When I got started with an internship at a newspaper during my last year of high school, I told myself that I would never get a job working as a reporter.
I had higher goals at 18 and figured that I’d be in a constant position of compromising myself artistically for the whims of one editor or the next as a reporter.
It was a true learning experience more than anything—a slow but gradual process of reaching maturation. I was working as a freelance writer for the Community page of the newspaper by the following year. Even as I started undergraduate school, I was under the impression that this writing track would remain as a side gig for the remainder of my life. By the time I graduated it had moved itself into a pressing place in my destiny. Within weeks I was taking a position as a full time staff writer at the same newspaper where I completed my high school internship. It was a different and strenuous journey, but I met all kinds of interesting people along the way. I was always fascinated by the television broadcast crew and their huge collection of stage, sound, and video equipment. They were literally stationed in the far back corner of the newsroom where the sound remained fairly isolated. They had their own television news network with numerous anchors and a weatherman. The equipment they used fascinated me more than anything. There were immense lights they had to haul around and set up in varying angles, as well as an immense array of cables to supply live audio to the crew members and anchors. Finally, they had a separate video production team who regularly worked on editing the footage for broadcast. It was a unique setup for a small city newspaper, to say the least.