There’s nothing like pouring your energy into an article, turning it in to your editor with a smile and a hopeful heart, then getting it back 5 minutes before quitting time covered in blue marker.
I’m hurt. Maybe the article wasn’t amazing…but wasn’t it decent? Passable?
One of the most important things that I want from this internship is to see some growth and improvement in my journalistic abilities – writing, reporting, interviewing, everything. But especially writing. I firmly believe that writing consistently on different topics makes you better. And that’s the only place my high-profile internship falls short: the magazine is too high-profile to have an intern bump a columnist/correspondent/reporter from their own work. I can report, I can research, but can I write? Maybe. And ONLY for the Web site. Or perhaps a half-sentence in an infographic that accompanies someone else’s opus in the magazine. I’ve had the pleasure of doing all that.
I get the meaning of “intern.” I appreciate the incredible opportunity I’ve got to even be able to meet someone like my editor and our bureau chief and all the amazing writers. But understanding all that doesn’t make the sting of blue marker any duller. Then again…
“Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.”
– W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Posted by journofile 