The New York internship was not easy. Most of the other Daily News interns were native New Yorkers, but to me, the city might as well have been a foreign country. My total lack of knowledge of everything from NYC neighborhoods to how to hail a taxi often put me at a real disadvantage when I was expected to race around the city chasing stories and beating out seasoned reporters from news outlets that sometimes included the likes of the New York Times.
The most important news outlet to beat was the New York Post. The Post and the News have a storied rivalry — the stuff of journalism legend. Every reporter, photographer and intern alike knew that with anything they turned in, their haul would be compared side by side with the Post's coverage the next day, and they would have to account for their failure on every single detail that ended up in the Post but not the News.
I got chewed out on many occasions for not finding the same person in a crowd of bystanders that a Post reporter did. I remember one day the main assignment editor I reported to coming over to the table where I was working alongside a handful of other interns and junior reporters, grabbing the end of it, and saying he wished he could push the whole table and all of us with it out the window and into the Hudson because of how useless we had been to him that day.
This sort of thing generally led to two different responses in Post and News journalists: some resorted to subterfuge of all kinds to outwit their rival on a story, while others banded together behind their editors' backs to level the playing field.
This played out most obviously in stakeouts. Sometimes I ended up outside a building with a News photog and a duo from the Post for hours on end, either waiting for someone to come home or waiting for them to come out of their apartment so we could shout questions at them and take their picture. (That sort of behavior was something I absolutely hated, am not proud of, and once I was done with that internship and had a little more control over how I handled stories, never did again).
Sometimes the News photog I was paired with for the day would warn me not to take my eyes off the other team for a second, but often we would all chat amiably throughout the day, and I learned a lot from those conversations. When we trusted each other, we took care of logistics like bathroom breaks by agreeing the four of us would all leave the scene together to hit the bathroom and grab some lunch from the nearest bodega. If we all stuck together during the break, then if the target of our stakeout came in or out of the building while we were gone, no one would be the wiser, and none of us would get yelled at for missing anything that the other paper got. And if our editors wouldn't give permission to leave the scene unless the other paper's team left first, well, the solution there (providing you trusted the other team not to double back) was for both sides to tell their editors at the same time that the other one was just leaving.
(Sidebar: There was one other BYU intern at the News, and she was from Canada. One day she got stuck at a stakeout for longer than necessary because when she called to check in with our editor and he asked if the Post was there, her mind jumped to the recent arrival of the mail carrier to deliver the mail, which in Canada is known as the post, and told him yes, the post had arrived.)
One of my favorite moments of collaboration came with a Post reporter who I had been through a few stakeouts with. We both showed up at a large office building one day, following the same tip that an FBI raid was about to take place. Following a fruitful off-the-record conversation with a guy loitering outside in a polo shirt and buzz cut, we plunked ourselves down across the street and watched as a collection of vans pulled up a short while later and people filed inside, returning a few minutes later with armfuls of computers and boxes.
Afterward, the other reporter and I were both told by our respective editors to stick around and see if we could catch any of the neighbors of the (alleged) mass scammers who were raided and ask what they had seen. As was often the case in New York, the doorman would not let us inside. But eventually the doorman had to leave his post momentarily to help someone carry something, and the Post reporter and I slipped inside. We searched the building, trying to look like we belonged there, until we located the raided office and had an excellent interview with the secretary for the neighboring office that yielded all sorts of colorful quotes about how they seemed shady and "dressed like gangsters."
I did, on occasion, get something the Post didn't get. One of my most triumphant moments came thanks to an appearance by Justin Bieber on the Today show.
This was at the height of Bieber fever, and there was a line of preteen girls a mile long waiting for the chance to catch a glimpse of the teen idol leaving the NBC studios on Rockefeller Plaza after the show. Many had spent the night on the sidewalk. When I called to check in with the assignment editor on the morning of the big appearance, he told me to get down there and interview a few of the girls in line about what they loved about Justin Bieber for a fluff piece about his visit to New York.
I showed up to find a couple of other news outlets had the same idea, and watched as they interviewed a handful of girls and then left. As I studied the line to see which girls might give the best quotes, it occurred to me that the girl at the very front of the line would have waited there the longest and were therefore arguably his biggest fans.
When I talked to the pair of 14-year-old girls at the head of the line, I struck gold. They had, as many girls had, spent the night before sleeping on the sidewalk. However, unlike all of the other girls, they had also spent the night before that sleeping out there — all alone. One girl's grandmother had brought them into the city, but was too old to sleep on a pool floatie on the sidewalk for two nights, and so had checked into a hotel and had let them sleep on the street all by themselves on the first night, until more girls showed up the next day.
We got a photographer down there, I convinced the girls to convince the grandmother to come down and do an interview, and the News played the story up big on social media, with polls about whether she was the worst grandmother ever or best grandmother ever, sparking major comment wars online. It was the one time the main assignment editor I worked under all summer ever complimented me on a story (technically, he ended up in the elevator with another intern who later told me he said "I should have told Jade she did a good job with the Bieber story today" but coming from the same guy that threatened to throw us into the Hudson, it was rare praise nonetheless).
I did not get to see Justin Bieber that day, but the two finalists from that year's American Idol did drive by in a limo and wave to the girls in line, much to their delight.
It was one of many minor brushes with celebrities I had that summer. Once, I interviewed a Pussycat Doll and some of the wolves from Twilight (minus Taylor Lautner) when they were judges for a contest to sing the national anthem at the U.S. Open. Another time, my editor sent me to Spike Lee's townhouse to ask him a question about the Boston Celtics. The famed director, unfortunately, was not home, but his wife took a note from me asking him to call my editor, and he did call.
I ended up helping cover the funeral of Lena Horne, as well. Another News reporter did most of the coverage, but after the service I followed a scrum of other reporters around outside, jotting down notes as others asked questions of talented legends like Dionne Warwick, Chita Rivera and Diahann Carroll.
The New York internship had its ups and downs, for sure. There were some bad moments (more on that later) but I don't regret doing it. I had a lot of interesting experiences and learned a lot of things from that internship, including the importance of always looking for the thing that's going to make your story stand out from the rest of the field.
