Thank God first impressions aren’t always lasting.
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| Ronnie Turner |
Otherwise, my first impression would have had a lasting negative effect on my internship this summer at The Salt Lake Tribune.
I arrived in Salt Lake City on May 26 after a long, yet exciting four-day drive from Houston. My managing editor, Michael Anastasi, had requested that I arrive at the Tribune’s office at 9 a.m. the next day, but my body wasn’t willing to comply. I badly overslept, got lost on the way to the office, had to call a co-worker I had just met the night before to let me into the building, and ended up arriving in the office at 11 a.m.
The embarrassment didn’t end there. I overslept the next morning, was late getting to my first assignment, got lost again on the way to the office and struggled to stay awake. At that point, an editor took me aside to talk about being on time and professionalism.
I also nearly missed the next day’s flight to St. Petersburg, Fla., for the Sports Journalism Institute, running out of my co-workers’ house so fast that I left behind my suit jacket and didn’t get to shower. Needless to say, I was all too glad to get away from Salt Lake City for the next 10 days. I needed a fresh start.
A fresh start is what I received at SJI. The struggles of the first two days of my internship became a distant memory as I set about getting to know and working with the other sportswriting interns, writing story after story, meeting all kinds of prominent journalists and learning from some of the best professionals in the business, including Sandy Rosenbush and Leon Carter.
Plus, the other students and I had to be in class at the Poynter Institute usually by 8:30 a.m., meaning that I had to get up by 6:30 every morning to have time to read the newspaper and make it to class on time.
I was better prepared for the challenges that awaited me upon returning to Salt Lake City on June 7. The extra confidence was needed, as I was immediately put to work the moment I set foot in the office.
I covered nearly everything under the sun. I mostly wrote features about local athletes, teams and sports events, with a lot of enterprisers sprinkled in. In my first week back, I was put to work on a feature about a high school cowboy who was temporarily paralyzed for two months, a enterpriser about minority football coaches in Division I football and a feature on the All-Poly football camp, which draws a lot of big-time high school talent and college coaches every year. All three stories ended up on the front page of the sports section.
I also was assigned to work one week for the justice desk, which covered crimes, courts and safety. Familiarizing myself to the court system and that style of writing was a challenge, but a welcome one. It gave me an opportunity to expand my horizons beyond the familiar ones of the press box.
I spent probably 85 percent of my time at the Tribune working on stories. The rest of the time, I was monitoring the wires for breaking news stories. I spent my last week there working on the copy desk. Not much happened, but these moments provide time to organize my thoughts and chat with co-workers, who were always willing to lend a helping hand.
Handling all these responsibilities was a challenge. On any given day, I could be juggling as many as four stories. Assignments were scheduled on top of each other. Breaking news would sometimes steal my attention and efforts from one story. Sources would often call at the most inconvenient of times.
I’m a workaholic by nature, but I found myself running up against a rookie wall near the end. I struggled to make deadlines, missed a press conference because of car trouble, wrote a story intended for A-1 that was yanked, mostly rewritten and instead ran in sports. I had to work overnight a couple of times to keep from falling behind.
The personal failures piled up, but there was no time for self pity. You had to move on to the next assignment or risk another letdown.
Yet, as I drive back to Houston with a boatload of clips, and a nice nameplate as a souvenir, I’m confident that my time at the Tribune was a success.
To be honest, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I was treated like an employee and with the utmost respect by my peers. I also can’t recall an internship that has challenged me more than my editors at the Tribune did.
I only regret that my first impression didn’t go over nearly as well as the second. But my first impression didn’t last beyond those first two days, and I can live with that.
