Career Spotlight: Cori O’Connor ’15

Class of 2015 student Cori O'Connor explains her internship at the Walton Reporter and future career goals.

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Home State: New York

Current Residence: New York

Current Employer: The Walton Reporter (Summer 2013)

Describe your company/organization and give a brief description of your current responsibilities: The Walton Reporter is a very small, local newspaper in upstate New York. The reporting portion is run by only two full-time people. As a result I was able to experience a variety of tasks and responsibilities. I published eight articles (including one court story and several feature stories), wrote many news releases, and copyedited letters to the editor.

What are highlights of past of present internships? The highlight of my summer was definitely reporting. I interviewed many individuals for feature stories one of whom was a twelve year-old girl who was raising a service dog with her grandpa for Guiding Eyes for the Blind. I really enjoyed interviewing her because she was so proud of what they were doing, very passionate about the cause, and I felt like I was giving her and her service project a platform.

The other highlight of my summer is that I attended county court each Monday with the court reporter. This was a really neat experience because I began to understand the language and phrases that are used in court and then rephrase it in layman’s terms for the paper. This was definitely a valuable lesson and gave me a taste of a type of reporting that I haven’t experienced before.

How has King’s education prepared you for this role? My education at The King’s College prepared me for this role in many ways. However, the most significant way is through the critical thinking skills and ability to analyze that King’s has developed in me. Through my classes at King’s I have been pushed by professors to question, think, and be able to articulate my thoughts and this summer I was able to put some of these skills into action.

If you are a student, what are your plans after graduation/how this position fits into those plans? When I graduate I would like to be a journalist so this internship fits into my future plans rather perfectly. I love reporting and informing people of the hard facts through an intriguing story and that’s what I hope to do for most of my life.


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