Change in Plans

Remember the amazing internship I got with Newsweek magazine?

My family and I were excited to have such a special opportunity to live in New York this summer, and for me to work with a national magazine. Things could not get much better for starting out my career, and we were looking forward to a great adventure as a little family in the Big Apple.

Well, a couple weeks ago that internship came into doubt. With the merger of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, we at the BYU end of things weren't sure what would happen. After trying multiple times to contact people with Newsweek and The Daily Beast, it was confirmed yesterday that there is no longer a place for me at Newsweek. The Daily Beast already has its own interns coming, and won't be needing any more. The special access BYU has with Newsweek seems to no longer exist.

Cue the quandary.

We're still going to New York. We've already begun the paperwork and the payments, and besides, why would anyone pass up on New York?

And Professor Campbell was able to find some extra internship opportunities in New York, so I am guaranteed a place at either The Brooklyn Paper or The Riverdale Press. Both are very localized weekly newspapers, specifically for Brooklyn and the Bronx. So, even though I've never heard of them, it's still journalism work in New York City! And I might get to do sports, which I wouldn't do much of at Newsweek, I imagine. The Brooklyn Paper offers "the world's best Cyclones coverage," meaning the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Class A Minor League Baseball team. That might be fun to be involved with. (It would be like last summer when I went to a bunch of Orem Owlz games, only I'd get to write about them.)

But since yesterday afternoon I have been welling up with a lot of emotions, none of them very positive. I feel like I was duped once again. Just another on a long list of missed opportunities:

- Last year, I thought I was going to get to go to New York for a journalism student convention. But I got the invitation before the trip was actually approved by the department, and so I jumped the gun a little bit and got my hopes up for a weekend in New York.

- Around the same time, I was asked by Rich and the sports editors to represent The Daily Universe at the NCAA Tournament regional games in Salt Lake City. BYU didn't make it that far, but they were going to send me anyway just to cover the games and get that experience. Which would have been amazing. But alas, the NCAA pulled a reverse and decided college newspapers were not eligible for media credentials. Then, we were going to try and borrow media credentials from The Daily Herald in Provo, because they likely weren't going to use them unless BYU was in those games. But they decided to use them anyway (or at least not give them to The Daily Universe, who knows what they actually did with them).

- This past football season, The Daily Universe sold enough ad space for a special football section every Monday after a football game. With the extra ad money, we had the chance to send at least a couple of people to every away football game. My co-editor "Sparky" went to the Florida State game in Tallahassee, then the TCU game in Fort Worth, Texas was going to be my turn. But then, when it got closer to the TCU game, somehow plans were changed because the broadcast program had connections that could make things cheaper. As far as I can tell, because one of the broadcast kids had family in Texas and everyone could stay there for free, the department gave the trip to them instead of to The Daily Universe - you know, to the side of the department that actually earned that ad money in the first place.

Even now, I'm signed up to go to the MWC Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas, but I won't really believe I'm going until I'm sitting in the BYU rental van driving down I-15 toward Nevada. I've been trained by now to never get my hopes up.

But I thought this Newsweek internship would be immune to this trend of disappointment. I needed this internship to graduate from BYU with a degree in communications, so I didn't think it would be messed with. (An internship with The Brooklyn Paper, The Riverdale Press or somewhere else would still count for the graduation requirement.) This was a sure thing. After all, I got the internship. It wasn't that I merely hoped for something that didn't happen. I earned this, and it was taken away. Even this, the pinnacle of my BYU education and of my journalism career so far, turned into a letdown too.

To be fair, in many ways these circumstances were out of my control and out of the BYU Communications Department's control. And I haven't always been left out. I did get to travel to BYU football games in Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, Colorado. And I've also been able to talk face-to-face with Bronco Mendenhall, Harvey Unga, Jake Heaps and other football players, Dave Rose, Jimmer Fredette, Jackson Emery, LaVell Edwards, David Nixon, Mark Lyons, Mike Scioscia and many other amazing people.

I'm just bummed right now.

But I need to have an attitude that this happened for a reason. I have to think that this will work out somehow. One day, I'll probably look back on all this and I won't be able to imagine doing anything but The Brooklyn Paper, Riverdale Press or wherever. Looking back, this will all make sense. This will be right. At least, that's what I have to think. That's what I have to tell myself.

What's ironic is that the day I got the bad news was also the day Erin and I were praying and fasting that I would keep my Newsweek internship. Professor Campbell literally gave me the news while my stomach was a-grumblin'. I got the opposite of what I was asking for.

But maybe that means that this is what is supposed to happen. I don't know exactly how the Lord works. But maybe the opposite of the answer I want is still an answer.

At any rate, I have to make the best of it. It's the only way to get through life.

Crossed the finish line!

Whew.

I whipped up two COMMS 420 stories in one day. It's quite an achievement, but now my fatigue-induced nausea and ache is setting in. It was worth it though.

First, I put the finishing touches on a story about the BYU athletics budget on Tuesday. I interviewed Dallan Moody, the athletic director over finances, like two weeks ago. But I procrastinated with other interviews and stuff, without any real good reason. My professor, after seeing my rough draft with only the Moody interview, suggested writing the story as two parts. So I worked on dividing it up on Friday, and then planned on doing the rest of my interviews Monday.

It's a good thing, too, because Monday my second 420 story became suddenly urgent.


Professor Hughes gave me the assignment to write a story about former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr.'s presidential prospects. Some Huntsman buzz came up after a Newsweek interview hit newsstands earlier this month, written by none other than McKay Coppins, a friend and a BYU grad. Pretty cool for McKay, I hope I follow those same footsteps somehow.

Anyway, I was thinking of writing just a general story on the buzz. But then on Monday, the news broke that Huntsman had submitted his resignation to the White House and would be leaving his ambassador post. Which is a pretty obvious sign that he's up to something.

In The Daily Universe front page meeting, someone asked if a 321 reporter could do a story on the Huntsman developments real quickly. I piped up and said I was going to do one for 420, but that it would probably be two or three days before I could finish it. But I realized that if I was really going to do this story, to do it quick enough after Huntsman's breaking news for it to be relevant, I would have to do it the next day.

I freaked out. But, Monday night I called McKay and he graciously gave me 15 minutes of his time on the day that he was "vindicated" (his word). That gave me a good start, and then the next morning I finished my last interview for the BYU athletics budget story and then rushed to find some more interviews for the Huntsman story. I talked to the president of the BYU College Republicans, the president of the BYU Democrats, a political science professor and two students from the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.

And I finished it that afternoon! I was 45 minutes late to my 4 p.m. class, but other than that it was pretty smooth.

Anyway, that's the story behind my story.

Here it is!

Huntsman to throw hat into ring?

The original story was 58 inches long! I decided to take out some secondary quotes for a shorter version (which was still 40 inches). Our fearless leader Natalie Crofts was kind enough to use both versions, the short one for the newspaper and the long one for the website.


(My BYU athletics budget story will be published sometime later.)

New York, New York!

I'm in a New York state of mind since Dec. 8.

I officially got an internship with Newsweek magazine this April!


The BYU Communications Department has a New York internship program, where students who earn a spot get to live in the International House on Columbia University campus near Harlem. In addition, BYU's got the hookups at a few places, Newsweek being one of them. And that's where I ended up! Staying up all night putting together my portfolio (it had copies of every single clip I've ever had from The Daily Universe, plus most of my The Dalles Chronicle ones) paid off!

Me and my little family are so excited for our New York adventure! So far, the plan is that we'll be there starting around the middle of April and stay for six weeks. We might live at the International House, or find an apartment on our own, we're not quite sure yet. I don't know a whole lot about what I'll actually be doing, because a lot of changes will happening at Newsweek around the same time I get there. But I imagine it to be like the career of my friend McKay Coppins, who interned there last summer, was asked to extend his internship and stay all summer, and ultimately was hired and never came back to Provo.

We are going to have so much fun in New York. We have plans to see all the sights (we've already put money toward a Broadway show). We are also driving out there, so we'll have our car to go on trips to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Niagara Falls, and Palmyra. I had a little bit of the big city experience when I was a missionary in downtown Cordoba, Argentina. And I loved it. I don't think I'd ever want to raise a family in the city, but I still want to try it out for a while. And now is a great time, because Allisyn's young enough that the challenges of the city won't really be a problem (she doesn't need a backyard to play in, we don't have to make sure we live in a good school district, etc.).

For any of you who will be on the East Coast between April and June, stop by!