I’ve been asked a lot recently — by friends in the U.S., by American friends in Costa Rica, by Costa Rican friends in Costa Rica — why I’m continuing my internship at PBS MediaShift while studying abroad at la Universidad Nacional.
It’s a two-pronged answer, one answer more honorable than the other.
That’s what one passenger asked me on my most recent interstate bus trip. I don’t consider myself an IT specialist, but I’m honored by the misunderstanding.
Titles, both lofty and lowly, on a résumé really don’t make much of a difference.
Yes, more grandiose titles are a great ego boost (the same applies to the name of the organization attached to that title).
But your actual experience means much, much more than that. No use being a “fellow” if you’re only getting coffee. And “interns” do plenty more than that.
Read the rest the post here. Would love to hear your feedback here or there.
It’s always an odd balance to strike: As a student, I’ve always valued summer as time to relax and not worry about homework or other academic responsibilities.
But for the past two summers, I have not done that. I have worked, often fulltime, in order to get more work or internship experience under my belt. Evenings were my only time to do anything but work. And even then, sometimes my internship flooded over into home. I even had a summer class last year in the evenings, and readings for that often took up any time I would have had to read for fun.
All of my reporting on the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City last weekend.
A full story for PBS MediaShift:
With reports that the National Security Agency is amassing data from Internet and phone companies, jokes abounded at the 10th annual Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in New York City on June 6 and 7, especially when the list of sponsors for PDF sounded like a tally of NSA’s tech titan collaborators — Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.
But against the backdrop of Silicon Valley and government snooping on citizens, speakers held “big data” in high regard and pointed to a number of technologies that had the potential to amass tons of raw data for analysis and democratization.
A bunch of photos:
A dispatch on “Mediatwits”
And a reflective essay for the American University Career Center on how I was able to go:
Interning can be expensive. Living, eating, transportation. It makes it hard for people of limited resources to have the opportunity to intern. That’s why a federal judge on June 11 ruled, with potential implications for the intern market, that, in one case, interns should have been paid for doing work.
I’m lucky to be supported financially during my internships. But transportation, especially to conferences, turned out to be the most expensive part for me.
It’s odd when the intern’s the boss.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been editing PBS MediaShift’s Daily Must Reads, a collection of the latest news in media innovation and journalism industry trends. Though it often requires me making simple edits such as checking links and deleting commas, I often make much more substantive calls, such as nixing or pitching stories.
Julie Keck, our social media and newsletter author, typically takes my recommendations. Though she’s been working for MediaShift (and working in general) much longer than I have, I often have the final say.
My first time on the “Mediatwits” podcast was last week. Take a look behind the scenes at my tech issues, and check out the episode itself.
As I take on more responsibilities at PBS MediaShift, I’ve had to improvise a bit. For an internship about the digital revolution of media, the irony that the digital media revolted is inescapable.
For example, I was on vacation when I needed to join the “Mediatwits” podcast. Mark Glaser, my editor, had me sharing screenshots of the stories and websites the team was talking about.
I would have also contributed to the conversation myself, but I ran into some technical issues.
I’m continuing the tradition of blogging about my internships for the American University Career Center. First TIME and USA Today Tech, now PBS MediaShift.
I had the pleasure to secure an internship at PBS MediaShift this summer!
Amy Eisman, my “Writing and Editing for Convergent Media” professor, first told me that Mark Glaser, executive editor of MediaShift, was searching for an intern to work on their weekly podcast, “Mediatwits.”
Though I wasn’t initially selected after the three-step application process (resume and cover letter, exercises, and then an interview), Mark did hire me to come on as an editorial intern to blog and edit the site for the summer.
A few weeks later, Mark’s first pick for their podcasting intern had to go, and he promoted me to work on the podcast as well with double the pay.
Zach C. Cohen 