At Mt. Lebanon Magazine, we are pretty proud of our decades-old internship program, where journalism, communications and writing majors get the opportunity to learn all aspects of putting out a magazine. But it doesn’t stop there. Our interns don’t get us coffee or answer our phones. They don’t just make phone calls to fact check the work of others. They learn by doing. From the first day, they write, collect assignments, conduct interviews and even learn how to incorporate photography and videography into their projects. Those with an interest in public relations can write press releases and craft posts for our social media platforms. They can learn to help design layouts. They sit in on staff meetings and learn to plan a media relations campaign or a pull-out news section. They help us proofread each issue and their fresh ideas inform our website coverage and help us think in new ways to get us out of our ruts.
Their work appears in the print magazine, online at lebomag.com or anywhere we help municipal departments promote their services. They make valuable contacts and build a portfolio of work that helps display their talent to potential employers. They may even meet a potential employer in their course of working here.
It’s not easy. There’s a lot to know, quickly, including our writing style, which, for the record, is a hybrid of Associated Press style with a little Mt. Lebanonite style thrown in there. They need to learn about local government, how we write about sensitive, or even boring yet important, issues and how we differ from, say, the college newspaper or literary magazine for which they already work. But we try to temper all this learning with fun. Many of our interns have gone on to great jobs in journalism, university publications, graduate school or publishing.
So — all that said, we are thrilled to introduce you to our Spring ’15 intern, Abbey Reighard, a senior at the University of Pittsburgh. If she calls you for a story, please be kind to her. On her first day, we asked her write a news release about herself. Here it is:
January 6, 2015
Abbey Reighard has been selected to be Mt. Lebanon Magazine’s spring intern.
Reighard, a senior nonfiction writing and communication double major at the University of Pittsburgh, has worked as a staff writer for The Pitt News [1], the school’s daily student newspaper, since 2013.
Since last January 2014, she has been The Pitt News Student Government Board beat reporter. Last September, Reighard and four other contributing writers were awarded first place in the news writing category in the 31st annual Gold Circle Awards hosted by Columbia Scholastic Press Association for their piece, “3 Months, 3 Board Members Down,” [2] published last March.
Reighard continues to work at The Pitt News as an assistant news editor. She will graduate from the University of Pittsburgh in April.
Last summer Reighard worked as an intern at The Northside Chronicle, [3] a monthly community newspaper with weekly online editions, located in the Northside’s Deutschtown neighborhood.
A Trout Run, Pa. native, she graduated from Montoursville Area High School in 2011.
Reighard began work January 6 and will be with for Mt. Lebanon Magazine for the next 12 weeks.