Herald intern reflects on her time in the Okanagan
When I began my hunt for a summer internship, I was looking at local newspapers to apply for amidst a sea of conglomerate-owned weeklies with a good breadth of coverage but not much depth.
I’d be lying if I didn’t consider that generally pursuing a future in the print business wasn’t going to prove a fruitful endeavour. Days after I finished a previous internship, the newsroom had been cleared out by layoffs despite incredible talent and drive its journalists had displayed.
With newsrooms shrinking, I wondered, how would journalists be able to tell peoples’ stories while addressing their concerns? How would we be able to do our job?
At the local level, the ability to both look at the surface of a community and dig deeper seemed impossible.
News coverage empowers people – it goes beyond merely keeping them informed, it tells them that they matter. And smaller communities are no less deserving of this right.
So when I saw Joe Fries was up for a National Newspaper Award for his dogged work holding power accountable at a paper with a single reporter, sports reporter and editor, it made me realize that local newsrooms won’t be going anywhere as long as there are passionate individuals filling them. That was the kind of environment I wanted to be a part of.
I think the biggest take away from my eight weeks with The Herald is that, to varying degrees, all stories matter. With the time crunch that comes from filing for a daily paper with a limited staff, my colleagues still found time to listen to peoples’ concerns in-person and on the phone. It was readily apparent that The
Herald team values community involvement and interaction. It would seem like a no-brainer that a great deal of telling comes first from listening, but the extent to which keeping content local and prizing all forms of local content was espoused in the news room was uplifting when the global news cycle is increasingly shifting towards a focus on efficiency.
I never felt like I was just “the intern.” I had responsibility placed upon me that came not because I was one of only two news reporters, but because James Miller thought I could handle it. It’s helped me to feel far more competent at my craft.
I covered everything from wildfires to dance classes. I cried in my car after witnessing my first on-the-job fatality. I beamed with pride holding my first Page A1 story in my hands. I had coffee with some of you, listened to your frustrations and aspirations, your hopes for this community and your contributions to it.
It’s been an honour to be able to do so.