General elections chaos

This week was the general elections, which were very big for Allegheny County, as key roles were on the ballot, such as Allegheny County Executive and District Attorney. It was very crazy in the newsroom this week.

On Tuesday, I met with the freelancer that I am working with on the parental alienation use in the family courts story. We started putting together a draft and made plans for final interviews to finish the story. I will be meeting with a mom next week to talk about her experience, which I am both excited and nervous about, as the topic is very complex and heavy, but I believe this experience will be very beneficial for me. I also continued working on talking with local community organizations on how they are responding to rising antisemitism and Islamophobia amid the Israel-Hamas war. Then I also helped create some drafts for stories that were going to be posted throughout election night as results were rolling in, as well as some Instagram posts.

Thursday was another busy day. I started by meeting with someone from Carnegie Mellon University working with pro-Palestinian organizations on campus to talk about what college students have been experiencing amid the war and how student organizations are supporting students. It was also a pretty heavy conversation, but I am glad that I can help amplify these stories and hopefully have some sort of impact throughout storytelling. I also did a fact-check on a story another intern did. For the weekly meetings, we discussed the upcoming award season and the team's journalistic experiences that led them to PublicSource. The intern meeting was very helpful, as we mainly got advice from other reporters on how we can make the most out of our final semesters. I hope to stay in touch with the team next semester and try to strengthen these connections.

Overall, it was a pretty good week, and I am excited to wrap up some of my final stories and hope to work with PublicSource in the future.