Written by xinyingg on July 25, 2024

Keep learning, stay creative: An interview with a journalism college student about working as an intern at a radio station

Media

For college students majoring in journalism or communication science, it seems that only studying courses in the university is always not enough. Internships seem to be more and more important and have become an important way to improve professional skills and job competitiveness. Lorena Wang is a sophomore student in LMU, majoring in communication science. She has been interning at the m94.5 radio station in Munich for more than one year. I interviewed her about her internship experience. Lorena said that in this internship, compared with the data that directly shows performance, such as the number of views and likes, she cares more about maintaining creativity and efficiency when making works. Lorena also said that interning at the radio station is a process of continuous learning. During this internship, She learned a lot of things that are very different from her studies in the university. The following is an excerpt from the interview transcript:

Why did you choose this internship?

The starting point was that I saw the advertisement of this internship when I was in my first semester of university, which aroused my interest. I wanted to try what it was like to work in a radio station, but I didn’t have time to go during that time, so I finally went there to start my internship in my second semester of university.

Could you describe a typical day in your internship?

When I first started my internship, I was mainly producing traditional radio content. At that time, we gathered at 8 o’clock in the morning for a morning conference. We sat in a circle and told our supervisor some topics we wanted to work on. Usually each of us brought three topics. Then the supervisor would pick out the topics that could be worked on and assign who would work on which topic and what format it would be made into. There are two formats: one is Radio Beitrag, which is to edit an audio file and then publish it, and the other is Studiogespräch, which is to live broadcast and talk with the host about a topic. When I finished the topic assigned to me, the day was basically over.

Later, I went to a new position, responsible for managing the content that the radio station would publish on the Internet, including websites and social media, mainly Instagram and Tiktok. In this position, during the morning conference, I needed to decide which topics everyone brought to be made into online content, which we generally call posts. In the rest of the day, I would make some posts myself, and I would also teach some new people how to make posts.

Do you have any criteria or preferences when choosing topics?

I don’t think I have any particular preferences. I hope the topics are diverse. I don’t have any specific requirements. I never say that there must be how many topics or any specific topics today. I’m not such a serious person.

Then can you give an example of a topic you have done before that you think is your favorite or the best one?

Well, we once went to report a festival, and there was a person in our group who thought of a way, that is, we asked people in the festival to draw on a big piece of paper what they liked about the festival.  I think the idea he proposed is very creative. I think creativity is very important.

For the content you post on social media, do you pay attention to their data such as the number of views and likes?

Yes, but I think it’s just a little bit of attention. We will pay attention to the number of views and likes, but it is not so important to us. If a TikTok we make does not have so many likes, the supervisor won’t criticize us. Sometimes we may pay special attention to videos with a great number of likes. For example, there was a strike at Munich Airport last winter. I went to the airport to see what people were doing there, recorded the situation there, and made a Tiktok short video. The number of likes on this short video was unexpectedly high at the time. I remember that my supervisor sent me a text message on the weekend to let me see how many likes this video had. At that time, my video became the third most viewed short video among all the short videos we released.

Then did you think about why this video had such a high number of likes?

Well, to be honest, I didn’t, because I think sometimes inexplicably some people who did nothing on the Internet will become very famous. I think this has something to do with some social media algorithms, that is, my video happened to be pushed to a lot of people by the algorithm.

When you are creating content, do you consider trying to make this content be seen by more people?

Well, to be honest, no. The main thing I think about is how can we finish this video today. When making TikTok videos, well, it takes a lot of time to record, and then you have to edit it, which also takes a lot of time. So I always worry about whether we can finish and upload the video on TikTok today. I hope that the persons who make TikTok video today can complete their work faster, so all I am thinking in my mind is how to make them work faster. Because I think it is very important that we just finish the video in one day and upload it, instead of waiting for a week or two weeks, because maybe at that time this topic is not so concerned.

Is there anything particularly impressive for you during this internship?

I think one thing that impressed me was when I did Studiogespräch for the first time. Because I had never live-streamed before, I was very nervous. I thought, wow, if someone clicks the button on his or her mobile phone or the radio, they can hear me talking, and I think this is so magical. At the same time, I feel a lot of pressure, because if I make mistakes, many people will hear it in real time. But I said it pretty well at that time, and that topic is also a topic I like. Later, as I practiced more, I was more relaxed when I was on air.

Do you like this internship?

Yeah I like it. I think I learned a lot, and I also feel that we were very relaxed there, we didn’t have so much pressure there, and I could do what I wanted to do freely. If I have to say what I don’t like in this internship, I think some people are really hard to work with. In addition, we don’t get paid, even the regular employees are paid very little. Well, other than that, I have no other complaints. All in all, I think this job is a good job, I can recommend it very much. I think in this internship, if we want to do something, we can have the opportunity to learn it.

You just said that you feel that you have learned a lot in this job, could you tell me specifically what you have learned?

There are too many, I don’t know where to start. Hahaha. Well… I learned, how to find a topic? And I learned how to edit audio with DIGAS, how to make articles concise and easy to read, how to be a host of a live show, and how to read a script better. I also learned how to edit and format articles for publication on the website, how to use Photoshop, how to make social media posts, how to manage the social media posts of a day, and how to design peripheral products…. I may not have finished talking about everything I learned. I think it will take a long time to talk about everything I learned.

Do you think this internship has any impact on your future career direction?

I think it will have a lot. Well, I think one impact is that I know I don’t want to work as a journalist because I think the salary is a bit low, hahaha, I want to earn more. But I think a good impact is that I have learned a lot of skills that I can use in many fields such as public relations or social media. I can use what I learned in this internship in other jobs.

Do you have any plans for your future career direction now?

Well, I really want to try public relations. I think this job is very interesting, and the salary is higher than that of journalists while many of the skills it requires are similar to journalism. I plan to do an internship in this field first to see if this career is suitable for me. If I like it, I want to continue to move towards public relations field.

Do you think there are any mutual influences or connection between this internship and your studies in the university?

I think the biggest influence is that many of my classmates are interning there, which has strengthened my relationship with my classmates. In addition, I think this internship helped me write papers. I wrote a lot of long sentences before, which were difficult to read. But I learned from the internship how to make the sentences concise and easy to read, which made my papers much better.

Do you think what you learned in the university can be applied during your internship?

Are you talking about the major I am studying in LMU now? No, not at all, hahaha, everything I learned in the university, I feel that I can’t use them when I work in the future, hahaha.

In that case, how do you think university studies have helped you?

I think I chose communication science because I like this major and I just want to get the knowledge about it. I think it is still very interesting, but it is not very useful for my future, hahaha. Internships are very useful for my future work, but university is not so useful.