Internship 16

This picture shows one of the signs put above the computer on someone's wall. It says "Our job is not to judge if they're right or wrong. Our job is just to lend voice to their stupidity." I took a picture of the sign the first full day of internship that I was here because it's true: The job of a news-writer is to give information about both sides of the story, even if one of the sides is, well, stupid. Since everyone has a different opinion, you can't tell right from wrong in the news business.

This picture may seem myspace-y, but it's on this blog because of the meaning behind it. From the picture you can take that I'm in a car, I'm near some kind of background that is white, like the top of a tall hill or an ocean (it's the ocean, by the way). Judging from the water on the car window it's raining (which it was), and the camera I'm holding is a Canon Rebel EOS, which was probably the most important resource to have in my time as an intern at the La Jolla Light.

This picture was taken about halfway through my time as an intern. I was out on an adventure to take pictures of the ocean, rough by the storm that La Jolla was caught in. Very often I'd be told to go out and take photos of an event, place or thing, or go out on my own and take pictures which could be used in the newspaper/website.

(taken with a camera phone)

This picture shows my target audience: the entirety of La Jolla (even though this is only 1/2 of La Jolla pictured, I couldn't exactly fit all of La Jolla into one camera phone shot). Taken from Mount Soledad, a high point in La Jolla. The picture is 1/2 of La Jolla, some of other parts of San Diego, too. Since the La Jolla Light is merged with San Diego Suburban News (?) it also applies to the rest of San Diego County.

Internship 15

Resources

Here is a picture of the entire county of San Diego. There are several of these around the office. Highlighted are the parts of the county that San Diego Suburban News offers news for.


These are all newspapers that San Diego Suburban News has produced in the past year. Once the year is up, new newspapers replace the year old ones, week by week. These can be used as resources or sources of past news events, or to see how formatting was used in past papers.

Classic resources: Pens, highlighters, post-its, a recorder, stapler. These can be used for interviews and editting.

The view of La Jolla that the Light office overlooks. From here, we can actually see some areas where notable news is happening.

Internship 14

Kathy Day, La Jolla Light News Editor

La Jolla

What made you interested in newswriting?

I just started doing it in Junior High. I always liked it. It's a good way to get to know interesting people and talk to people, and you get to share interesting stories with readers and also give them information that helps them learn of the world around them.

What'd you have to do in order to become where you are today?

I had to have a degree in journalism. I had a summer internship that got my foot in the door during college and I got a job with it after I graduated. I was in public relations business, I've done freelance writing so I could great a broad view of the business. At first I was a copy editor, then a reporter, then a data reporter for a long time. Eventually, I worked my way up.

Why are you interested in newswriting?

I think it's important that people know more than what they get on a television, tv news, the internet, etc. In newspapers, you get to tell more of the story than tv news. It's always been my that people need to know what schools and government, etc. are doing. I really like being at the community level. Although I don't LIVE in La Jolla, I treat the readers like my neighbors. Readers and sources have to know about the readers to be on that level.

Sometimes, if you're working on a story and it's somebody you've known a long time and you have a good relationship with, but you find out they didn't tell the truth, perhaps broke the law, you've gotta step back from being nice to becoming the bad cop and wanting to push info out of them. Sometimes, you have to flat out say "you lied to me -- tell me the truth now." Sometimes you have to go around the backdoor in order to get information.

Sometimes you have to be hard nosed to get the story you need, you have to ask hard questions and the people you interview won't like it. But if you create a good relationship with your interviewees and they know you're just doing your job, then they're likely to open up to you more.

Internship 13

This will be the blog that I don't do this week (since we get a choice of not doing one every week), but instead I'll substitute it with 3 pictures of the Riford center (which was my subject for the day)

Internship 12

1: Documenting

Over there ---->

2: Writing

The amount of people I work with per day can vary depending on the day. It depends if I am staying at the office and doing office work all day or if I'm out and about La Jolla, doing interviews and taking pictures.

"How many people are indirectly affected by your work?"

The work done here at San Diego Suburban News could affect everyone in the world if their homepages were set on ours. It's impossible to estimate how many people could be affected by my work since I can't count how many people read the La Jolla Light newspaper on a weekly basis, or how many check the website. So, I'll just say whoever decides to read the La Jolla Light and sees a photo that I took that is in an article will be affected in some way.

"Describe your direct collaboration with others—how does it go & how does it influence the work?"

At a newspaper office, there has to be a lot of collaboration in order to get work done orderly and correctly. If there is an issue, or I need someone's opinion on a story or photo, I will ask them to proofread it. I believe I've helped at the office in a way, too. At one point, my mentor Kathy Day gave me a rough draft of the newspaper that would come out the next day. She told me to find any errors in spelling, grammar, etc. I didn't find any errors in that field, however, looking closer at one of the articles, I saw a person I knew in a picture. However, under the picture, they had captioned his name wrong. Even though it wasn't that big of a deal, I was able to catch a small mistake, which must've benefited the newspaper that much.

Describe your indirect impact on others through your work—there are probably many people you never actually see who are affected by your work. How does this happen? How does this influence your work?

As I said, working at a newspaper office, there will be plenty of people that read our work that we have never seen. There's no way to monitor how many people actually sit down and read the whole newspaper every week. This influences our work because it reminds that complete strangers to us, personally, are trusting us with providing them correct information about what's happening around their neighborhood.

Internship 11

Summary

This past week has been quite a crazy one, I guess you could say. Things were different every day. Some days I'd stay in the office and work on the La Jolla Visitor Guide website, while other days I'd step into the office and be sent to photograph an event at UC San Diego.

High!lights

On occasion, I would be told that something big or crazy had happened, and I needed to go to the site and take pictures. That was pretty exciting. One day, while it was raining, a king palm fell on one of the busiest streets in La Jolla Village. Out of nowhere they told me to get my camera and drive over there and take pictures. "This is what we call breaking news," Says my mentor. An hour later, the pictures that I took are on the website for all to see. Awesome!

Not to mention, it's pretty awesome seeing my name under pictures in the stories in the newspaper and website.

Low?Lights

Somedays, it'd feel like I was just in the way, as if my mentor didn't know what to do with me. She'd sound annoyed at me when I asked what I should do, or when I asked questions on how to do certain things. Can't say that was too good.

Internship 10

This photo shows me taking a selfportrait(-ish) photo of me in the rear view mirror of my car, with the rain falling down. The camera is a Canon Rebel EOS, the type of camera that I use while working at the La Jolla Light. I've come to find that this camera is indeed very helpful. Usually, on a day at the Light, I'm told to shadow somebody or I'm quickly told to go to a site and take pictures of a breaking news story that just happened, notably while it was raining. That's why this photo summarizes a Light day for me.

1. What exactly made you interested in newswriting?

2. Why are you interested in newswriting?

3. What courses in college did you have to take in order to become a newswriter?

4. What jobs built you up to this career you have now?

5. What do you think is in stock for you in the future?

6. Anything else?

^^ These are just some ideas for questions. I will be interviewing my mentor, Kathy Day, this afternoon. ^^