Rick Brewer

WCMU News Director Rick Brewer, writing on the station's website, reports that after 13 weeks of intense training, hundreds of interviews and publishing a total of 130 stories, the cohort of four reporters of the Michigan News Group Internship graduated from the program last month. This was the sixth consecutive summer of the internship program at WCMU Public Media.

This year's group included Masha Smahliuk, Lauren Rice, Courtney Boyd and Draya Raby, all students at Central Michigan University seeking a career in journalism.

Training the next generation of journalists is a love-hate relationship. Brewer writes that he really enjoy opening young reporters' eyes to what is possible through local public radio and seeing them grow their skills in a short amount of time. But at the same time, he hated having to say goodbye after getting to know them and becoming a mentor.

It’s one of the necessary evils in the mission at the WCMU newsroom, which is to give students experience they need to land a job after graduation. Some of my favorite moments at WCMU have been when a former newsroom intern calls to tell me they got their first, full-time job in journalism.

The News Group is a unique opportunity that, to Brewer's knowledge, is unlike any other internship program in Michigan.

After two weeks of training on the fundamentals of audio editing, recording and broadcast writing at WCMU in Mount Pleasant, the four interns ventured off to local newspapers across our broadcast coverage area.

This year they were stationed at the Midland Daily News, Alpena News, Traverse City Record-Eagle and Cadillac News. They not only filed stories for both the paper and WCMU, but also learned, for the first time, what it’s like to work in the real world.

“I got a better sense of what it means to be a full-time, professional reporter,” said Lauren Rice, who was based at the Traverse City Record-Eagle. “This internship helped me understand what to look for in a work environment, and how I want to use my degree after graduation.”

Read more from Brewer here.