From One to the Other

My CNN internship ended after 10 weeks, and I'm still evaluating what happened. In between South Park episodes, 2-hour lunch breaks, and fantasy sports, did I become a better person? Or at least a more valuable commodity?

I arrived at the Orientation Meeting with 49 other interns from around the US, and toured the CNN building -- meeting potential mentors and cute colleagues. I left the Time Warner Center with zero friends and mediocre exchanges, but I did my job and I did my job well. Some time along Week 3, relational priorities took a backseat to the more selfish interests of my own career.

I left the building vowing to come back. Or at least be their competition.

Before I had a chance to breathe or let the dream slide away like most, I find myself in another internship at another news station that is both like CNN and drastically different. At WSB-TV Channel 2 News in Atlanta (ABC affiliate), it is stereotypical. It is a little on the insane side. It is getting yelled at. It is having thick skin, saying fuck you silently, and moving on.

I traded in the 10-floor glassy building in the center of Manhattan for one large news room where $1.00 an hour interns work side by side with 3.5 million a year anchors. I traded in a personal computer and phone, researching for a specific story for a community phone -- taking in phone calls from 80-year old grandmothers tipping me about the "bad man" outside her window on Peachtree. If I get lucky, a police officer may call me to tell me about a car wreck on I-85. Whoop dee doo.

In local news, you seem to take the good with the bad equally. Bad story ideas come in as plenty as great story ideas. 99% of the time, the police will tell you nothing is going on, but if there is something -- you will be the first to know -- before national news, reporters, or desk editors. Some of the most colorful personalities work with you one-on-one. Meanwhile, larger than life reporters who are in actuality much smaller than they think, give you the Anchorman treatment without the comedic effect of Will Ferrell.

At CNN, everyone does their own thing, and the system makes everything else work. At WSB-TV, everyone does everything together in the same room. Unless you're sports, lucky for them. And because of that, it feels like a breeding ground for moody personalities, where apologies and smiles come after a report making deadline.

And yet, one thing remains the same. I leave this place everyday as I did with CNN or countless other competitive institutions: an overconfident attitude -- knowing, or at least tricking oneself to believe, that I am better than everyone above me.

It is, I believe, the only way to think, in order to survive being kicked around as an unpaid intern in a community that will only give you respect if you demand it.

So demand I will till I get a job that pays above minimum wage.