Young journalists — the next generation

Here in the Northwest Corner midsummer is a season worth celebrating. We drive through the countryside that seems to become more lush everyday. For us at The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News, summer also is the journalism intern season when we observe a different kind of growth. This year we are hosting eight paid interns who learn from us just as we learn from them. Four are high school students (including one who was part of a student-launched newspaper at Housatonic Valley Regional High School this spring). That effort was supported by The Journal, and it will continue this fall. The four others are college students. Some came to us having experience in some form of journalism pursuit, or were simply curious to see what it’s all about.

The schools represented are: Housatonic Valley Regional High School, The Hotchkiss School, Riverdale Country School, Marist University, Kenyon College, Middlebury College and the University of Virginia. All the student interns have life connections to the Northwest Corner and Dutchess County.

Over the past six weeks they have fanned out into our communities to cover events, writing feature stories and shadowing our own staff to learn the ropes. Managing Editors Riley Klein and Nathan Miller have taken the lead in guiding these potential future journalists week in and week out. Besides field work, we offer a series of workshops to deepen understanding of important topics. For that, we have turned to experts in the community who have freely given their time for weekly presentations.

Devereaux Chatillon, a Sharon resident and member of the LJMN Media, Inc. board, is an experienced media and intellectual property attorney who shared her wisdom with our interns. Anne Day, a Lakeville denizen with a distinguished career as a photographer (and who used to edit Compass), gave her annual lesson on how to make better photographs, even with an iPhone. Natalia Zukerman, our Compass editor, shared her expertise on the ins and outs of the interview process. Laura Van Straaten of Lakeville, a multi-talented culture writer, multimedia consultant and volunteer at The OpEd Project, helped empower our interns to become thought leaders through their own voices.

Soon you will hear from our interns themselves as they write about what they learned from their summer experiences.

We can’t discuss our intern program without thanking our major sponsor, the William and Mary Greve Foundation of New York. One of our interns came to us through a new partnership with Marist University.

These interns are at the beginning of a possible career in local reporting. Today there is a big need for coverage of local government, school board meetings, healthcare in our threatened healthcare desert — not to mention a vexing housing shortage, and the need to know what’s happening to our environment. More than one intern was especially interested in covering sports, which we consider vital to bolster awareness of what our young athletes accomplish.

A recent study by Axios found that there were fewer than four ‘full-time equivalent’ journalists for every 100,000 people in either Litchfield County or Dutchess County. That’s a lot of meetings, cultural events, sports activities for small newsrooms to cover.

Thanks to our readers, advertisers and donors, we are making good progress with a nonprofit model. And that is affording our summer interns a genuine experience. We will miss them when school beckons.