the kids knew exactly what he was telling them. It was a great story that we ran in print, but also posted the video online to tell more of a story.

I'm really going to miss working at the Times. It's a very positive place where the people truly care about their media. I gained a lot of valuable experience that will definitely benefit my classroom. I look back on the past few weeks and I still can't believe everything that I have done. How many people can say that they covered a murder case, talked to people who were close to Michael Jackson, read through the news before anyone else, put together five issues of the newspaper and worked on a redesigned web site all within four weeks? I'll definitely have some stories to take back to school. :-)

It's been a while. . .

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but getting used to working nights has been more difficult than I thought! Friday night ended my week working the copy desk. I was really impressed with how exact and picky the copy editors are about what goes into their paper, and the experience on the copy desk has definitely helped me learn more about journalistic style.

Today I start working the design desk. I'm a little nervous about this because this is the area in which I think I need the most work. And, on top of that, they use a different program, Quark Xpress, than I am used to. I think it'll take me a couple of days to really get used to the program, but I'll eventually get the hang of it.

Dennis asked me to post links to all of my stories from nwi.com, so here they are:

Valpo resident who named Jackson Five recalls time with Michael
Jackson's Gary roots bring back memories
Family, friends gather to remember Jada
'Public Enemies' cars tour region
Hot under the collar