Internships:
 A Taste of the Working World

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Adam Claypool

 Usually, interns at major news stations get stuck back at the office working at the assignment desk.  But with a lucky break, Adam Claypool had the rare chance to work as one of two interning field producers for the superstation WGN Television in Chicago.  This taught him a lot about the field, gave him once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and reaffirmed his decision to work in television broadcasting.

Adam’s search for internships began with a little twist of fate.  A friend of Adam’s met and became friends with the assistant news director at WGN.  When his friend found out that Adam was looking for an internship for the summer, he was able to set up an interview for him.  Adam interviewed in December, and by February he had been offered one of the best internships at the station.  He was to be one of two interns that would field produce on weekends, and on weekdays, work in the office with the other interns.  

 Adam had previously worked for Kirksville’s KTVO and for TruNews.  These experiences had taught him the fundamentals of journalism, so he was ready to learn and work in the larger news world.  “The newsroom was just massive.   The immensity of it really shocked me.” The best part of the job was the weekends, because he had the opportunity to go out on his own to handle different stories.  He would get there in the morning and check the news wires and the assignment board.  Then his assignment editor would assign approximately five stories for the day, and he and a videographer would go into the city and cover the stories. 

He was fortunate to be working for WGN because they are one of the only stations in Chicago that does not have field producers that are actually employed.  With Chicago’s strong unions, most stations’ policy is that you cannot get on air unless you have a contract, since that would break union policy.  At WGN, interns are the field producers.  Therefore, Adam had more opportunities than most interns.  “Basically, as a rule I didn’t get air time, but there were some rare occurrences where this wasn’t true. There was a time when my voice was actually on air, and that was kind of exciting...Sometimes you’d see me holding the microphone, or doing that kind of thing.  During the story on Darrel Kyle’s death, ESPN came and apparently I was on air for about five minutes holding my microphone.”

As one of the few field producers on the weekends, he had some amazing opportunities.  “What is good news for the journalist is often bad news for someone else.  With Darrel Kyle’s death, I was the first person on the scene for WGN and I was covering a national story.  Although he died, it was exciting for me and it was what real breaking news was all about.”  For that story he was able to interview Cardinals players Fernando Viña and Steve Kline.  He also called the manager for the Cardinals, Tony La Russa.  “I just called the hotel and they just connected me to his room, so that was kind of strange.”  Besides the Darrel Kyle story, he also covered a press conference with the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and got to meet Tom Hanks at his premier in Chicago for the movie Road to Perdition. 

The weekdays were not quite as exciting as the weekends.  He spent most of his time searching the Internet and reading the news wires.  He also helped reporters do fact checking and background information searches.  “The weekday got to be really long because you had to stay in the office.  Coming from working on the weekends and then the very next day working the weekday shift was definitely a very big change.”

The internship turned out to be a valuable experience for Adam.  “I found out that I definitely want to do news.  Whether it’s a producer or a reporter, I haven’t decided yet.  But, I definitely have narrowed it down to television news.”  He also gained a lot of resources for the future.  “Bob Jordan, who’s the weekend anchor, wrote a letter of recommendation to Karon Speckman, who’s the internship advisor here.  Now I’m going to use that letter every time I go to an interview…three of my references that I have on my resume are people from WGN.”

He recommends to others in new internships to do all they can to build good relationships with your work mentors.  “When you’re there, be open and nice and do anything you could possibly do to make the best impression you can.  Because if you do that, you have so many resources you can use…you really can help yourself out.”  He also has some advice for students beginning their search for internships.  “Don’t shoot low.  I got an internship at one of the best TV stations in the country and I’m from Truman.  The one thing I realized was it really doesn’t matter where you go to school.  I was there with a journalism student from Northwestern. And that is considered one of the best journalism programs in the country…I think I definitely proved that I was the better intern.  So don’t shoot low, you can shoot for the top.”