A day in the life of a Journalism intern
Sydney Observer Magazine is a North Shore premium magazine, previously known as the Ku-ring-gai Observer. It is a free publication distributed in the areas of Ku-ring-gai, Hornsby and Willoughby. It’s a small but well-known and successful publication located in Roseville and has been up and running since 1996.
A day in the life
Title: Journalism Intern
Current major degree: Bachelor of Communication (Journalism)
Agreement: One day a week for a three-month period with the possibility of being kept on.
Remuneration: Unpaid but the opportunity to have my work published.
How did you find the internship? Through intense job searching on my own, and I came across it during a heavy stalk on Indeed.
9am: Jumped on my train just in time to make it to Roseville early. I have a 10.30am start which lets me sleep in a little, but it still takes an hour and half to get there. Taking an internship on the North Shore when you’re from the West is a bit of a difference but it’s worth it.
9:30am: Just swapped over at Central. I can see UTS as I wait for the next train. I’ve just received an email from the editor, she details all the tasks I have to do today before I finish and will give me more if I finish early. I read over these on my way over, seems simple enough.
10:30am: Finally here, I walk up to the office and say hello before I sit down and start up my laptop. I begin by looking over content from the last couple of issues of the magazine to get a feel for the writing style and format of the particular content I’ll need to produce for today before I start my research and writing.
11am: I’m almost done with my research for the Community Notice Board section of the magazine. This is basically just finding out events that are taking place in the following month that the community can attend, listing when, where, how much and how they can get involved. Almost done task one.
12pm: Task one done, now researching task two which will take a little longer. This one is for the Food and Wine Section of the magazine. I have to do some deep digging into the April hotspot for food and wine. This one requires a little bit more detail and research, I’ve just got to figure out which events would be best for our audience and sell it to the best of my ability in a few hundred words.
1:30pm: Finished and finalized both tasks and sent them to the editor who approved them both! Now I head to lunch for half an hour, giving me plenty of time to do the final task I need to for the day.
2pm: Back in the office and behind my laptop ready to smash out the final task. This one is a bit longer, and allows me to put some more of my own writing style in it. I’m just filling content for the magazine but I don’t mind because I only just started working here and I still get to see my work published in a real magazine! This article is for the Home and Garden section.
3pm: I’ve finished! With 30 minutes to spare until I get to go home. I’m assigned another task, of course, I just hope I can do it quickly. It’s the Health section - I’ve got to do some research on health trends. There’s some really strange things out there. I have to select three of the best ones people can actually do and write those up.
3:30pm: Alright, so I finished on time. Let’s be real, I timed it perfectly so I could catch the train and be home by at least 5:30. It wasn’t too bad of day, I actually enjoy the little tasks. I think I’m actually looking forward to doing it again next week. The editor even said in the future I can source out my own stories and interviews for publishing!
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This article originally appeared in The Comma.
