My LINK Internship: The Durango Telegraph
What is LINK?
LINK (Leading Internships for New Knowledge) is a mandatory graduation requirement for all Animas High School Juniors. It's a three week long internship of the students choosing, it offers real world work place experience in the students field of choice. It gives great insight and knowledge into real careers and helps students figure out the next steps for their senior year and beyond.
About My Internship: Challenges and Successes, Steps Moving Forward
I went to the Durango Telegraph and I interviewed one woman about the toy store she opened up and published a story with my peer about it, I interviewed another woman about the inferred yoga studio she was opening, I took photos of an abortion rights rally, I did Word on the Street every week and asked random people questions, I did Ask Rachel High School edition. And of course I did some more boring work like stuffing envelopes, delivering news papers, updating the calendar, helping with editing and layout, etc,. A lot of the things I was doing were very independent and I think that was my greatest skill developed as well as the thing that caused my biggest struggles. It was hard to organize interviews and schedule meeting times with other people with busy schedules and sometimes it was hard to get inspired when you don't have as many connections in the given community. Through that I learned how to communicate effectively, find inspiration in the world around me and strengthen my connections in the community. These things will help me in my future career as a multi-media journalist because it shows me how to be independent and work efficiently as well as find the important things people want to know about. This will also help me develop my leadership role in my school moving forward especially in journalism class, which I will continue to take my senior year and hopefully help pass along my experiences to younger Ospreys. I am also doing LINK 2.0 this summer surrounding the same journalistic reporting but in the form of marketing for non-profits. All of these things will help me achieve my goal of going to college for communications/social media marketing and making a career out of this.
My Project: The Bigger Picture
Originally I was going to make a photo spread on the Telegraphs Instagram but due to forgotten passwords I had to print the spread in one weeks paper copy addition instead. When originally planning it I had the idea that the era of picking up a newspaper and reading about the news is coming to an end with the upcoming generation of different types of media. So I wanted to utilize this aspect of multi media platforms and make a photo spread of spring colors around the Durango area. I didn't have a breaking news story to cover for my photo spread so I just photographed things I found beautiful for people to enjoy. I wanted to show that even the little stories can have big impacts.
At first glance my project is just a bunch of pictures with seemingly no tie to actual relevant news. Though that may be correct, it is a much larger idea in the grand scheme of things. In recent years, as I have become more politically, economically and socially aware I see a lot of people including myself find their news from non-trustworthy sites and social media platforms. I really started to notice this while on my internship because I would read a real journalistic story, with good solid evidence and research shown, that were completely different then the same story I had heard on Tik Tok a few weeks ago. The Tik Tok showed a woman talking about abortion bans and playing the whole situation down to seem as if fewer rights were being taken as people thought, and she spoke how society was over exaggerating the whole thing. No factual evidence or data. It had 6 million views. A few weeks later I read a story somebody wrote to us at the Telegraph about abortion bans and just how severe the situation really is. They showed real evidence about certain umbrella laws surrounding abortion and talked about how truly detrimental the situation is for all women across the country. This story had a lot less than 6 million views. It's interesting to see how many people would have a similar realization if they read reliable and trustworthy news. At the end of the day I would much rather watch a video or read a brief about breaking news as would many others. I know that if reliable news and evidence can reach huge crowds on platforms like this it would be revolutionary. Social media is a great tool and if utilized properly it will help spread accurate, helpful information more than unreliable, non-fact based lies. Times are changing, so should our sources of reliable media.
At first glance my project is just a bunch of pictures with seemingly no tie to actual relevant news. Though that may be correct, it is a much larger idea in the grand scheme of things. In recent years, as I have become more politically, economically and socially aware I see a lot of people including myself find their news from non-trustworthy sites and social media platforms. I really started to notice this while on my internship because I would read a real journalistic story, with good solid evidence and research shown, that were completely different then the same story I had heard on Tik Tok a few weeks ago. The Tik Tok showed a woman talking about abortion bans and playing the whole situation down to seem as if fewer rights were being taken as people thought, and she spoke how society was over exaggerating the whole thing. No factual evidence or data. It had 6 million views. A few weeks later I read a story somebody wrote to us at the Telegraph about abortion bans and just how severe the situation really is. They showed real evidence about certain umbrella laws surrounding abortion and talked about how truly detrimental the situation is for all women across the country. This story had a lot less than 6 million views. It's interesting to see how many people would have a similar realization if they read reliable and trustworthy news. At the end of the day I would much rather watch a video or read a brief about breaking news as would many others. I know that if reliable news and evidence can reach huge crowds on platforms like this it would be revolutionary. Social media is a great tool and if utilized properly it will help spread accurate, helpful information more than unreliable, non-fact based lies. Times are changing, so should our sources of reliable media.
Final Take Aways: One Post at a Time
So my question began to be, how do I get the crowed of 6 million people but give them accurate information? I know that going forward in life with these new found skills of independence and knowing right from wrong will be crucial while pursuing a position in this field. I also know with my skills of social media and knowledge of marketing will benefit me profusely while showing the world new types of accurate media. The world is changing everyday and people need to know about it. People need to know the real facts but have them accessible for the busy life we all lead. From every small photo spread to every article posted I think I can help change the world.