News-Register intern completes fourth week

My fourth week was short. I had to take a brief hiatus from the office since I'd been spending so much time there I was neglecting doing the chapter readings for my online course. I had a lot of catching up to do at the end of that week. But as I sit here this Monday, I'm' really glad I forced myself to get it all done.

At any rate everyone in the newsroom was more apt to converse and it was great. I even made the other intern and the ladies at the front desk some root beer floats- that's how cheery I felt in the atmosphere. I'm beginning to wonder, though how everyone makes it through. Loving what you do doesn't always break up the monotony of the day-to-day. I'm struggling with that. Maybe I'm just in a slump- the newness has worn off. I need a morale booster. Is there a drink for that?

Just kidding.

Tomorrow I will be interviewing a woman who has a collection of books about color, we're going to be doing some video work with that, too so maybe that will put some pep in my step, who knows.

But...
Here's the latest link of mine
Renewing the Relay for Life

Oh, and when I returned from my little break I had a particular e-mail in my box that made me smile.
Here it is:

Hi Septembre, I just wanted to thank you for the great article you wrote about our McMinnville Relay. I am the Accounting & Registration Chair for the event and I enjoy hearing about the personal stories of others. I did notice you working at the breakfast on Saturday; so thank you for your help in making this a great Relay For Life year.
- Adeline

Adeline Reynolds

Good times.

Anyone doing sales calls?

Cold-calling is the bane of my existence. Any pointers or tips? I am working on a project where I'm calling area law firms to try to get more information about their investigation needs, and I am having some trouble getting through the heirarchy of the offices, if I even get past the receptionist. Any help would be appreciated!

News-Register intern completes third week

Since last week was my third week, and today marks the middle of my fourth week, this post was long overdue.
But I've been busy.
I covered the annual cancer fundraiser, Relay For Life Saturday. It was a ton of fun. I killed two birds with one stone that day. You see, at the event the Kiwanis Club served a complimentary breakfast to the participants and I volunteered to help them- I was the server of the scrambled eggs that morning, bright and early.
I was incredible anxious about covering the event. I walked onto the go-kart track with no idea of any kind of angle for my story. I stood hoping something would come to me. Like a newspaper omen of some sort.
It came to me.
After the last call announcement rang out over the fairgrounds and the last throng of hungry families and individuals came to grab some breakfast I took a walk around the track and took some notes when the excitement began. I heard a name called over the loudspeaker. The name belonged to a man who walked the entire night and was still walking.
Jim Cozine of Willimina.
There was my angle. I stopped alongside the track waiting for him to make his way past me and when he did we walked and talked for a lap or two. It was exciting listening to him and wonderful to just be there period.
I also picked an interesting team to interview as well. The woman I spoke to was great, I made her cry with one of my questions- just a little bit. I knew it would happen one way or another because some of the activities tied to Relay For Life are heart rendering.
I felt good when I got home, tired, but still maintained a great feeling- until I fell asleep.

Since my last post I have written some things that need links.
A brief for Relay For Life , I suppose I'm the designated hitter for this ball:
Relay for Life slated this weekend
Letter to the Readers, equivalent to an opinion piece which I am all too familiar with being tasked to write for The Linfield Review:
Between time, something we all need to cherish
and finally a story about a couple who had twins right before Father's Day:
Twins tied to family legacy

And that's that. It's time for my morning root beer float :)
I'll have to link the piece I did on the happenings at Relay in my next post. The paper has yet to come out as I type.

Septembre "The Intern" Russell

Week 1- A microscope, a cat, and the bull****

Hey everyone,

First, I will introduce to all to my company. I work for Debra Seifert Communications LCC, which is headed by, you guessed it, Debra Seifert. She is a veteran deep-technology marketer, and also a Linfield Alumna, graduating around the Watergate days. Debra recently left her former agency, and now runs a small-scale marketing-public relations firm out of her own house on the edge of Beaverton.

That’s where I come in. As her intern, I am officially ½ of the company staff. Seriously. In reality, she works with many outside partners on work projects, but most of the time it’s usually just her, I, and the company kitty (Squirt) hammering away on tasks. Squirt and I share my office, which doubles as the TV room of the house. Squirt occasionally jumps on my keyboard or in front of my monitor to say hi.

Debra has taken the role of marketing mentor for me: we usually begin each day discussing recent happenings, the daily work agenda, and some current events just for fun. Most experiences provide a digestible lesson or two, such as learning to decipher a real functioning product feature from, as the professionals put it, complete bull****. For example, a manufacturer may claim that a product does this or that, but dig a little deeper and you might find that feature is buggy and incomplete, more possibility than reality. Asking the right questions to our clients is perhaps as important as breathing in our line of work, and it takes quite a few of them to get to know a product, a situation, a story. If we cannot understand it, we sure as hell can’t market it.

Last week’s agenda included getting myself aquatinted with the company and economic situation, setting up my work station, and transcribing a recorded conversation (writing down whatever is said). Currently, I work mostly with FEI, and marketing their ultra-powerful desktop microscope, the Phenom. I have been writing a piece focusing on two high school students who used the Phenom to determine when climate changed occurred in the Willamette Valley.

Debra’s taught me plenty on how to tell a marketing story, which in the end should create a vision in the reader’s mind of how that particular product could improve their job, their company, and their lives. I’ve also done some coordinating for a video shoot, which is similar to organizing friends together for a road trip, seeing who is available for what day and time. It’s great to be part of a company that isn’t structured as vertical as Everest, which makes me feel like I’m an important contributor to the day’s agenda, instead of a cog in the machine. Most of the time though, I simply take orders from the inside of a house; sounds like my childhood and adolescence all over again!

End Week 3

Week three was very eventful for the Bend Elks. I have still been doing some grunt work before games: pulling tickets, parking lot management, and other exciting tasks. But during the games I have been up in the press box learning a stat program. It keeps track of stats during the game and after the game is over we have to send it into the league representative who collects all of them. After doing this, I write up and send a recap of the game to the local tv stations and the local paper. It has been tough to learn the process but I'm beginning to get the hang of it which is good and very necessary because this up coming weekend 3 of the 4 top employees for the Elks will be gone. I will be working double duty in the press box working the program solo, helping our PA with in game stats, and working the scoreboard. It will be another fun week of learning and applying skills at the ballpark!

Operation Smile - A brief introduction about my organization!

Hi all,

Yay! Summer is great so far coz I'm in my hometown - Vietnam. I choose Operation Smile as my first internship since I've been working for O.S. for 4 years as a non-medical volunteer.

Operation Smile is an international non-for-profit organization providing reconstructive surgeries and related medical care to indigent children and adults who have cleft lip, cleft palates and other facial deformities. Operation Smile head quarter is Norfolk, VA. Every single month, Operation Smile operates thousands of surgical missions in many cities and nations all over the world where cleft lip and cleft palate patients are waiting for help. Besides these missions, the organization also regularly hold various training courses to enhance local doctors and nurses to enable them to provide safe treatments.

This summer, I'm working for O.S Asia Pacific as a business development coordinator. My first project is working on the Newsletter for O.S. as a part of the summer fundraising program.

Duc

Work a little slow...

Work has been a little slow lately...a little anxiety provoking as we are a still a startup company and are just beginning to grow our client pool. We went from being so swamped about 3 weeks ago that we hired 2 more people, to just a trickle of cases each day. Luckily we each have special projects to work on in the down time, but we still would rather be running cases.

I have tried to think about the reasons why our business has taken such a sharp downfall lately. It really has been just in the past 2-3 weeks that our clients have not been sending in many cases; therefore this means they are not doing a lot of hiring. I though maybe the big push we saw in end of spring was when companies were hiring for the summer, but now that summer is here those jobs are filled? Does anyone else who is in a corporate situation notice anything that would validate that assumption? Since our business is directly correlated to the job market and, therefore, the economy, we were please with the increase in May. Now we don't know what to think of this quietness.

A little bit about my company

So I've been working here since February, but this summer I am transitioning from being a Research Associate (just doing research and running screens), to taking on special projects and going through training to become a Research Manager (promotion!). This summer will be full of new experiences and challenges, but I'm excited for it. But before I go any further, you all probably need to know what the heck my company is!

Northwest SecureCheck is a highly specialized private investigating firm in Dundee. It was founded by Lisa Blos-Johnson, who is my boss. We are only in our 2nd year of business, so we are still a start-up company, and there are many challenges that go along with that. Right now our staff includes Lisa, her husband Steve, Casey (Steve and Casey are our sales and marketing department) Rosanna the Research Manager (who is moving to Taiwan in the fall and therefore needs someone to take over for her), and the Research Associates: Me, Bert, and Jessop.

Our business consists of running pre-employment background checks on our clients' potential employees. We are in the Court databases, legal sites, and other internet search sites that we have special access to because of Lisa's Private Investigator License. Overall the work is enjoyable and I like all of my co-workers, it's a pretty sweet deal!

So now you'll have some context for the rest of my posts!

-Jasmin

Long Homestand Aprroaches

I'm on my lunch break right now and thought I should bang this out real quick. With the second week done and my third week starting, many members of the organization are becoming overwhelmed with work and other things. The team was on the road this last week and were 3-3, which wasn't too bad, anytime you can go on the road and be .500 you're doing well. Some of the same stuff has been going on. Stadium preparation, season ticket sales, and player relations work tops my list. Our first home game is tomorrow and I'm scheduled to work a long day from 11 to roughly 11 or midnight. It's been a great experience thus far and I hope everything continues going well. Got to get back to work now. See ya.

The news doesn't sleep so don't think weekends are off limits

It's Saturday and I decided I would stop in to the News-Register and try to get some work done. I was hoping I had e-mail inside my inbox that would lead to the set up of an interview for next week.
No e-mail.
But here's the links to three more stories I wrote in chronological order continuing from my blog post containing links to stories.

Behind the wheel, Lodge to hold flag celebration

Group gets in the spirit and works up a sweat

Homespun heroes: Legends of the flame

There, now we are all caught up as far as stories that were written by me.

With hope I will be able to read about everyone else and their activities and such very soon : D

Septembre "The Intern" Russell

News-Register intern completes second week

Just a short video blog to highlight the close of my second week as an intern...

Septembre "The Intern" Russell

Blogger.com catches up with a summer intern

I wanted to make a short video, but this morning I was rushed. However, my stories are at a halt and some great ideas popped into my head.
I am one week behind on my posting, and with hope I will catch up quickly. All of the trepidation and uneasiness about my internship at the News-Register has abated as of this point, but I can remember it all quite well if you care to take travel back in time with me.

Unofficial day one. I met with my supervisor Steve Bagwell in May. He showed me around the News-Register. I saw the desk at which I would be working complete with telephone- my own telephone and extension. It's 334, by the way.

I hadn't the slightest clue what they would have me doing. This is my first internship ever and my brain was full of the cliche image of an intern. You know, the movies where the intern is overrun with copies to make and files to file and all of that jazz. Those images didn't deter me. Especially since I had taken them at face value long before this opportunity arrived in front of me (more about that, later). Still, I was unaware of what I would have my hands in.
I found out soon.

After my e-mail account was setup I began getting messages. Steve sent me a test e-mail at 10:25 and by 10:38 I received another message from him, only this time it was more than a test.

Below is the news release that was included in the 10:38 message

NEWS RELEASE
Date: May 29, 2009
Release: Immediately
Contact: Debbie McDermott, McMinnville Fire Dept.

Celebration of Sixty Years of Service to McMinnville Fire Department


Elmer Parker and Andy Schryvers have each given 60 years of service to the City of McMinnville as volunteer firefighters. On Saturday June 6th McMinnville Fire Department will be hosting a celebration and presentation to honor their dedication to the Oregon Fire Service and the citizens of McMinnville.
There will be a presentation at 11:30 followed by a free BBQ lunch for the first 2000 guests. The presentation and BBQ will be held at the station located at 175 NE 1st, McMinnville OR.

For more fire safety information, call McMinnville Fire Department at 503-435-5800.

Exciting. I know. I was nervous, however to just get started. It was happening, that was one of my assignments. It was just a brief which meant I would write a short snippet informing the public of the BBQ and what was to take place at the event.

Here it is:
Pair to be honored for long service on fire line

I assumed my time would be spent re-writing press releases. I was comfortable with that, I just wanted to help out and be of some use. I was given another press release to write my first day.

WOW to pick up yard debris

And I was assigned a follow-up on an talent show fundraiser as well:

Show produces repeat winners

I was wrong about press releases, briefs and follow ups. After the work above was done I was to started in on doing a feature piece about Elmer Parker and Andy Schryvers. I needed to schedule an interview and create some questions for the men. I did. The piece I wrote about their service will be published tomorrow.


At a newspaper, some aspects are reminiscent of a Montessori school for obvious reasons that I will expand upon later.

Septembre "The Intern" Russell