Made it to Hudson Yards

Internship Reflection

Fall 2023

By: Kaitlynn Schwanemann

When I first arrived at 30 Hudson Yards, I was confused as to how I would possibly find the CNN office in a skyscraper filled with marble floors and Warner Bros. Discovery paraphernalia. Three different elevator rides, and four scans of my red and white badge later, I made it – decked with images of Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper, televisions broadcasting live international reporting, and big signs everywhere reading “CNN.”

I could see the whole city from my desk, from the New Yorker building to Central Park to the Hudson River. I wasn’t sure how I got here – I mean, I took the Long Island Rail Road to Atlantic Terminal, took the N train home to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, then took it back to Times Square the next morning and hopped on the 7 to Hudson Yards. But as I met my colleagues – all distinguished professionals, and quite intimidating, and my fellow interns, who had previously published stories with huge outlets or worked in executive positions for their campus media – I didn’t know how I fit in.

If I learned anything from my summer internship at NBC Miami, though, where I’d gotten a spot as a digital intern after their first choice pick declined the position, it’s that it doesn’t matter how I got there. It just mattered how I spent my time there – so I clocked in and out of the Miramar office my whole summer, and published nearly 200 bylines by the end of my 10 weeks.

Pivoting from local to national coverage was difficult, though. The scope of my work was much larger, the stories were longer in form, the sourcing was more extensive, and my pitches needed

to have some type of impact beyond South Florida – they needed to be of interest to people across the United States. The editing and fact-checking process was also far more scrupulous, which definitely humbled me after a summer of having WordPress privileges.

Still, my manager assured me from the time I interviewed with her that because the Race & Equality beat consisted of a relatively small team of writers and reporters, I would get to have a more hands-on experience than most interns. She absolutely delivered on that promise, and during my first day in the office, I published a short-form story for CNN Business  about the racial demographics of higher education, primarily regarding Latinos. I felt proud to not only have my name published by CNN, but to contribute to reporting that is important and can have an impact on the community.

That story was certainly not the last time I got to shine a light on an issue or even solution to a racial justice problem. My next story was dense – I interviewed countless researchers and medical experts to help me understand a study in which scientists developed new technology to help abridge racial bias in medicine.  Not only was I terrible at science, but I was on deadline. I researched the subject as in depth as I could as quickly as I could and did my best to transcribe the medical jargon that the researchers were giving me into layman’s terms. This tedious task paid off when my story was published for CNN Health, and my own reporting and writing was able to highlight a team that is making strides in healthcare justice.

As I got into the routine of pitching stories and taking assignments, finding sources and scheduling interviews, and writing and editing at an increasingly fast pace, I was able to do this again and again, with different headlines, characters and images attached to each story. Soon after the medical imaging story came my first digital write for CNN.com, for which I published a feature on a South Carolina teen who was elected as the first Black homecoming queen  at her school. Then, I published a story on the National Audubon Society and its chapters local to the Midwest, who changed their names  to cease affiliation with John Audubon, a 19th-century ornithologist who was notoriously racist. Soon after, I published what might be my favorite story thus far. I wrote about a Native American dance troupe  that provides ballet and other courses to Indigenous students on the Osage Reservation, where the famous American ballerina Maria Tallchief was born. I got to interview her daughter, Elise Paschen, a famous poetess I’d previously read and admired.

My internship at CNN gave me a platform. Because of this opportunity, my words were positioned so as to make an impact beyond myself and my world. I was re-hired to join back as an intern for the Spring 2024 semester, and I hope that in the coming months, my storytelling continues to bring attention to injustice, highlight solutions and create engaging conversations on how to move forward.