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