Two months in

This week marked my second month at PublicSource. It is strange that I still have quite a bit of my internship left, as all my other internship experiences have been about two months long. This week was pretty busy, so let's get into it.

On Tuesday, I met with a freelance reporter who has worked with PublicSource a lot in the past. She pitched a story on the 50/50 standard in custody cases and the harm that it causes in local cases, and I am going to help with reporting for the story as well. We mapped out a general outline for the story, and I started working on researching contacts and looking into national and local data on child custody cases. I also made some final edits to my story on a new fertility clinic coming to the area and continued to try to contact Montour for my AI story. I had my weekly mentor meeting as well and am finally going to start some research on conflicts of interest in local universities.

Thursday was a day I had been waiting for for quite a while, sort of. I finally heard back from Montour for my AI story, but the assistant superintendent declined all requests. This situation has really shown me the public's lack of trust in the media. I have never had this much trouble trying to get in contact with a source and declining to be part of a story. I did get some movement on the story about parental alienation in custody cases that I am working on with a freelancer. I made a list of sources to contact and did some initial emails, which led to scheduling some interviews for next week. I also did a fact check on a local elections story. At the end of the day, my editor was able to get through to a solicitor for the Montour school district, so hopefully that will help the school cave in a little and see that we are trustworthy and want to learn about their high-tech services.

All in all, it was a pretty good week. I hope to get my byline in a story again soon1