Student

Students find work in the real world

By Ryan Klatt
J Alumni News
staff

Anyone under the impression that students with internships spend their time making copies and running errands should take a closer look.

For most Nebraska journalism students, internships serve as a highly realistic work experience.

Ieva Augstums, Emily Gallagher and Tony Bock can attest to that. All had internships on the East Coast last summer. Augstums worked full-time as a reporter for the metro desk at the Boston Globe while Gallagher was an intern for CBS News in Washington. Bock was an intern for “The Late Show with David Letterman” in New York.

Gallagher, a junior advertising major from Friend, said she wasn’t sure what to expect when she started her work at CBS.

“I thought I was going out there to answer phones and make coffee,” she said.

As it turned out, Gallagher did much more than that, reporting and producing stories for the evening news. She covered the Senate hearings about the rock band Metallica’s dispute with Napster, the online music service, for copyright infringement. Gallagher also reported on Vice President Al Gore’s speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Baltimore.

Gallagher said her job was stressful at first because she wasn’t treated as an intern. “I really thought it was going to be an easy thing,” she said.

But the treatment she received as part of the regular staff helped her to adjust to the work, she said.

Augstums, a senior news-editorial major from Lincoln, spent 12 weeks as an intern in Boston. She said she quickly learned the ways of a big city newsroom.

“It’s very fast paced up there. And I knew it would be,” she said. “Deadline was a big thing.”

One of the first things Augstums had to learn was how to get around in the city. She took a city bus tour and was given a map book of the Boston area, which helped her when she literally had to chase a man through the city for a story about his lawn mower ride across America.

Bock, a senior broadcasting major from Omaha, said he learned a lot in his time with the “Late Show,” especially the amount of work that goes into putting a show on the air every day. “There was no such thing as an average day,” he said.

Bock worked in guest research. He did everything from running to obscure video stores to find old clips of a guest to writing sample questions for Letterman to use.

Augstums said her experience in school helped her with her internship.

“It gave me a sense of what I would have to do,” she said.

For instance, she was glad she had learned photojournalism at NU when she was working with a photographer on a story in Boston.

Both Gallagher and Bock said that learning how to communicate with others was what helped them the most with the internships.

John Bender, a news-editorial professor at NU, said internships were important for journalism students. He urged students to work hard to get the most out of an internship.

“Be flexible. Be adaptable,” he said. “But I think most of all be prepared to give as much effort as you can.”