My name is Katherine Smith. I live in Brooklyn, New York and I am a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. I am very excited to begin working as a summer intern at the Gettysburg Connection this summer.
Growing up, I knew that I wanted a career that would help others. I wanted to leave my home outside San Francisco, travel the world, and to somehow make an impact. I became interested in journalism after joining my university newspaper. When I first began to produce articles, I dreamed of my future career, where I could go to different places, meet new people, and help them through my writing.
My perspective has changed in the last several years, especially after entering graduate school. I still want to help others through my reporting, but I have learned a better way to do so. There are many different people capable of speaking on the history and perspective of their own communities. My job is to listen and to help represent each story with the proper context and nuance needed to help others understand.
I applied for an internship at the Connection because I like to focus on local communities. In my program, we are taught to keep a strong focus on the people within the stories, rather than just the story itself. It takes a great deal of trust and courage for people to speak up publicly about their thoughts, concerns, and hopes for the future. As a journalist, I consider it not only a great responsibility to report accurately and carefully, but to ensure that you are able to hear yourself in every story that I write.
I also want to help report on communities that would like to be better represented through the media. As a student, I have helped to cover stories on different people who may not also see themselves in the stories they read online or the news reports that they see on their television. I hope to continue that during my time at the Connection.
I look forward to speaking with many of you over the summer, and learning more about your thoughts and experiences as residents in Adams County!
My name is Katherine, and I am a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. I graduated from Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 2018 with a degree in history, and I was one of the news editors for the Observer, the college's student-run newspaper. I love to learn about and cover different communities, and I am very excited to be interning for the Gettysburg Connection this summer and getting to know about all the work being done by the residents in the area.