My Mentor

I have had a lot of teachers/professors/coaches in my life that have inspired me… but when thinking about my future in the field of communications, one person really jumps out as a true mentor that took me under their wing. That person is my internship advisor from this summer at WKBN, Maggie Henderson. Ever since my first day at the station interviewing, Maggie has been very understanding, patient, and willing to help whenever. I thought for sure I wouldn’t have gotten my internship in the newsroom this summer because I got lost in Youngstown and was consequently late for my interview. Maggie was understanding though and actually very relatable to because she told me she was from Pennsylvania and that she went to college in PA so she known how confusing Youngstown can be at first. This automatically put me at ease and I knew I could talk to her about anything I needed from there on out, it was also nice that she is in her twenties so she knows what it’s like to be a young professional in the field. Throughout my internship, Maggie watched over my fellow interns and myself and always made sure we were learning something valuable from what we were doing. The list of things I learned this summer from my internship is never ending, but some of them were running Avid, writing scripts/teases/VOSOTS, producing and promotions. I spent a good amount of my internship experience going out on the field with reporters, but whenever I was in the newsroom I learned how to enter press releases into the day book and how to take phone calls. Maggie helped us get into contact with the promotions department one week, where we learned how promotions ties into the newsroom with producing commercials, special features, graphics and much more. After that, I asked Maggie if we (the interns) could job shadow her as a producer. She was more than willing to help and show us how she times out a show, how to make the show flow and how to write short and concisely. She also gave us very informative packets of information for anything we needed to know about producing or being in the news room. Overall, Maggie Henderson made my internship experience very valuable and very special to me; I think without her, I wouldn’t have appreciated what I had done for 3 months so much!