All posts filed under: SHFW

For my Fall 2010 semester of college, I worked a reporting internship for the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire in Washington, D.C. This collection of posts documents my first foray away from home, as a reporter in the big, bad city.

The end of an era

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Looking over my last entry, I kind of get the feeling that I was feeling a little overwhelmed and homesick. It seems that I just fell off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again. You won’t get rid of me that easy. When I returned to the District after Thanksgiving, I was feeling a little down and a lot homesick. The holidays really are the most wonderful time of the year to me and my family. Every weekend we go to a different Christmas display and spend too much money buying each other gifts, baking and cooking stupendous meals. I’ve just finished eating my big Christmas dinner with my family before I sat down to finally post this entry. But I didn’t really crawl under a rock my last three weeks in the city. I spent a couple of days developing a few story ideas and then dug in, barely getting two of the three stories finished by the end of the internship. In my last few weeks I practiced a …

Change of pace

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And now for something completely different. Typically on this blog, I talk about things I do and see, or things I want to do and see, not what I think or how I feel. When it comes to talking about how I feel or what I think about something or someone, or moments that shaped a part of my character, I freeze up. I froze up earlier this evening when I was talking to one of my roommates about how this internship has changed my perspective on some things. She has decided to relocate to DC from the western U.S., and we were discussing what it’s like to be in a city where you know no one. When I got to the part where I tried to vocalize how in the last couple of months I have changed from someone who valued having an exciting career above all else to someone who valued family and friends above all else, I mumbled out, “But, I don’t know.” I couldn’t articulate why I no longer want to …

Maine!

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Portland Head Light, most photographed lighthouse in Maine. As lame as it sounds, I’ve always wanted to go to Maine. It’s not a metropolitan place, its more of a wilderness and that’s just the kind of thing that suits me. I’m happy with a little ocean, a little rocky beach, a few lighthouses and the chance to spot a moose – as long as I’m safely in a car or somewhere the moose can’t get me. Sunday morning around 8 a.m., I finally got to see Maine. The only bad part of the trip is that we only had time to venture in to see one lighthouse, grab a lobster roll and start bookin’ it back to DC. We were in a race to get back before the Metro stopped running. After getting some tips from the best welcome center worker ever, we plotted a trip to go up to see the most photographed lighthouse and then stop to walk along some cliffs and see another lighthouse on our way back out of the state. …

Uncharted territory

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Providence, R.I. Capitol. It took up half the state. All the fist pumping really kind of messed things up for us going into Jersey. I kind of started ignoring Sh’niqua (the navigation system in my Android) and ended up missing the exit for the Jersey Turnpike. But, after a quick detour through Camden, we were back on our way. Fun fact about Jersey Danielle dug up on Wikipedia: It’s the doughnut capital of the world. When someone says “America runs on Dunkin’,” what they actually mean is “Jersey runs on Dunkin’.” Of course we stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts for an afternoon snack and quizzed an employee. She had no idea if Jersey was the doughnut capital of the world and seemed to think we were crazy for asking. The second leg of our journey brought me to places I haven’t been before. New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were all new experiences for me. I tried not to let Jersey Shore influence my opinion of the state, but still, I think I’ll be …

50 in 30

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There are two kinds of perks with this internship: work and non-work. These are very technical titles, so pay close attention to the following descriptions. Work perks are the kind of everyday perks one experiences as a reporter in Washington D.C. These are things like being able to go to the White House. Non-work perks are just about everything else. These include just living in DC and the general proximity to other eastern states. I want to see all 50 states before I turn 30 on July 14, 2015. At the start of this internship I had about four years and 20 states to go. After the East Coast Extravaganza two weekends ago, the magic number is down to 13. The first leg of our trip took though four states I had already seen before. We started in Virginia, where we picked up our rental car, passing through Maryland and Delaware to get to Philadelphia. I wasn’t particularly thrilled to go through Delaware again, but we passed through Wilmington and realized that there is a …

Road Trip: East Coast Extravaganza

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Danielle and I are taking to the road again, this time with two more interns, Raymundo and Adam. As soon as the first train leaves Woodley Park, we’re headed up the East Coast to Maine. Although this trip won’t have the epic proportions of the Gypsy Trip, it does have some notable statistics nonetheless. We’ll be covering about 1,500 miles in two days. Its about a 10 hour drive to Maine from the District, but with side trips we’ll be in transit about 12 hours each day. But my most favorite statistic: We’ll be covering 12 states in 48 hours. We’ll see Virginia, Maryland, Deleware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. I’ll be adding a whopping seven more states to my count!  We’ve talked about making a video with stories written by each of us to put out on the wire. And we’ve discussed a mockumentary that would have nothing to do with the Foundation’s wire. I’m not sure what we’ll end up with, but rest assured …

Little Victories

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One of the things about this internship that can be frustrating is the amount of time we can spend on a story without any assurance that it will actually be picked up by someone. The easiest way to get a story picked up is to write it for one of the Scripps papers or someone else who requests it. My first story was picked up when I did the cost of living adjustment story for Trish Choate, the Washington correspondent for the Texas papers. I know the other interns have been picked up in other Scripps papers or have been published on the Scripps Howard News Service (a national wire staffed by seasoned journalists, not just students.  We’ve recently established a relationship with El Paso, Inc., a weekly in Texas, where the mother of one of the interns this semester is editor. So after I spent a week harassing sources and gathering information about a dicennial process I really didn’t know much about, putting a story out on the wire without knowing if it would …

Blood, Sweat and Tears

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I hope you’ve been to SHFWire.com by now and read the election stories Elvia and I wrote today. (In case you didn’t I linked to them on our names and the wire’s website is no longer password protected. Score!) And I’m sure you’re aware of the election outcome, so I’m not going to rehash any of that. What I do want to talk about is what it was like covering my first major election. I’ve covered Student Government elections before, but sitting around with a fellow newspaper watching the Student Government people sit around waiting for election results is nothing like this. In my previous entry, I explained how Elvia and I really wanted to cover something for the election, even if we knew no one was going to pick up our story. It was as much about the reporting experience and being part of something historic. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaking at the Republican watch party Tuesday night. As soon as I walked into the Grand Hyatt I knew I had stepped into a …

It’s the Journey

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A row of embassies. I love the weekends. Don’t misunderstand me, I love my internship too. But I love being able to get into some jeans and my comfy shoes, grab a camera and just get lost in the city for a while. The weather has been perfect every weekend I’ve been out here, so I’ve been doing outside exploring before it gets too cold to enjoy things. Last weekend, I decided to just go for a walk. I’m still too uptight of a person to just wander around without some kind of a guide, so I knew I wanted to end up in Georgetown and I knew the navigation in my phone would get me there. So with Google maps as my guide, I began the two mile walk from my apartment to Georgetown. Latvian’s perception of American culture I always have to remind myself that in life its not about the destination, but the journey. To get from Woodley Park to Georgetown, I passed by several countries’ embassies. Maybe I’ve watched too many …