From NBC Field Trip to Internship

By Dean’s Intern Maddi Pariser at NBC4

Last semester, during the Spring of 2015, I was enrolled in Professor Lynne Perri’s reporting class. She arranged for us to take a tour of the NBC4 Washington studio on Nebraska Avenue during one of our class periods. Our tour was lead by Matt Glassman, who is both an AU professor and the assistant news director at the station.

Excellent and unique opportunities like this often arise when studying in the School of Communications at AU. In fact, last week Professor Jane Hall took my advanced reporting class to the NPR headquarters so we could spend time learning about the history of public radio. Site trips like these are part of the many privileges that come along with being a journalism student in the District.

What I had not realized while touring the NBC4 newsroom was that I would soon be working there, amongst the content producers, web writers and television anchors.

Before beginning my internship, I remember visiting the station and experiencing an overwhelming sense of excitement. Everyone was busy preparing for the evening news. Inside, you could see the AP wires scrolling across the giant screen in the center of the newsroom, you could hear content producers discussing story ideas and anchors recording teasers live on set. Today, I am lucky enough to get to be apart of that excitement.

I intern for NBC Washington’s Digital Team. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday you can catch me in the newsroom working for the talented journalists who are responsible for creating NBCWashington.com.

My job as the intern is to assist the members of the Digital Team in the daily production of the website. Often times, I am cutting and editing video from the live broadcast so that it can be posted to the site and viewed by our followers who may have missed the show. I have also had plenty of opportunities to turn press releases into news stories and be published on the site. Receiving feedback from my supervisors who editing my work has already dramatically improved my writing.

Not only has the Digital Team done an incredible job of making my learning curve simple and easy, but they have also welcomed me into the newsroom. The work atmosphere is enjoyable and I look forward to my internship every week. I am excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store.