Parades and Performances kick off the summer season

It is hard to believe that I am almost halfway through my internship; I still feel like I just got started. This week was another interesting week and provided a great number of new opportunities and experiences.

This Monday was Memorial Day, and as a part-time employee, I did not get the luxury of having off like most of the other staff. The editor and I attended a local parade in Hermitage, which I wrote a preview story for last week. The valley hosts a lot of parades, but this one has not been held in the area since 2018, which is why we went to it. I had never covered a parade before, so I struggled a little with what to write, as the main story is really told through visuals, like pictures. There was a ceremony held afterwards, which helped give me some better content than just who all was in the parade. I then wrote and edited the article for the nest day's online publication. Check out the full story here!

Tuesday was filled with phone tag, as I tried to set up either a phone call or in person interview for a preview story I was assigned to do, which is something I have been working on the two weeks. A local community theater is hosting several summer camps for students and adults, which the theater and paper wants to preview before the registration deadlines next week. I was able to speak with the vice-president of the group after I got out of work, which taught me that sometimes I cannot always schedule things during my set hours and that being a journalist essentially means always being on call. We also held a staff meeting to update one another on what we are working on, throw around ideas, and began to prepare for when our editor will be on vacation in the upcoming week. I also had a quick one-on-one meeting with the editor to talk about my latest articles, pointing out any AP style errors and working on how to use active voice and not passive.

On Wednesday, I finished up my story previewing some summer camps for school students at a local community theater, adding in quotes from my interview yesterday. I edited my story and published it online, and it will be in the next day's newspaper. Check out the story here! I started to work on a story that I was assigned yesterday, about a veteran working in farming through a program that helps veterans use their skills when they are no longer in the service, but my editor said we were not going to run the story anymore, as the subject that it is about had already finished the program, which was the focus of the story. I was glad that I had only been researching some background information before calling the source, but it showed me that some assignments do not always get finished due to several things, including timeliness, like in this case. I felt weird not completing something, but I totally agreed that it should not be run because it was not really relevant anymore. I also had two phone call interviews for assignments that I received from the editor, one on another theater company bringing history to life and one about a man seeing a bear in his yard. I will be receiving the upcoming event list and details for the theater company soon, which I need in order to finish the story, but check out the bear story here!

Thursday was a slower day, as I mainly played catch up with emails, school work, and any miscellaneous things in the office. I did some background research for a press conference that I will be covering next week at the county court office.