Summer Internship at The Pioneer- a media house.

The bundled newspapers arrive at dawn, crisp and creaseless and smelling fresh! But how many give it much thought? This time a group of us did. On 2 June 2014, a group of seven students were ready to begin with their summer internship programme at The Pioneer , a leading English daily, to explore what it takes to bring the newspaper to our doorsteps every morning .

On the first day of the internship programme, Muskan Nayyar, Diksha Dhawan, Piyush Nanwani, Sakshi Kathuria, Snigdha Verma, Enakshi Dasgupta, Tanya Duggal reported to Ms. Navneet Mendiratta, Managing Editor of the Exotica Magazine, who introduced us to newspaper layout, the organizational structure, and the dynamics of a systematic approach. She informed the students that the initial step of writing a news report is collection of information, followed by writing of the story and its filling. This is then followed up by the selection of stories and editing them at the DESK. The layout of the newspaper is finally decided in an editorial meeting.

Sitting in the conference room on big blue chairs, our group had it's very first taste professional life and was handed over it's assignment- to collect information and write a story on the different summer workshops going on in Delhi.

Braving the soaring mercury of Delhi, for the next interview we interviewed several people who were conducting different workshops in the city. We got firsthand experience of doing effective interviews and collecting the required information. We also learnt how to deal with impatient and difficult people without losing our cool!

On the 4th day the group was briefed on how to go about writing a report. We were taught the sort of language that is expected in the writing of a report, and how an article is made attractive to the readers. With Ms. Ritu as our mentor, we learnt the nuances of productive reporting. Finally, on 6 June, we were ready with our set assignment- our very first newspaper story!

Every day of our training was a truly worthwhile learning experience generating a new respect amongst us for the world of journalism.