First story in PublicSource

This week was my third week with my internship at PublicSource, and it was a great week because I had my first story published in the outlet.

Tuesday was a busy day. I watched a City Council meeting in the morning to see the final vote on legislation that I was covering for my first story. Then, I called some outside sources to wrap up the piece. I got to create and layout my story in WordPress. It was exciting to see my first piece come together. I also worked on updating the outlet's Board Explorer page, which is something we new interns were trained on last week.

While I did not work on Wednesday, I had an online meeting with the higher education reporter, as she is my designated mentor for this internship. I have never had a mentor in my previous internships, so meeting with another reporter weekly for about an hour is a new concept. I found myself getting a little frustrated at this point in the week, feeling like I did not fit in at PublicSource. At all my previous internships, all the stories have been handed to me, and the outlets were more breaking news based. PublicSource is much more in-depth, and a lot of the kinds of stories I covered in the past, do not relate to the outlet. While it is great to have the freedom in what I cover, it felt like too much.

Thursday was filled with a lot of meetings, such as talking with the health and mental health reporter, as that is an interest I have. I also met with my supervisor to get a clear direction on a story idea I had, and I felt much better about where I was heading for the overall internship experience. We also had our weekly lunch and learn and intern meetings, where we talked about interviewing techniques.

Here is my first story:

Pittsburgh council protects gender-affirming care from out-of-state prosecution