As a McGill student in Political Science and International Development, but also as an aspiring journalist, there was no better place for me to be this summer than at The Huffington Post in Paris. My goals of working in a newsroom first became real through student journalism and my involvement as an editor at The Tribune.
However, following my internship at ELLE last summer, I was looking to learn even more from being mentored by accomplished journalists. How do they respond so quickly to current events unfolding before their eyes? How do they differentiate themselves from other media? How do they stay objective in their political reporting while putting forward their progressive values? Here are some of the questions I found the answer to during my internship.
Le HuffPost is a numeric media comprising multiple sections, that provides French people with accurate, well-researched and easily understandable information. As an intern for the LIFE section of The Huff, my daily responsibilities are the exact same as the four coworkers on my team: constantly monitoring the news and pitch articles relevant to our editorial line and writing two to three news articles a day.
To me, the most interesting part of my job is not my day-to-day work, but rather the pieces I wrote over a longer period of time, for which I had to go beyond the news and find angles related to people’s everyday life. This is the most challenging part of the job, as it is not always obvious to come up with something interesting that has not been done before. However, everything became easier once I realized that thinking through my personal lens was the key to finding original angles. Thus, the pieces I pitch are not only relevant to what is going on in the world at the time, but also touch on themes that are important to me, such as minorities’ experiences and mental health.
I pitched these ideas on a weekly basis during my section’s editorial meeting, where my manager and my team all discuss different ideas together. Our conversations are heavily influenced by major current events, namely the French legislative elections for the first half of the summer, and the Olympics for the second half—which were definitely the highlights of my internship. Some of the articles I pitched and wrote in relation to these events include a piece on French POC’s anxiety with the rise of the far right and an article on the mental health of Olympic athletes. Having the freedom and my team’s trust to pitch and write my own pieces every week is by far one of the most gratifying parts of this internship. Moreover, each of these pieces was a long process of finding sources, conducting 20-40 minutes long interviews, and trying to write their story in the most accurate way possible. This is my favourite part of the job, as I got to talk with a diversity of people, whether they are experts in a specific field or just people with stories to share—making every day completely different than the last one. This truly inspired to me to continue this work as student journalist for my last year at McGill.
As I am about to leave my internship next week, I am grateful for more than just the learning experience and the network. I am also leaving this place with some really good friends. With around thirty journalists, The HuffPost is a relatively small and close-knitted newsroom, which allowed me to get well acquainted with everyone and quickly become part of their team. This wouldn’t have been possible without the funding through the Ithaca Arts Internship Award, which allowed me to participate in some essential bonding activities, sometimes as simple as paying for a meal every day at the cafeteria. These moments make my experience incredibly special and worth all the hard work.
