Beginning at Out-and-About

Last week, I began my internship at Out-and-About Magazine. The first couple days of the internship I was writing information for the magazine's event calendar. This took awhile to do because it was tedious work. I had to go to the websites of different groups around the New Castle County area and find out what events are going on for the month of Feb. Even with just the first few days, I can see that working at a magazine is much different than working with a newspaper. At The Review, my stories are for the next day, but here, stories are for the next month.

On Tuesday, I began writing advances for the magazine. I would take press releases and write between 150-200 words. I found that the most difficult part of writing these were trying to really cut down on the unecessary words. These advances will help with slimming down my writing. I wrote an advance on the First State Boxing Series. This event will be huge for Delaware because the fight card will premiere on ESPN Feb. 8. I wrote another advance about the Wilmington Photo Club. This group is having a major photo exhibit during the month of Feb. I might have to check it out myself. There will be hundreds of photographs from around the world.

During the end of the week, the other intern, Sarah Wahlberg and I, went over to the Wilmington Public Library and researched for awhile. Out-and-About will be celebrating its 20th Anniversary in March, so I have to find out what events were going on during 1988. I had a lot of fun finding out this information. Through my research, I found that not a lot has changed. There was a major writer's strike in 1988, the U.S. was not getting along with Iran, various players were being caught with steroids (Ben Johnson had to give up his medals that he received in the summer Olympics), etc.

I really enjoyed my first week at the internship and look foward to the upcoming weeks.