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I worked remotely under the supervision of Carolyn, a senior data journalist, who assigned my tasks and guided me through qualitative research.  Carolyn would assign me weekly tasks that ranged from conducting Russian-language research on Ukrainian hate speech online to writing text for data visuals for a story on domestic violence in Eswatini.  The assignments changed weekly, and throughout the summer I gravitated towards topics that I was interested in, but everything was rooted in data journalism and research.

Learning about the tools and resources used by data journalists opened my mind to the plethora of careers in journalism going beyond the typical newsroom. My experience this summer, specifically observing the skillsets my supervisor regularly used, inspired me to take more coursework at Wellesley pertaining to data science and statistics. I struggled a bit this summer adapting to and learning technical skills, but hope that my final year at Wellesley can be used to fill some of these gaps in my knowledge. I believe that I achieved my initial goal of writing. I wrote the text associated with some visual data for a story, but most of my growth came in data analysis and research. I learned that I enjoyed that aspect of an investigative story more than the writing aspect involved.  It was surprising to find out that investigative stories are 95% research and take years of work, and only 5% of writing the story. 

I also learned that I prefer to work in person rather than remotely. CCIJ’s sense of community is strong, but it’s hard to replicate the intimate culture of a team that meets on a daily basis. Other than joining a biweekly team meeting on Zoom, I had no communication with other members of the team apart from my supervisor. I felt very isolated, which was exacerbated by living in a foreign city and experiencing a family emergency over the summer. There were 3 other summer interns at CCIJ, but I never met them as we were assigned to different projects. With this knowledge, if I were to design a program as an intern supervisor, I would make sure to foster more community building for the new members of my team. Carolyn, my supervisor, set an excellent example of how to manage expectations and assignments for interns.  She set clear deadlines, explained in depth every task that she assigned and why it was important to CCIJ’s overall mission, and was quick to respond to any of my emails. These are qualities I hope to model once I enter the workforce. 

I am pleased with the skills I developed at CCIJ and the people I met, albeit my summer was clouded by a serious family emergency. My main challenge revolved around this problem. I struggled to concentrate at times and ultimately had to come home early, but Jeff and Carolyn were very understanding and accommodating with me during this period.  I know that this experience was crucial to my career development; the research skills I honed are transferable to a wide range of jobs.