Internship Highlight- Nene Mensah

My name is Nene Narh-Mensah, I’m a senior studying journalism and public policy. This past summer I interned at Maryland Matters, a state politics and policy publication. I covered justice and health equity while there. I also contributed to their coverage of the elections this year.

The semester before, I had been searching for an internship that could count for internship requirements for both my journalism and public policy majors. I reached out to the internship advisor in the journalism department for help. Luckily for me, the editor of Maryland Matters, Danielle Gaines, had just contacted her about a recently opened internship. It was the perfect opportunity so I did an interview and started three days later.

Before I started, I created a list of goals I wanted to achieve during my eight weeks at Maryland Matters. I worked with Danielle throughout the internship to get them done. With her help, along with support from my coworkers, I was able to get the vast majority of them done. For example, I wanted to write a campaign finance story. The campaign finance story was the first one I completed for the paper. I also wrote stories about heat regulations and Maryland residents being appointed to a national advisory board for HBCUs.

I also got to travel fairly often for the internship, getting exposed to different environments. I went to cover a Tom Perez campaign event on primary night. I was in my first reporter’s gaggle and got to ask Perez himself a question. I spent some time in the state capitol building, where Maryland Matters has an office in the basement near all the other publications.

As a part of the internship, which was through the Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Foundation, I was assigned a writing coach and mentor which I met with throughout the internship. I formed close relationships with both of them, and they both offered great insight on working in the journalism field as a veteran and a more recent hire respectively.

I learned an innumerable amount from the experience about reporting, writing, and working in a professional newsroom. I’d like to thank CSS for helping me improve my resume and cover letter, which got me the position. This is my second time writing an internship highlight, and I got both jobs through CSS.