Election Night! Reporting for The Cincinnati Enquirer II: Video Transcript

Jenn Smola [senior, Journalism and Political Science majors]: My biggest takeaway from the coverage with the Enquirer was just being ready to adapt, and you really have to think on your feet. I was covering some of the precincts in Hamilton County and we talked to a couple of people at one precinct and everything was going fine there, but they tipped us off to go to another precinct and we had to kind of find where that was and talk to the people there and talk about the problems they were having with provisional voting. So, you always have to be able to hop in your car and go and talk to people and just kind of follow your gut and be adaptable, I guess, because things can happen in a flash.

I want to cover politics eventually — I'd love to be in D.C. — and this experience has been great. I got to do a telephone press conference the day after the election about the youth vote and I was on the phone with other people from news organizations – the guy from Politico, which, some place like that, I would love to work there. This has really been an awesome experience. I've already had some interviews for summer internships next year and I've been able to show them clips that I've done with The Cincinnati Enquirer with this capstone [JRN 421: Capstone in Journalism] so it's been helpful and definitely along the path I want to go down someday, so it's been great.

There weren't too many big surprises. I think the people at the Enquirer knew that we're students and I don't think they wanted to throw us into a shark tank necessarily but nothing too major, I don't think. I had a little experience I'd interned at Washington D.C with the Inside Washington program last summer, so I also had a little bit of experience already so I felt prepared.

I did the Inside Washington program in the summer of 2012, last summer, and that's a program where there were about 20 students and we met with a lot of big movers and shakers in Washington D.C. We met Paul Ryan and we got to go to the Supreme Court. For the first two weeks we did that sort of thing and then the following seven weeks we were all positioned for internships so I interned at The Hill newspaper in Washington D.C. I got to get my Capitol Hill press badge and talk to members of Congress and write stories that were published in a paper that everyone picks up in D.C. It was a great experience. I recommend it to anyone.

[November 2012]