They’re award winners in photography, writing or design.
They’ve interned at newspapers, magazines, television stations — even for state government.
They’re wannabe rock stars, novice skydivers and sports enthusiasts.
They’re a varied and talented lot. They’re our summer interns.
The Pilot has 16 interns this summer who pull 12-week stints, earning $450 a week — a far cry from the $88 I made as an intern in 1966.
This year’s crop was culled from more than 250 applicants, says Baylies Brewster, director of staff development, who runs the internship program — an effort I oversaw for nine years before becoming public editor.
“I read every application,” says Brewster. “Sometimes I don’t make it past the cover letter — too many errors, no prior experience on a college paper.”
Brewster said that experience on a college paper is “a must. A previous internship at a daily paper is a plus.”
What do Brewster, the writing coaches and other editors who help narrow the list of finalists look for?
“Initiative, tenacity, high work standards, good journalistic skills and the ability to work in an energetic, team-based environment,” Brewster answered.
She is ever on the lookout for talent. Among other things, she tracks students in our summer minority journalism program, students who write for our 757 youth section, and Scholastic Achievement finalists. Recommendations are sought from current interns and contacts at colleges and journalism programs nationwide. We also recruit at job fairs and on college campuses. The deadline for applying is Dec. 1 for the following summer.
At some media outlets, interns do a lot of grunt work. They “shadow” professionals — learning by observing — and write occasional stories.
Not at The Pilot. Here, they’re treated like real employees. And they produce like real employees.
Says Brewster: “We give interns a chance to work as if they were full-time news staffers. In return, we provide feedback, coaching and guidance that should hold them in good stead when they return to college or head out to the marketplace seeking a job.”
Chats with two of our standout interns bear that out.
Mike Saewitz, 21, has certainly gotten a lot of experience and guidance since starting his internship June 13. The senior journalism major at Northwestern University found himself “at both the right place and the wrong place at the same time” on July 12, and ended up reporting on one of the biggest and saddest stories of the summer.
Saewitz was getting a haircut at the Ambiance Salon & Day Spa on Independence Boulevard in Virginia Beach when a woman entered screaming, “Call 911!” There had been an accident right outside the salon, where Saewitz saw “the most horrible image” — 2-year-old Patrick A. Ward had been struck by a vehicle that jumped a curb as Ward sat in a stroller while his mother waited for a light to change. Rescue workers were rapidly pressing the boy’s chest.
“At first, I freaked out,” said Saewitz, who tried unsuccessfully to call a couple of editors on his cell phone, “thinking they would send a cops reporter to handle the story.”
Saewitz, who had done police reporting during a spring internship at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, ended up reporting the front-page story.
A self-described quiet guy from Deerfield, Ill., a sleepy suburb about 30 minutes north of Chicago, Saewitz described that experience as both the most rewarding and most traumatizing of his tenure.
Like Saewitz, Melissa Scott Sinclair, another intern, has had a good run of stories — from a look at individuals’ feelings about Friday the 13th to the front-page centerpiece “Kempsville widening paved with lawsuits.”
Sinclair, a June graduate of the University of Delaware, has interned at The Pilot’s sister paper, The Roanoke Times, covering everything from a trapped black bear to the Miss Virginia pageant.
“I’ve always loved creative writing but never considered journalism until I took my first basic reporting class in college and realized, `Hey, here’s a whole new way to tell a story!’ ” Sinclair says.
Her most challenging assignment this summer has been the Kempsville Road-widening story.
“An unprecedented number of lawsuits by people whose land borders the highway has forced the Virginia Department of Transportation to set aside $13.7 million — $4.4 million more than planned — to get right of way,” she reported.
Sinclair tags that story as both her most rewarding and toughest assignment.
“At first,” she says, “I felt lost in the morass of legal terms, numbers and appraisal methods, but as I kept asking questions, a picture of what happened began to emerge.”
As a result of her experience at The Pilot, Sinclair’s “pretty sure” she’ll never grow tired of being a reporter.
“I’m still thrilled every time I see my byline in the paper,” she says.
