Budding LA Journalist Spends Winterim at The Groton Herald

By Emma Zihan Zhou ‘24

The Groton Herald is located in a small office in the basement of the Prescott School Community Center. Unless you’re given specific instructions on where it is, the office is quite difficult to find. Filled with the fresh smell of printed paper and the editors’ dogs running around, it is indeed a special place to put together a whole newspaper every single week with only three full-time staff. This is where I worked as an intern for two weeks as part of the Winterim program here at Lawrence Academy.

I still remember my first day at the job, nervous to make an impression. I’ve always known that interns shouldn’t expect to get too many things done. However, Deb, one of the editors, walked in, and the first thing she said to me was, “Emma, I want you to cover the Groton Reads and Gardens event.” Just like that, I had my first assignment. Deb is one of those editors who is organized and quite strict. When she speaks, her words are always on point, and she expresses herself well. She is one of the reasons I felt motivated to write for the town’s paper and decided to stay on as an intern even after my Winterim was over.

For the next two weeks, I wrote stories ranging from opinion pieces to traditional Q&A. The point of my Winterim Professional was for me to train and learn the skills I need for a real profession; in this case, I was practicing being a journalist. The responsibilities I undertook were big, such as remembering to cover a live event well past my working hours, taking initiative to ask for new assignments (they sometimes were so busy that they didn’t notice that I had nothing to do), finishing stories within a deadline, and even learning to lay out my own story on the computer.

The first story I wrote that got published on page 3 of the paper (quite a big deal) was an opinion piece that I had planned with another editor, Russ, when I first met him in January to plan the internship. It was about how the international students at LA viewed the town, and it required me to interview a few students on campus and to find a common theme within their answers. It was a topic that I had worked on for a while, so I could not hide my smile when I saw it printed over and over again to the readers. Those in the College Counseling Office who read the journals I was required to write for the “Professionals” internship really know how excited I was when it was Thursday. That’s when the papers had been printed and were out for delivery.

My love for journalism started early in my time at LA, and through the connections I’ve made with the com munications office, the faculty were able to intro duce me to this internship. This again just goes to show that the interactions students have with members of the LA community go far beyond the classroom. My Winterim Professional at The Groton Herald taught me that there is little doubt that I want to pursue a career in journalism in the future.