Meet Gabriel Castagna’18 Editorial Intern at SourceMedia.
Tell us about where you are interning and the kind of work you are doing.
My internship is at a newsroom in Downtown Manhattan. SourceMedia has multiple different publications, all with a focus on financial news in various categories. The publication I primarily work with is called Asset Securitization Report, and as the name suggests it focuses on news regarding new securitization deals and regulation in securitization markets.
I typically start the day by logging on to the company’s Twitter account (follow @_ASReport !) and tweet out links and headlines to ASR’s latest stories. I then spend a few minutes scrolling through the latest #securitization hashtagged tweets to see if there is anything worthy of a retweet that may be of interest to our readers. Next, I convene with my supervisor to see if anything newsworthy is happening in the securitization market and come up with a topic to research and write about. I spend the rest of the day researching, writing, and revising until I have a fully-edited story ready for publication.
Give us an example of how you have applied your academic learnings to your internship?
My academic learnings have been vital to my internship experience. As a Political Science major, much of my work involves researching and dissecting articles for information that may be relevant to whatever topic I am assigned to write about. That is what I spend the majority of my day doing here at SourceMedia. My Holy Cross experience has taught me how to research effectively and write professionally in a timely manner.
What has surprised you about being an intern?
The most surprising thing about being an intern in my experience is that nobody sees you as subordinate or less valuable to the company because of your intern status. At least in my case, I feel like the full-time employees here view me in the same regard. Expectations are just as high for you as they are for full-time employees; nobody will cut you breaks or expect any less of you because you’re an intern.
How did this experience influence or connect to your future career plans / goals?
I hope to someday work in financial services, though I’m not sure what in particular I’d like to pursue. The finance knowledge I am acquiring will be extremely useful in my future career plans; I’ve learned more about financial markets in the past three weeks alone than I have my entire life.
I never considered working in journalism before, but given how much I am enjoying my internship I could see myself pursuing that particular career path. Personally, I think it’s so cool that people I’ll never meet read my articles every day, and pay to do so. There’s something rewarding about that, and it actually motivates me to do my work to the best of my ability knowing that people other than my professors genuinely care about what I write.
Any internship advice to pass on to other Holy Cross students?
Remember why you’re interning. It’s nice to have a summer job and make some extra cash before heading back to school, but that isn’t why you’re interning. You’re there to learn, to see, and to network. Take advantage of the opportunity you have before you; a lot of students would love to be in your shoes. Meet everyone you can, because you’ll never know what you might learn from them or who may offer you a job sometime down the road. Lastly, work hard. Always. There are tons of other kids just as qualified as you for your position, but they chose you. If you’re going to slack, your company will have no problem trading you for one of the other thousands of kids raring to prove themselves.
