Influencers- Short Stories of Intern Experiences
As a child, she was interested in learning about the world by talking to adults and listening to their stories. She decided that if she could write those types of stories as an adult, it would be a fun career. Later, having earned credibility as an editor, she advocated preparing stories from diverse sources.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
RP was born in New Jersey to parents who had immigrated from India. Her father was an electrical engineer for a precious metals recycling company. Her mother also worked for the same business firm as an accounts manager.
CHILDHOOD INTERESTS FORECAST AN ADULT CAREER
As a child, thoughts of writing stories about people appealed to RP mostly as an excuse to satisfy her curiosity about the world. Journalism would be a career that gave her permission and confidence to ask questions of strangers and get answers. “I felt like it was something I would never get bored doing,” she said.
EDUCATION
During RP’s high school years, she volunteered to write stories for her school newspaper.
Following high school graduation, RP enrolled in a state university to study economics and journalism, leading to earning her Bachelor’s degree.
INTERNSHIPS
To learn more about how her journalism interests could be utilized in the modern world of communications, RP served within several businesses as an intern, focusing on business issues first for a business journal (NJBIZ) and later for the financial news network CNBC.
Editor – As with most internships, the pay was minimum, but the learning experience was maximum.
CAREER PATHS MAY VARY MULTIPLE TIMES
Next, follow RP’s path as it varied within her chosen field of journalism.
CAREER PATH A – A NARROW FOCUS (ECONOMICS)
RP’s initial adult career employments continued to blend her interests in journalism and economics, first as a researcher and writer in D.C. with Kiplinger’s business newsletters.
CAREER PATH PART B – A BROADER FOCUS (COMMUNITY NEWS)
After self-limiting herself to writing stories about business, RP wanted to broaden her writing interests beyond financial issues so she found a journalism career-related job as a “Community News Editor” with the public radio station WHYY in Philadelphia.
CAREER PATH C – ADDING A NEW TOOL (TECHNOLOGY)
Thus far along RP’s career path, RP had been involved in the large world of communications but only within a narrow division of that world: print, examples of which include newspapers, newsletters, and magazines.
Looking to the future of communications, RP noticed the emerging growth of online platforms such as electronic news, electronic magazines (“Ezines”), Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. RP thought her future career would be well served to jump into journalism involving these new technologies. So, RP joined a national newspaper (The Washington Post) as a digital editor. This was her first effort to combine and learn the growing fields of electronics and news.
CAREER PATH D – A WEBSITE TO REACH A BROAD AUDIENCE FOR HER NARROWED FOCUS (WOMEN AND GENDER)
After a year learning more about digital journalism, RP narrowed the scope of her work within the newspaper to help launch a newspaper sponsored website: “The Lily” which focused on original and curated material for and about women and helped grow the brand in newsletters and social media platforms including Instagram and Twitter.
On the podcast “Motherly” a co-founder of the website described The Lily as “a stopping place on the internet where we could bring together the best stories on women and gender.”
Among the projects which RP shepherded as editor were the “Anxiety Chronicles” a mental health series and a book club that featured literature by female authors, often women of color.
RP spent months working on a project called “The Jessicas,” which looked at the most popular name for girls born in 1989 and examined their lives and evolving identities as they turned 30. She found 10 diverse subjects, worked with freelancers to tell the stories, and oversaw a documentary short that was included in film festivals.
USING HER PLATFORM TO ADVOCATE YOUTH AND DIVERSITY
Writing an ‘op-ed’ for a media training center about the importance of diverse sourcing of stories – by age, gender, and ethnicity among other categories – RP noted it was important for journalism to attract and retain a younger demographic of potential subscribers.
“Younger audiences want to see their experiences and the experiences of their peers reflected in the journalism they consume,” she wrote. “They want to see how policy affects the lives of everyday people. And they want to feel personally connected to what they read. Diverse sourcing makes us more trustworthy arbiters of the news.”
“If we don’t include a diverse range of voices, we are narrowing those lanes and not reflecting the world we should be covering, “added RP.
CAREER SATISFACTION
A co-worker called RP “a vibrant colleague who found our greatest stories and gave visibility to people and ideas who had long been ignored.”
Another professional friend within journalism said about RP: “What stood out immediately was her desire to collaborate – to take what she had learned running a website and infuse it into every department, every article and every project.”
This career story was based on a news article / obituary written by Adam Bernstein, published by The Washington Post on 10/25/22.
