While attend­ing the Princetern­ship Ori­en­ta­tion, I remem­ber our career ser­vices rep­re­sen­ta­tive told us stu­dents, “Remem­ber to be flex­i­ble dur­ing the Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence. Some Princetern­ships may be more chaotic or hec­tic than others.”

Indeed, later my alum­nus would describe his job as “chaos, but a good chaos, a func­tional chaos.” Thus, I def­i­nitely did not know what to expect from this Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence, but I was excited to begin. I com­muted via sub­way from where I was stay­ing in New York City to ABC News’ office, which is near Lin­coln Cen­ter and west of Cen­tral Park. The alum­nus I would shadow, John Grif­fin ‘99, is the Spe­cial Projects and Mobile Edi­tor at ABC News. I learned quickly that my days did not have a set rou­tine, but instead var­ied greatly depend­ing on issues in the news­room. Usu­ally we would fig­ure out our agenda for the day by check­ing his very busy email inbox. Many turn to him when they have some­thing that needs trou­bleshoot­ing, earn­ing him the nick­name GRIFF: “Gripes Resolved in Fast Fashion.”

After greet­ing each other, he toured me around ABC News, and I saw rooms full of mon­i­tors, teleprompters, video feeds, green screens, cam­eras, and lights. The news­room where he worked was full of com­put­ers and mon­i­tors. The sounds of ring­ing phones, jour­nal­ists call­ing sources to inter­view them for their lat­est piece, key­boards click­ing away, and iPad alerts all rever­ber­ated through the air.

On his com­puter at his desk space, Mr. Grif­fin showed me Chart­beat and News­beat, which show real-time ABCNews.com web sta­tis­tics about where traf­fic is com­ing from. He told me about the impor­tance of SEO or Search Engine Opti­miza­tion, and how you want to keep the “bounce rate” low, improve link­age by using Face­book or Twit­ter, and pack­age the story to fit search key­words. He also taught me about spon­sor­ships, how dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies or orga­ni­za­tions pur­chase ads and how ABC News has to meet a cer­tain impres­sion goal and keep track of pac­ing. Addi­tion­ally, you do not want to asso­ciate some spon­sors with cer­tain arti­cles. For exam­ple, if some­one is read­ing an arti­cle about Occupy Wall Street, you would not want to have a ban­ner of Gold­man Sachs on that same webpage.

Later, on TVs around the news­room, I noticed the ABC News chan­nel had the head­line: AIRCRAFT HIT BY EXPLOSIONS and felt alarmed. That is, until I noticed the words “DRILL…DRILL…” scrolling hor­i­zon­tally across the screen. I learned that broad­cast com­pa­nies often hold news drills, which are used to test oper­a­tional readi­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in case one day there is an actual unex­pected emer­gency that needs broad cov­er­age. Anchors in the news­room and on site impro­vised and reported as though this explo­sion was a real event, and the TVs showed “footage” of the event. News net­works have to be care­ful, how­ever, to not make peo­ple think this is real news and cause panic by show­ing this cov­er­age on live TV.

My alum­nus then gave me jour­nal­ism tips. He empha­sized how for break­ing news, it was impor­tant to try to get your arti­cle out there first, although accu­racy must not be sac­ri­ficed. He showed me some humor­ous web writ­ing head­lines. About Osama Bin Laden’s Death: “Has Bin”; about Steve Jobs being forced to issue free cases for a poorly-functioning iPhone 4: “Let Them Eat Case”; about the U.S. Army unwit­tingly sup­ply­ing trucks to both sides of the Afghan war: “Oh, Truck,” and oth­ers: “Slip­ping on Greece,” “Obama Culpa,” “To Rus­sia, With Flub.” He taught me about “the art of the tease,” how it’s not always best to tell your audi­ence when you can tease them. Pose a ques­tion, involve the audi­ence, try to make it about the viewer, and raise the stakes, such as: “Is even more of your income now at risk?” For broad­cast writ­ing, use active words, called “the fly­ing –ing.” “How­ever,” he said, “don’t sac­ri­fice facts for cleverness.”

My work­day ended early that day, but I was told I could return at 6:30 pm for some optional work. I decided to go back since I would be able to do more hands-on work. I entered the Dig­i­tal Media Room, which was full of mon­i­tors, as well as sound and edit­ing equip­ment. Mr. Grif­fin showed me the four-minute long news briefs ABC News would make for mtvU, includ­ing episodes of “Don’t Know Much About His­tory” series with best-selling author Ken­neth C. Davis. My alum­nus showed me the basics of how to use Avid News­Cut­ter Soft­ware. “You just have to learn how to get used to it over time, and with prac­tice, you can play it like a piano,” he said, rack­ing between dif­fer­ent keys on the key­board with ease. He taught me about audio and video lay­ers for the sequences and splic­ing. I helped him do a lit­tle bit of edit­ing for one of the clips by end­ing cuts before large audio gaps in order to keep the dialogue’s fast pace.

The next morn­ing I printed out Pow­er­Point slides in prepa­ra­tion for ConEd (or Con­tent Edi­tor) train­ing, which I also attended. ConEd is used to gen­er­ate arti­cles and manip­u­late the home­page. After that, I got to do some hands-on work using Word­Press, which ABC News gen­er­ates their blogs from, and spent the next few hours edit­ing author credit on articles.

ABC News­room!

Before lunch, we explored the stu­dio labyrinths within ABC News and got to see old sets that were ripped apart to be used for later pro­duc­tions in the spring or sum­mer. I saw where they used to shoot “The Tony Danza Show,” as well as the cur­rent set they use for the food show “The Chew,” and the now empty set for “Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire.” We wan­dered through old con­trol rooms and pre­vi­ously used make-up and dress­ing rooms.
 

As we came back to his office space, I saw a woman walk by who looked vaguely famil­iar. “Was that…Barbara Wal­ters?” I man­aged to say. “Yup,” my alum­nus responded with­out even look­ing and returned to his email. Later, Diane Sawyer would film here to have this news­room as a backdrop.

Michelle, a pub­li­cist at ABC News, came by (she later was kind enough to give me a cap with ABC News printed on it). Mr. Grif­fin helped her fix the HTML cod­ing of web­pages dis­play­ing ABC News’ Emmy Nom­i­na­tions for 2011, which were cre­ated so that judges would be able to see the mate­r­ial clearly. For exam­ple, one of the entries was an inter­ac­tive vir­tual West­min­ster Abbey cre­ated around the time of the royal wed­ding.
 Mr. Grif­fin and I ended our last day with lunch at Shake Shack (where I had a deli­cious “pur­ple cow” grape soda float). He empha­sized, “don’t ask what you can learn how to do your­self,” and how it is use­ful to have knowl­edge about how to do a wide vari­ety of things, not just have one skill. For instance, even though he does not know all the intri­ca­cies of the HTML lan­guage, he taught him­self the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of HTML. He also told me about how it is impor­tant to find a job that ful­fills you in not only a moral sense, but also in an eso­teric, soul­ful sense.

This Princetern­ship was a great oppor­tu­nity since it pro­vided me with valu­able and inter­est­ing insight into the field of broad­cast jour­nal­ism and edi­to­r­ial and I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it to oth­ers. Mr. Grif­fin was very friendly, help­ful, and infor­ma­tive. Although I am con­sid­er­ing apply­ing my pas­sion for writ­ing more to cre­ative writ­ing, video games, or film, the ABC News Princetern­ship taught me valu­able lessons about writ­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, soft­ware pro­grams, and the role of enter­tain­ment and news media in today’s world.