My name is Lauren Wolverton, and I am a senior majoring in communication with concentrations in journalism and broadcasting. This summer I interned at CBS News in New York City. A family friend told me about this internship, and I applied online. Several interviews later, I got an email offering me an intern position. I remember having to step out of my class because I was crying happy tears!
I only had 2 months to find a place to live and get prepared after finding out I got the job. I had visited NYC before, but I really had no idea where to look for places to live. My parents wanted me to be somewhere we knew would be safe, so we decided to go with student housing through a company called EHS. My building was in Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, New York. The neighborhood was adorable and had a fantastic view of Manhattan across the East River. I got all moved in and started work three days later!
There were 45 interns divided up into tons of different departments. I was placed at CBSN, which is the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel. It launched in 2014, and I was super excited to get to work in a relatively new department. I was the only intern for the afternoon show. Every day I was assigned different stories to work on in our show rundown. I would write readers, write intros to packages, write banners and gather elements in the morning, then I would roll the teleprompter for our anchor when our live show started in the afternoon. I went into this expecting to log video all day and get people coffee, but I did so much more than that. The team at CBSN did a fantastic job of training me and gave me much more work and responsibility than I expected. It was awesome.
The best part about this internship was that I learned so much that I would not have been able to learn in a classroom setting. I think that news is something that you have to learn through experience once you get the textbook basics down. My favorite perk to this internship was that every Thursday we had meetings where we got to talk with different journalists at CBS News. We got to listen and talk to Jeff Glor, Jim Axelrod, Susan Zirinsky, Steve Hartman and so many more journalists that I look up to. It was really inspiring and cool to be able to talk with such iconic people in an intimate setting.
One of the more challenging parts of this internship was learning to have thick skin and not take anything personally. In the South, people are very friendly and tend to sugar coat all of their critiques. The news moves quickly, so patience can be scarce. I had to learn to not get caught up on criticism or seemingly harsh comments and just move on and get the assignment done. This pushed me a little bit out of my comfort zone, but I think I am much better at taking criticism now than I was at the beginning of the summer.
My best advice to other students considering interning is to just go for it. Keep reaching out to people until you get a chance to talk with someone. There’s nothing wrong with reaching out to a stranger who works at a company you’re interested in. I’d also tell students to be confident. I’ll be honest, I was nervous going into this internship because I don’t attend one of the “well known journalism schools” like Syracuse or Northwestern. I can now say that Mississippi State University absolutely prepared me to be successful at my internship and in my future career. I would advise other students to have total confidence in MSU and in themselves. You can do any internship you want to if you work hard for it!