PLCA is an ideal introduction to political reporting for young journalists. Coming into the internship, I had no experience covering state government, but I was trusted with important stories, given guidance and constructive feedback on my work, and even given the opportunity to pitch my own story ideas.

​Even during another pandemic summer where newsrooms worked remote or hybrid, editors took care to make sure I was getting the experience I wanted, and made sure I could cover events and conduct interviews in person whenever I could. I covered Biden’s visit to a Macungie truck plant, a protest at the Capitol where four organizers were arrested, and Gov. Tom Wolf’s visit to a business incubator in Bethlehem. I covered stories on hard-hitting topics like college student hunger, statewide unemployment and the push to increase Pennsylvania’s $7.25 minimum wage. Stories I covered for Spotlight PA and other outlets were syndicated across front pages all over Pennsylvania. 

Being treated like a professional, full-time journalist is the best part of this internship — it gave me the confidence and skills I needed to grow as a journalist, and helped me land a full-time job once the summer ended. I can’t recommend it more  for any college juniors and seniors interested in statehouse reporting!

Lindsay Weber, 2021 intern
Macalaster College, Class of 2021

My internship with the PLCA has taught me so much about how state government works, and it also introduced me to a politically competitive legislative environment. The rotational structure of the program places an emphasis on the hard work that goes into refining a story and explaining complex political or policy topics in such a way so that it is relevant and meaningful for the readers of that individual publication. Quickly, you learn that you have the ability — with the guidance of some of the best long-time, experienced state Capitol reporters and editors — to learn a large, sophisticated state bureaucracy and political environment and hold your own in tackling important urgent issues and stories of statewide significance.

​The confidence a PLCA intern walks away with is perhaps the best intangible part of the internship. PLCA interns become accustomed to interviewing lawmakers, questioning department secretaries and connecting decisions made in Harrisburg to everyday Pennsylvanians. I really grew to appreciate state Capitol coverage. I realized just how important the work is and why this program and accountability journalism is so important to the health of the state. And you learn quickly how past decisions — education funding, property tax rate, staff levels at the Department of Environmental Protection — really shape the lives of the state's residents.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an internship program that gets you this level of exposure, is this practical and high-profile and gives you opportunities to cover this many different topics for such a variety of publications and audiences. If you want to move up from covering your local city council, this is the best place to start. Pennsylvania is, frankly, just such an interesting place to cover state politics and government. There are lots of different perspectives on issues and it is annually a hotly contested state for whatever positions happen to be on the ballot that year. There is no shortage of policy oriented or political stories to tell in the Keystone State. Come learn, grow and get better through this program.

Jordan Wolman, 2020 intern
​Lehigh University

In my first week as an intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association, I covered municipal elections, pushed my way into a press gaggle with the governor and collected eight bylines. In short, I quickly realized that I landed a great internship.
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I got my fast-paced start at PennLive, where I would write roughly 25 articles over three weeks. Later, I would wait outside the Pennsylvania Senate chambers to pounce on lawmakers as a reporter for Capitolwire during budget season, and drive around central Pennsylvania to interview people living without broadband access while working with the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As a reporter with The Caucus, I dug into data and sorted through spreadsheets to land a cover story. Closing out the summer, I learned about broadcast reporting with ABC27, editing a package on one of my last days as an intern.

I loved every minute of it.

I’ll be forever grateful to the people I worked with during my internship, because they taught me a lot. They taught me how to edit a video, how to take photos and write notes at the same time, how to work my way to the front of a press conference and how lawmaking and governing actually work.

But most importantly, my experience in Harrisburg taught me that political reporting is what I want to do with my career, and gave me the confidence I needed to go for it.
So if you’re a prospective intern and made it this far, go for it and apply, because I can’t recommend this internship enough.
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Sasha Hupka, 2019 intern
Binghamton University

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On my first day in Harrisburg for my PLCA internship, I went to the food court with my parents for lunch. As I ate my lukewarm Taco Bell, we marveled from afar at Gov. Tom Wolf, who had just stopped in for some pizza. Within a week, I was interviewing Wolf and other politicians and publishing stories for the top news organizations in the state.
 
Throughout the course of 12 weeks, I grew so much as a reporter. I had covered politics in my hometown of Philadelphia, but with the PLCA I was able to write technical pieces about the state budget for Capitolwire, a front-page profile on a new state representative for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and participate in data analysis and reporting on an investigation for Spotlight PA and The Caucus. I learned how to write for television with ABC27 and went live on Facebook at a protest for PennLive. Everything I wrote required hands-on work, from staying late to chase the Senate majority leader for comment on the new budget to photographing the lieutenant governor’s mansion and sitting in on a taping of This Week in Pennsylvania.
 
The real gem of this internship, however, were the Capitol reporters who became my mentors for the summer. I started the summer with Angela Couloumbis, the Inquirer reporter who taught me how to write “jazzed-up ledes” and guided me through my first-ever profile. Brad Bumsted and Sam Janesch trusted me to help with their months-long campaign spending investigation, which taught me how to turn thousands pages of credit card statements into a longform story. Everyone I worked with during my internship is still on my side as I navigate job applications, and I can’t thank them enough.
 
I came into this internship as a political science and journalism double major, but this experience taught me that there is so much you can’t be taught in a classroom. No other summer program I can find gives their interns such substantial work published in diverse news sources. I can’t recommend it enough. 
 
Alyssa Biederman, 2019 intern
Temple University

     It sounds strange to say that my dream internship was in central Pennsylvania. Aren’t there only cows there? You are probably asking. While the answer is yes outside Harrisburg, it’s also home to one of the most unique state legislatures.
     And that’s exactly what the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association internship was to me: a dream from start to finish.
     Every day was a new day to navigate the state’s complex political atmosphere. A fresh start to attend a heated committee meeting, run upstairs to the state Supreme Court for documents, or just generally get lost trying to figure out how to get into each chamber.
     During my internship, I had the privilege to write about how the state legislature was handling the #MeToo movement occurring within its halls, the Commonwealth Court’s spending habits and secrecy, and the Senate’s close-but-no-cigar effort to redistrict state lines – just to name a few. I also got to make a ton of dumb intern mistakes, learning that there really can’t be a stupid question (A special sorry to PennLive’s Jan Murphy, for breaking a piece of the tripod and almost dropping it in the river).
     Even better, I got to learn from reporters I deeply admire and look up to. Some of my greatest insights came from just listening in on the Harrisburg bureau reporters as they refused political spin and never got discouraged as sources turned them down.
     I now use the tools I gained this summer each day to report and edit my peers’ work in my capacity as Editor in Chief of my student newspaper, The Temple News, and as an intern at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
     Maybe it’s my naïveté as a young journalist, but going to work in the PLCA suite of the Capitol building each day never felt like I had to go to an internship. I looked forward to it every day for my 10 weeks. I can’t think of another internship where you get thrown into a statehouse head on and get to learn the style and philosophy of six news organizations.
     The PLCA internship was the best experience and I’ll forever be grateful for my time there. I can’t recommend it enough for any student journalist interested in political reporting.

Gillian McGoldrick

PLCA Summer 2018 Intern
Temple University Senior

     Within hours of running into the Capitol newsroom on my first day as an intern, I was in the Governor's Reception Room covering the attorney general and governor's press conference on a new reentry program for Pennsylvania prisoners. Walking into the press conference with little preparation my first day on the job, knowing I had to walk out with a story for The Philadelphia Inquirer, I knew this internship would be different than my previous ones.
     And I was right. As a post-graduate intern with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents' Association this summer, I was supported, but not coddled; given independence, but not stranded. There was no coffee-fetching or sending faxes, but I was instead treated as one of the newsroom's own. I was trusted with stories on complex legislation and Pennsylvania's notorious budget problems, and was allowed opportunities to write enterprise pieces on topics that excited me.
      I have had internships where I sat in a corner fact-checking all day, but that was not my experience with the PLCA. I was on the phone and running around the Capitol, typically writing a story per day or more. I felt like a real reporter rather than "the intern."
      I was also able to get a feel for six different newspapers' rhythms. Each of my five two-week rotations flew by, each having a distinct feeling from the rest, and offering me new knowledge that I hadn't learned from the others. I was encouraged to inject more color into my stories for The Allentown Morning Call, incorporate multimedia elements into stories for PennLive, and report the hell out of long, investigative pieces for The Caucus. And each reporter I worked with at all six newspapers was eager to help me, answering my questions and encouraging me to grow.
      I may have had a journalism degree under my belt going into this internship, but I sure had a lot to learn. This internship helped me fill in the gaps of my knowledge with valuable, well-rounded experience I truly don't think I could have gotten anywhere else, and helped me discover what kind of reporting I want to do in the future.

Sarah Mearhoff
Penn State University, 2017

​The Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents' Association internship is an invaluable experience for aspiring journalists, especially those who wish to cover state politics. The experience is more of a temporary reporting job than a conventional internship; an intern is thrown into the thrust of Capitol politics and from day one is working with experienced, talented reporters to produce content to be published in several well-respected Pennsylvania publications.
 
Not only did I exponentially increase my knowledge of state politics and what goes on in the Capitol, I also further developed my writing skills through constant reporting and collaboration with other journalists. It's an excellent transition from my college experiences into the real world of journalism, and the skills that I have learned in the Capitol newsroom, along with the relationships I formed, will remain in my mind as I continue my career in journalism.
 
Logan Hullinger
Indiana University of Pennsylvania Journalism '18
Email: l.r.hullinger@gmail.com
Cell: (814) 319-5158