For most of the blog entries in this class, I will keep a running journal of sorts about my internship with the sports department at the Wilmington Star-News. For anyone that doesn't know, the Star-News is the newspaper here in Wilmington. If something else I find interesting comes up, I may blog about that instead.
First, I'll let you know a little bit about me. I am a senior planning to graduate in May with an English degree and a Journalism minor. My dream is to become a sports journalist in Washington, DC and cover the teams that I love. I grew up in northern Virginia just outside of DC and have been a sports fan my entire life. My favorite teams are the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards, Georgetown Hoyas and Virginia Tech Hokies.
As an aspiring sports writer, I really wanted to try and land an internship with a newspaper or magazine and get experience in the field before graduating. Working with the English department here at UNCW, I was able to get an internship at the Star-News by enrolling in ENG 498.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the internship. The term intern, to me at least, is usually associated with a college kid getting coffee and running errands at some corporate office, trying to work their way through the ranks. Much to my pleasure, this is not the case with my internship at the Star-News.
I am basically an unpaid reporter, and my editor will give me a story or two a week to go and cover. In my first week of the internship I had to go and cover a local high school basketball game in which the coaches were coaching the game barefoot in support of a charity that collects shoes to donate to underprivileged kids.
It was an exciting experience. I had done some journalism work for the school paper here at UNCW, but this was my first assignment in the "real world," if you will. I watched the game and interviewed each coach for about ten minutes afterward. I got my story in on time and, after a few minor edits, my editor said it was good to go.
The next day, it was on the front page of the sports section! I was so excited!
This week I'm going to be covering a basketball double-header at Hoggard High School, so I'll be blogging about that in my next entry.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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