Observer Observations

In just the few weeks that I have been interning at the NY Observer, it's unreal how much change has happened.  First, SCENE was pulled from publication and I was lucky enough to become an intern for the Style section of the Observer.  I began to pitch ideas and started on a longer article that would require me to reach out to retailers and marketing professionals in the retail industry for quotes and information.  While in the process of doing so, Elaina, my supervisor, went abroad and the Managing Editor for the Observer, Lale Arikoglu, became the new supervisor for all of the interns.  Since most of the interns write for the New York news section, she started to oversee that.  I began to write short re-blogs/reposts of news clips each day, which was a nice change as it has allowed me to get more writing experience, as well as bylines on the website.  However, Lale is now planning on shifting the format of the New York section to include fewer re-blogs and more report-style pieces.  In other words, rather than flooding the site each day with information that every other news service is posting, she is encouraging us, as interns, to take on more meaningful projects by pitching stories that require us to go out and experience something firsthand or interview people to get our own information and quotes.  This is quite an ambitious change as far as I'm concerned, only because I started out the summer completing more administrative and organizational tasks, as well as light copyediting and now plan to report and write my own stories.  (What a fast and unexpected progression)  Regardless, I feel so lucky to actually be able to to immerse myself in the journalism world in the most exciting (and newsworthy) city in the country.