Making Your Voice Heard

My name is Allison Rodriguez and I'm a current Metro Minutes reporter and Anchor. I was lucky enough to be chosen to be as one of the entertainment interns at WGN with Dean Richards.

As many of you know, the journalism industry is moving more and more to the Internet than ever before. And big city news organizations are no different. I specifically remember the News Director of WGN calling a meeting and talking about the importance of writing for the web and coming up with new web content.

At the time, I was really stressed out with juggling school work and all the responsibilty that goes into being an intern. I thought to myself "if only people knew how hard and fun it really is to be an intern..." And just like that a light bulb went off in my head! I told some of my fellow interns about the idea to get some feedback on whether or not I was crazy or it really was a good idea. Everyone seemed on board so I decided to try and make it happen. A few days later I walked right into the new directors office and said "we should create a blog for the interns here so that people and are our peers will see what it's really like to be an intern at a huge T.V. station." He looked at me and said "Who are you?!"

Looking back on this I can't help but laugh at the idea that I just barged into the top head honcho in the newsroom and told him my idea. But to my relief he sat back and thought for a moment and then said "that's a great idea!" He then called in the assistant news director and told her what I had done. She looked at me in shock and told me that she too thought it was a good idea.

From that point, it took about two weeks to get the first blog up and I invited all of my fellow interns to join in on the blog. I now have that on my resume and couldn't be prouder of the fact that I helped get it started. If you want to check out some of the blogs or videos I helped post then you can follow it here http://weblogs.wgntv.com/wgn-morning-news-blog/the-intern-diaries/

If you have an idea, I say go for it. You never know what it could turn into unless you give it what you got and aren't afraid to fail. Even if the first idea doesn't come out, something else could come from that beginning point.