Ted McCartan, Graduating from the UI in Spring 2007. McCartan has interned at Golf Digest Online and South Bend Tribune.

By Jeffrey Pawola

After two grueling internships, Ted McCartan will take a break. In 2005, he had an internship at Golf Digest Online for eight weeks during the summer, immediately followed by another internship at the South Bend Tribune for 12 weeks during the fall. This upcoming summer, instead of recording sports scores in his notebook, McCartan will be jotting down dinner orders -- it could be his last summer off.

Before getting his internship at Golf Digest Online, McCartan sent out around 20 resumes to magazines and newspapers all over the country in November 2004. Along with the resumes, he bundled clips from the Daily Iowan, including pieces that he called “offbeat stories, not just typical sports stories,” in order to showcase his writing.

While he waited to hear back from the magazines and newspapers, McCartan said, “I would e-mail them once every two or three weeks to make sure they don’t forget about me.”

In the e-mails he would sometimes simply wish them happy holidays, but it kept his name visible to the company.

Taking the initiative

Before long, McCartan was hired for the internship at Golf Digest Online. While there, one of his main tasks was simply to stay busy. He would often occupy himself by fact checking other reporters’ articles.

He wasn't satisfied with busy work for long, though. McCartan said he found himself begging to write until he was finally given an opportunity, and eventually, he got an article published in Golf World. He said that when his article finally got published, it was his favorite part of the internship.

From there, McCartan moved onto his next internship as a sportswriter at the South Bend Tribune in Indiana. This time, expectations were higher. His normal weekly requirements included three local high school stories, as well as a Notre Dame story. However, McCartan did not feel overwhelmed -- his experience at the Daily Iowan had prepared him for a tight work schedule.

“For the DI,” he said, “we have four stories a week plus class, and for the South Bend Tribune we had just four assignments a week.”

Despite being used to the workload, McCartan still encountered stressful situations.

He recalled one time he had a midnight deadline for a high school football playoff game that took place an hour away from the newsroom. Both teams’ offenses consisted of a lot of passing, stretching the game all the way to 11 p.m., leaving McCartan little time to complete his article. McCartan franticly finished his story and successfully completed his article just minutes before midnight.

Other times, the person whom he was expecting to interview did not show up, so he was left missing crucial information for the article. For the most part, he said, “people understood, but there was still a deadline.”

"Solid, accurate and entertaining writing"

Throughout his internship, McCartan had to cover all types of sports, including Notre Dame Football and various college and high school sports, some more popular than others. Al Lesar, the assistant sports editor for the South Bend Tribune, offers his staff this advice:

“Check your ego at the door. You might be covering high school soccer, but you have to treat it as the most important story in the paper.”

Lesar also emphasized story quality with regard to selecting job applicants.

“We’re looking for variety -- features, game stories, explanatory pieces,” he said. “We don’t need to see coverage of ‘big time’ events, just solid, accurate and entertaining writing.”

Both McCartan and Lesar also stressed the value of experience and getting clips.

“Experience is more important than the classroom,” said McCartan. “Bottom line, get clips. Writing a story for class is nothing like writing for a publication.”

Lesar added, “Studying is important, but in journalism, there is no substitute for working in the newsroom.” He said that when choosing among internship applicants, “clips are the primary evaluation tool we use, in an effort to at least get a large stack of applicants down to three finalists.”

McCartan said that his internships got him accustomed to the magazine and newspaper industries as a whole. He described his internships as “straight up experience.”

McCartan, who is graduating in May 2007, plans on sending out his resumes for next summer in November. He'll be back in the newsroom long before then, though, as he rejoins the Daily Iowan staff at the beginning of the fall semester.