Job & Internship

September 2008 Internship Spotlight

Name: Chelsea Reynolds
Major: Journalism
Company: Midwest Living magazine at Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa

Duties: At first, most of my duties were centered on administrative tasks like answering phones, fact-checking copy and doing research for the high-level editors. But as I became more familiar with the magazine and its employees, my work started to reflect the editors’ confidence in me. They began assigning me more complex tasks like maintaining the magazine’s e-mail account and updating the website. Soon, I was conducting phone interviews and writing shorts for multiple departments.

As the summer progressed, I was able to attend story meetings, assist with a photo shoot, scout multiple locations for stories and corporate events and go out into the field for feature reporting. Although the grunt work is always part of any internship, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of responsibility I was ultimately given at Midwest Living. Hard work, even on the little things, really pays off.

Most Memorable Experience: I haven’t heard of any other interns who have been directed to embark on a road trip for the sake of the magazine. So, when my fellow intern, Claire (a University of Iowa journalism student), and I were told we would be driving my Civic coupe out to the middle-of-nowhere Nebraska to report on the 15th annual Nebraska Star Party, we didn’t know what to expect. After Mapquesting the route from Des Moines to Cherry County, Nebraska’s Merritt Reservoir, we got scared. It was a 10-hour drive each way. And our destination was about 250 miles from any city with a size comparable to Ames.

After a week of making reservations and doing research, we packed up our things and hit the dusty trail. Following an editor’s recommendation, we took a scenic highway through northern Nebraska. Unfortunately, only 100 miles from the reservoir, a bridge was out. We had to backtrack for three hours to take the only other east-west highway out there. Then we ran into tornado weather. We stopped for shelter at a country saloon as we watched funnel clouds form in the turquoise, hail-filled sky. After a high-anxiety 45 minutes, the storms passed and we got back on the road. More severe weather erupted, and by ten at night, we found ourselves in a prairie lightning storm, lost in the sand dunes near... nowhere. A heard of spooked cattle in the road prevented us from going further, so we hightailed it toward the closest town (30 miles away) and checked in to a Holiday Inn.

Even though the drive out there shook us up, the next two days provided some of the most picturesque scenery imaginable. We visited two roaring waterfalls, saw wild buffalo and prairie dogs and attended the Nebraska Star Party, of course. There is so little light pollution in that part of the country that once it gets dark, the Milky Way is so bright that you can see your hand’s shadow if you hold it above a sheet of white paper. We were able to look through telescopes more expensive than foreign cars and talk with people who could discuss particle physics in the way that most people discuss Paris Hilton’s latest mishap. It was truly an unforgettable experience.

Special Contribution: The atmosphere at any corporation can get somewhat dull when all the employees do is sit in cubicles and stare at computer screens. Midwest Living is no different. Human interaction is stunted by e-mails and there’s a pretty high chance that you’d never meet the person down the hall from you if you didn’t have to drop off a story draft or layout for editing. I wasn’t about to let that kind of corporate lifestyle hinder my internship experience. So, I made a point to be unnecessarily boisterous, exuberant and outgoing.

Many of my coworkers told me that I livened the place up and made it a much more interesting work environment. It occurred to me that any intern can write a good story or design a nice layout, but not every student walks through the door and makes a memorable impact. I’m not claiming to have made any life-altering changes at Midwest Living, but I really do think I brightened my coworkers’ days and made the office a more pleasant place to work. And that’s more than enough for me.

Advice to Future Interns: Network, network, network! Every professor and adviser preaches about how important it is to get your name out there, and I can’t emphasize how true this is. At a place like Meredith, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of employees, but you never know who might turn into a future boss or the name at the bottom of a recommendation letter. And that short, tan guy you see in the lunch line every day may actually be none other than the company’s president and CEO. No joke.

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