free gif maker As some of you may know, I am a senior fashion merchandising and journalism student at the University of Delaware. For the past couple of months, I have interned a the Delaware News Journal, the local newspaper of my state,and it's been quite a journey. I started off the internship very strong with a feature story about Elizabeth and Kathryn Fortunato of Lizzie Fortunato Jewels You can check out that story here. It was a very fun interview because I was able to speak to girls who know what's it's like to grow up in Delaware and move out to a big city to create a successful company. The twins invited me to their jewelry party at Peter Kate in Wilmington,Delaware and it was really cool to be able to meet their families and some of the people who read the story I wrote, because sometimes you never get to see how big of an impact your story makes. I was glad that I got a really positive response to my story. My editor at the News Journal had other ideas about the story though. She said it was "mediocre" and opted to add whole sections of her own writing to the story. I wasn't very happy about that because I felt like the story wasn't my voice and turned out a little corny. When she was giving me critiques about what I needed to do to make my feature writing better I pulled out a paper to write notes and she yelled at me to look at her face. Quite rude. My next assignment was a story about the top ten trends for spring. I was excited to be able to talk to shop owners across Delaware to find out what they thought the trends were, but it proved to be a difficult story to write. Some of the shop owners wouldn't respond to my calls and it took days for them to respond to my multiple calls. When I finally got a hold of the shop owners, they didn't have the right pictures to go with the story according to my editor. When I finally turned in the story my editor hated it. She didn't give me the specific format she wanted the story in so I gave her a descriptive list of trends. She was very annoyed so I went back to do the story and she still had a problem with the pictures that I was able to get. It was like I could never win. The last story I was assigned was a story about the Common Threads Exhibition at the University of Delaware. I started the story then another editor suggested we do a double by-lined story about the exhibition. She asked me to send her notes and I did. She used my notes and didn't credit me for the story. Overall, I wouldn't say it was the best experience I've had in my life, but what I did gain was knowledge on how to deal with certain types of people. These types of experiences are good because they prepare you for how people will treat you in the real world. P.S. Please don't use my experiences to pull you away from an internship in the journalism field. Ashley
