Starting a journalism internship is never dull, and 2025 is the year that redefines “never a dull moment.”
Nationally, we saw in September an assassination and aftermath, public health shakeups and National Guard deployments — just for starters.
Locally, Trump administration decisions reverberate, scholars wrestle against brainrot, ICE lurks and AI data centers loom. And of course there’s zoning. Endless zoning.
Ember Duke
- Editorial intern
- Hometown: Scranton, Pennsylvania
- Current or recent school: Duquesne University, recent graduate
- Major: Multiplatform journalism and digital media arts
- Prior journalistic home(s): The Duquesne Duke
- Favorite “third place”: The library
- Favorite no-screens activity: Hiking or exploring different neighborhoods
“Being a reporter in general means super-high highs and super-low lows, even in a single workday,” said Ember Duke, in her second internship with Pittsburgh’s Public Source.
Being a journalist these days also means nonstop immersion in the swirl of events, fed by phones and other screens that chirp with alerts.
“Sometimes you can feel it actively making you go crazy,” said intern Tory Basile.
Public Source internships aim to teach journalistic skills — reporting, fact-checking, data analysis, document work, interviewing — but the nonprofit newsroom also learns from every intern it hosts. This month we asked fall semester interns: What gives you hope? And how can the rest of us get a dose?
Spoiler: It’s not found on screens like the one you’re looking at now.
Hitting the books, streets
Alex Jurkuta worked all summer as a team photographer for the St. Cloud Rox baseball team in Central Minnesota, logging just a single day off. Oakland, where he studies, was pretty empty and provided little distraction. No more. Fall brings “the opportunity to take a walk on a Friday night and see what’s going on around me” with “people to talk to” everywhere. He also picked up a side gig taking pictures for a music venue.
Alex Jurkuta
- Visuals intern
- Hometown: Waunakee, Wisconsin
- School: University of Pittsburgh, junior
- Major: Communications and English writing
- Prior journalistic home: The Pitt News
- Favorite “third place”: HAVEN
- Favorite no-screens activity: Hiking
Basile, a newcomer to Pittsburgh, can’t yet count on finding a friend on Forbes Avenue. But a recent story on Hazelwood had her testing that neighborhood’s welcome mat. “Alex was going to take a photo when we were out there and this man came out of his house, like, ‘Why are you taking a photo? Get away,’” she recounted. But the interns explained their mission, and made a new connection.
“Overall people are pretty receptive and do want to be heard and listened to,” said Duke. “I think that there is still trust in reporters and people still want to connect even though we live in an increasingly disconnected world.”
Duke misses the random interactions she so enjoyed on Duquesne’s campus, but is getting analog with the book version of a favorite film: “Trainspotting.” Frantic as a movie, it’s a deliberative read, thanks to Scottishisms that make it “super hard to understand,” per Duke. She’s also upping her hiking game. “Not looking at a screen is really crucial.”
If you must be inside, be in a newsroom
Newsrooms may not have the everybody-working-the-phones buzz they did pre-COVID, but they’re still unique spaces in which people unite around the hunt for truth.
College newsrooms have a special vibe.
“Even though it is work, it’s a third space in a way. It’s where all your friends go between classes,” said Basile.
Tory Basile
- Editorial intern
- Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
- School: Indiana University, recent graduate
- Major: Journalism and political science
- Prior journalistic homes: IndyStar and the Indiana Daily Student
- Favorite “third place”: Coffee shops (though she hasn’t found a favorite in Pittsburgh yet)
- Favorite no-screens activity: Reading
“It’s over now,” the recent grad added, ruefully, of her time at the Indiana Daily Student.
For Duke, a year with the Duquesne Duke was “what made me know that I wanted to be a reporter, just working toward a shared goal and feeling like it was making a difference.”
The Pitt News editors push Jurkuta to get to know the entire campus and its people. “One thing I always look forward to every year is the Silhouettes publication we do,” he said, because it profiles professors and students who are “incredible people.”
For Jurkuta, portraying inspiring people is an antidote to the drum beat of “No sleep, no fun, everybody must be grind culture always, always, always.”
Fighting tech with tech — and not giving up to AI
Basile said it takes “extra-special, difficult effort” to “not get overwhelmed in all the noise” online. She has worked to curb screen time with apps like Freedom or Opal that set time limits for social media or block it altogether.
More and more of the noise is produced by, or is about, AI.
“It’s kind of really scary, and I feel like all I ever hear about AI is how it’s going to make somebody’s passion and somebody’s career irrelevant in some way,” she said.
What about her career? “While I think AI can definitely produce the easy, quick-hit articles, like, 10 places you can go this weekend … I don’t think AI can ever really replicate a deeply thought-out and reported story or investigation.”
Duke wonders what society will be like as AI takes a larger role in areas like medicine and finance, but feels probing journalism is “almost AI-proof … I think there’s always going to be way more value in a human perspective and a human gathering information.”
Jurkuta isn’t impressed by AI’s efforts at journalistic visuals. “I kind of feel less threatened by AI, just because, A, it’s still really bad at doing photos, and B, it’s not getting better.”
“Not that technology is this all-encompassing, evil thing,” said Duke. “But people do want to get back to their roots.” Civilization’s root is human connection, and that’s never clearer than when connections are strained.
“The only way out is through,” Duke said. “There’s going to be a better moment at some point.”
Rich Lord is the managing editor at PublicSource and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.
