Behind the Scenes at Voice of America

By Dean’s Intern Simin Ma at Voice of America

As I grew up, I found myself pursuing many different dreams. I wanted to be an educator, an interpreter, and a traveler. Looking back, I have come to realize that I have followed all of these dreams by becoming a journalist. Being a journalist means always working in the front line and getting the first-hand information for the audience. As a journalist, you must travel and communicate complex issues to non-experts to inform a broad audience.

This spring, I’m honored to have the opportunity to work as a production intern for the weekly show Plugged in with Greta Van Susteren at Voice of America. It’s a 30-min show hosted by the well-known anchor Greta Van Susteren. The show examines and communicates US policy and global issues to international audiences. As a production intern, I mainly conduct research for the producers, write factoids for the program, as well as contributing show ideas at the editorial meetings. So far, I’ve assisted with episodes including Super Tuesday,  Coronavirus Global Outbreak and Lesson from Auschwitz. On top of that, I and the other two interns are given an awesome opportunity to pitch and produce a show on our own, so we are currently doing research on our show idea and will hopefully make it on air.

The show airs weekly on Wednesday morning, as part of the team, I’m able to sit in the control room to see how the producers put the show together. There are always lots of screaming and laughing in the control room, which is hard to imagine from just looking at the show. What the audience sees is only the people on the screen, however, there are many more people behind the screen to work together to deliver the show. Yet, whether we work on the screen or behind the screen, we journalists are all working on bringing the audience the most updated and accurate information.