As I neared my final semesters at GSU, I tried to keep a space in my course schedule for an internship. You hear about the benefits of having real world experiences and making connections in your field and the value of experiential learning. My field-per my pending BA- is Journalism. So here I am, in my final semester and feeling excited to be a podcasting intern at Five Points Journal. Do I love podcasts? So many of them, in a variety of genres. My curiosity about how podcasts are made is what drew me to the Intro to Podcasting class last semester for my minor in Editing & Publishing, which helped prepare me for this internship role.
I explored all the previous episodes, the website and social media to get familiar with the journal, and look for creative opportunities. In my first meeting with Dr. Sexton, I learned some of the process she uses to organize this one of many moving parts at the journal. It’s also helpful to be in an editing class with Dr. Sexton. The class surrounds Five Points, mostly the editorial evaluation process for submissions. I’m learning a lot about the aesthetics of the journal as well. Having a chance to see another aspect of the work that goes into this process each semester is helping reveal the bigger picture of bringing a literary and art journal together.
Primarily we collaborate with Trello. I’m glad to be getting practical experience with a project management tool. There’s a little learning curve for me as this is my first time really using one. One challenge so far has been the alerts from updates on the board. To resolve this I am downloading the app to my phone. With Trello we’re able to communicate and track progress on tasks. I was able to pitch two ideas for future episodes- A short ‘coming soon’ promo for the upcoming releases (print and audio), and a P.S. kind of segment that’s still forming. For this we’ve explored other interesting segments and we’re working on a mailbag format, in essence a Q & A, with the hope that it can be repeatable in future semesters.
The prominent part of the podcast episode we’re creating is an author interview, which will also be published in the journal. There was a fast turnaround from when we found out this was an opportunity to getting it booked and recorded. The studios in the campus library are great resources that allow for this. I’m looking forward to our next podcast crafting steps, gathering some additional sound that will enhance the episode, our weekly meetings (some of the highlights are our cats) and continuing to develop the podcast.
