Lights, Camera, Internship

Summer vacation. My friends were basking in the sun while getting paid to lifeguard at the local pool. Others were picking up big tips from rich patrons at the local eatery. I, on the other hand, was working in a stuffy office where the air conditioner never worked right. I was paid five dollars a day not even enough to cover transportation and a hamburger at McDonalds. But I was happy. I was living my dream. I was working as an intern for a television station. Walking in the door my first day, I had no idea what to expect. Right away, I met the television personalities that made up the NBC affiliate in Boston, MA. These were people I had seen on the air my entire life. And here they were, up close and personal, and actually talking to me. I figured I would be chained to a photocopier for hours on end, released only to run to the local Au Bon Pain to get coffee for the reporter. Instead I became an integral member of the team and received an experience beyond anything I learned from a textbook. That's the goal of a college internship, explains Sherri Palmeri, the 37 year old Consumer Producer for KFMBTV, the CBS affiliate in San Diego. For more than 10 years, she's worked with interns who have gone on to a variety of careers in television news. "I give my interns a lot of responsibility," she says. "And I expect them to treat this position as a job." Palmeri assigns her interns a list of daily tasks and makes them a liaison between the consumer team and the viewers. They call back viewers who leave story ideas on the "tip line" and answer e mails from those with questions about last night's story. But it goes beyond that. Palmeri also encourages her interns to become part of the creative process by researching story ideas and pitching them to the department. Sometimes they accompany reporters out in the field. Some even go under cover with a hidden camera. "I find the more responsibility I give them, the more seriously they take the internship, because they realize they are valued," says Palmeri. An internship is also valuable because it helps students learn if they really want a job with a TV station, says Alan Schroeder, assistant professor at the Northeastern School of Journalism in Boston, Massachusetts. "Newsrooms are unusual places with very specific demands, and not easily understood from the outside," he explains. "Doing an internship should answer once and for all whether a student will be comfortable in that rarefied and demanding environment." A television newsroom can be daunting for the inexperienced. Reporters and producers run around on tight deadlines and are apt to lose their patience and scream at confused interns. Interns should understand that this is the nature of the news business, right or wrong. Don't take things personally. Schroeder believes it's important to learn if you can survive in this kind of atmosphere before you commit your entire life to it. "They can be very educational experiences, not just in the sense of what is learned during the process, but also as a way for journalism students to know if they really do want to work in TV news," he says. Palmeri agrees, and she adds that it takes a person who is extremely motivated to succeed. "I can always tell when an intern is not enthusiastic about being here," she states. "And the truth is, if they're not enthusiastic about being here, I'd rather them not be here. It's that simple." Palmeri points to several things that prove to her that an intern is motivated. One is showing up on time and not calling in sick on a regular basis. Just because you're not being paid doesn't mean you shouldn't treat the internship like a part time job. Two is dressing appropriately. You want to look professional, even if some employees do not. Remember that they already have a job. And three: you should keep a good attitude. "The bottom line is I would never ask them to do anything that I myself have not done on the job," says Palmeri. "Would I ask them to get coffee? Never. But I'd like to think if I ever did, they would. It's all about attitude." A Foot in the Door As the old saying goes, in television, it's often who you know, not what you know. If you use the internship to network with people in the business and impress your superiors, you have a much greater chance to get a good entry level television job possibly at the same television station where you once worked for free. When I graduated from Boston University, I found a job in TV news at the station where I was once an intern. And when I got my first paycheck, I knew that all the hard work paid off. Today, I still work in television news as a producer, with interns of my own.