Interns see vital role for newspapers
Portland Press Herald (Maine)
July 16, 2006 Sunday
FINAL Edition
by Jeannine Guttman Editor
For most people, summer is the season of vacation, travel and
leisure. Unless, of course, you are a college student studying
journalism.
In that case, summer is not a time to slow down and relax, but a time
to accelerate the pace and grow. It is the time of the internship,
where students work in professional newsrooms. They learn the deman-
ding rigors of daily journalism, practiced on deadline, under the
scrutiny of crusty editors and demanding readers.
This summer, we are hosting two students in our paid summer minority
internship program. Both are working as news reporters and I’m sure
you’ve seen their bylines over the past few weeks. Today I’d like to
tell you a bit about them.
Karoun Demirjian, 25, is pursuing a master’s degree in international
relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
in Medford, Mass. She has also had internships at The Christian
Science Monitor and National Public Radio. Her ethnic heritage is
Arab and Armenian.
Cristina Bautista, 20, is a junior with a double major in
mass communications and political science at the University of
California at Berkeley. She is an editor at the university’s Daily
Californian newspaper and has worked with a campus Latina scholarship
organization. She’s fluent in Spanish.
Bautista started working here June 5; Demirjian began a week later.
"Each year, we receive dozens of applications for our internship
program," said Eric Blom, acting features editor and coordinator
of our summer internship program. "College students from around the
country send in examples of their best work and ask for a chance to
spend the summer in Maine, learning the journalism craft.
"Many have sparkling resumes, with lots of experience at college
newspapers, previous internships and great life experiences, not to
mention their academic achievements. So, it’s a real challenge to
select two participants."
Still, he said, the work of our two interns "really stood out from
the others."
Both have enthusiasm and a sense of mission, he said.
"They’ve been interviewing people, traveling to different locations and
writing stories – exactly the kind of experience, under professional
guidance and editing, that they need to succeed in a field that
is vital to the democracy in which we live. They’re also getting
experience at living in Maine, a corner of the country that has a
culture all its own."
The newspaper’s summer mi- nority internship program began in 1999.
"Including this year’s group, we’ve hosted 15 college students,"
said. Blom. "We get as much from their being here as I hope that we
offer them."
I interviewed the two women last week, curious about their career
interest in newspapers.
"I enjoy writing for newspapers, more so than other forms of media,"
Demirjian said. "There’s room to explore a story at greater depth."
Despite that attraction, Demirjian knows the media world is a very
challenging place right now. Newspaper circulations are down, Web
hits are up and news is a commodity. At the same time, the global
landscape is changing, economies are shifting, terrorism is a force
and political and public policy issues are intertwined. Which makes
some folks believe that the need for independent public service
journalism has never been greater in our democracy.
And yet, this is not a career for the faint of heart.
"It weighs on my parents more than me," Demirjian said. "They say I
should be rational and go to law school. But I don’t see newspapers
as fizzling up and dying in the next 10 years or so. Newspapers that
have survived this first wave of panic are pretty good at understanding
multi-media, at knowing how to use their Web sites to engage readers.
"There’s something that’s not complete enough about the local TV news
at 5:30 p.m. that will leave a demand for local newspapers."
Bautista’s perception is that fellow journalism students are a bit
rattled by the unsettled media world they want to enter. "People are
scared, I think. In our major, they are very concerned because we
have a passion to want to do journalism and to continue it.
"It’s hard but it’s something that we’re all committed to because
journalism is a public service, I feel. And it’s a service that needs
to be upheld and continued."
So far, their internships have been rewarding experiences, they said.
"It’s been a lot of fun," said Bautista. "It’s a very nice way to
spend my summer; completely different from California and I really
like that. . . . Going into small towns in Maine, it’s been a very
positive change. People here want to have their name in the paper;
they want to speak to you; they’ll call you back . . .
"I miss the nightlife, though," she said. "That life usually starts
for me at 9 p.m. and night dies here at about 9 p.m."
Demirjian said she appreciates the ability to do reporting that
originates with her and is not picked up from another medium.
"At a newspaper, reporters do real reporting," she said. "That’s why
I decided to leave the world of radio or television and do this."
Bautista said she enjoys the process of reporting and writing. "I
like being able to talk to people, and being some sort of mini-expert
for a day. You accumulate a lot of knowledge; I like the process
of reporting.
"I did a story about the hay shortage and I didn’t even know what hay
was, to be honest, be- fore I did that story. I may never use that
knowledge in San Francisco or Berkeley, but I enjoy the process of
reporting. In terms of writing, I feel much more confident expressing
myself through prose versus verbally. I like the general style of
journalism – it is consistent, neat, concise."
Demirjian had another view: "I think that if I had to choose to
express myself through the rest of time, it would be verbally over
writing. Even when I read, I hear sentences and I hear rhythms
of words and things like that. To me, journalism is about making
something comprehensible. And that’s the thing I like about journalism.
"My first story here was about the environment, then groundfishing
and now refugees." As a journalist, she has an obligation to report
accurately and completely, she said. It’s a lot of re- sponsibility.
"Making things understandable, accessible to everybody," that’s what
good journalists and newspapers do, she said.
I asked them about the popularity of blogs, especially with their
generation. How can that be explained?
A lot of people their age don’t trust newspapers, they said, and
see newspapers as an extension of the government. "We only talk to
government officials, that’s why," Bautista said. "So people go into
blogs to get information and hear other points of view. But most
people supplement blogs with newspapers."
The authors of some blogs were rebuffed by mainstream press, said
Demirjian. "You can’t get on the editorial pages, but you can start a
blog," she said. "You can get your voice heard that way. The opinion
pages of most newspapers are already established with their sets of
writers and you can’t get into that. So blogs are an alternative."
No matter how the media evolve, readers have an obligation to stay
informed, especially as members of this democracy, they said.
"I think people should really be active readers," Bautista said.
"Read the Press Herald, read other things as well, be informed,
understand current events. Once you stop doing that, things get
really lost. And there are a lot of people who don’t have any
connection. Being uninformed is being disenfranchised, I feel."
Readers need to know about their community, Demirjian said. But
community is many things. "Your community is the front page of the
newspaper, too. It’s Maine, but it’s also Somalia and Beirut. It’s
broad."