Dudes. Chicks. Just got home after finishing up day 5 of the internship. I have this strange, unexpected feeling of accomplishment about the whole thing, which I didn’t expect to have.

Today I was hoping to have a pretty cruisy one, finishing off a couple of things I’d started on Thursday, but I made the “mistake” of asking if the editors needed anything done, and I got four more stories to follow up, which filled up my last day pretty comprehensively. I also took a call from one of the subjects of my article asking if I could please do this and that, and if I could attribute some of her quotes to her friend because she didn’t want the article to be all about herself. I basically told her to shove off, but later talked to an editor about it who had a pretty interesting take on the whole thing. She said people in the community often thought of the paper as their friend, much more so than bigger dailies like the Courier, and so they felt comfortable asking for favours and things like that. I guess it gave me a bit of a different perspective on the whole purpose of those papers, and this was reinforced later during my interview with the zone editor, who said he found working in community news rewarding because they could act as an advocate for people who otherwise didn’t have a voice. I see their point, and I guess what I see as trivial (for example there was a big story this week about a koala stuck up a tree…isn’t that where they’re supposed to be?) may be important to people living in the community.

Anyway, I got through the day, and in the end I was glad I had a busy last day. The editor, who I thought had been quite ambivalent about my presence in the office ended up writing me a pretty great assessment. At the end of the day I thanked everybody and then said to the editor “And, yknow, any jobs just give me a call!” at which point everybody laughed, which wasn’t exactly the reaction I was going for.

When I was driving home, that’s when I started to get that weird feeling of accomplishment and….satisfaction? Really don’t know where that came from.

So, taking stock, over the whole week I completed the following articles (of about 250-350 words each):

Former Olympian Addresses Local Business Owners
Artist’s Epic Work Burns Up Brisbane’s South
Residents Volunteer to Help Disadvantaged Abroad
New Vision Centre Provides Glimpse of the Future
Teachers to be Slimed Again at School Carnival
Breast Cancer Survivor Urges Regular Checkups
Kids to Dance Through the School Holidays at Carindale
Carina Juniors to Host Mackay South for Annual Tournament
New Laws to Bring Neighbours Closer
KP Independence Day to Celebrate US Aussie ties
Mansfield Local to Hit the Boards in Grease
End of an Era as Vision Australia Changes Location

I did a few briefs, maybe about 4, and the vox pops thing about K Rudd and the J-dog.
I guess that’s quite a lot really, no wonder I’m so exhausted! Looking forward to seeing all y’all names in print next week, and all y’all in person next Tuesday!