Internship Spotlight: Taylor Mead

By Taylor Mead, FCRH '16

My internship at Inside Edition has been a remarkable experience for me and I know that wherever my “wandering strategy” brings me, I will take so much knowledge with me. Beginning on the very first day, I knew that the internship would be anything but boring. Although the first day I mostly answered emails and voicemails, I began learning how to truly investigate a story. I vividly remember the first voicemail that came through when I was there and after typing up the message and submitting it to Senior Investigative Producer, Bob Read, as instructed, I was told to return the call. At first I was hesitant about doing this, I had never interviewed anyone before, after calling her on and listening to her story, I found myself asking her questions that a “real” interviewer would have asked. After getting off the phone and returning my findings to Mr. Read, he started asking me questions about the information I had gathered. When one of the questions stumped me, he told me to call her back and find out the answer. So I did.

Although this story may seem trivial, I believe this was the beginning of a career-changing experience. From that point on, I began learning more and more about interviewing, what questions to ask, when to ask them, how to ask them, et cetera, and over time I became more comfortable doing so. I slowly began returning calls more confidently and asking questions more professionally.

On just my second day in the office, I went with the camera crew to shoot the unveiling of Sofia Vergara’s wax figures at Madame Tussauds in Times Square. As if attending this event was not remarkable enough, I was able to network with the interviewer and the camera crew. This was the first time I had ever been to an event of this sort and I was able to see the close relationship that the camera crews from each news station have. I found this extremely surprising because I never thought that cameramen from rival news stations would bond in the way that they did. One of the cameramen from another station had a dead battery that he needed to replace just seconds before the event was scheduled to begin and a cameraman from different station gave him a replacement battery because he had a spare. When I spoke to a cameraman at Inside Edition, he said that this is not uncommon when the crew is out in the field because you never know when something like that might happen to you and you would want them to do the same in return. Although this may also seem insignificant, I realized that this is the type of relationship I hope to have with my future employees and “rivals”.

As the days of my internship progressed, I found myself exploring different parts of the television industry. One day I would sit in and observe the editing department, the next I would sit in the dub room, and each day it would be somewhere new and exciting. Throughout this process I learned so much, just by sitting and observing. The people working in each department were also all very friendly and open to answering all of my questions as well as describing what they do each day. Through sitting in and observing I was able to get a glimpse of how creating a television show is not something that can be done all at once but that there is a very strict and timely process which must be followed. Each of the departments work together to create a successful result and that is extremely important to me. As I mentioned in my Career Aspirations Discussion, friendly and hard-working coworkers are the type of people I hope to work with in the future. I found that everyone at Inside Edition had these qualities and it was very easy to work with and learn from each of them.

Throughout my experience I found myself developing relationships with potential coworkers, learning the ins and outs of logging tapes, researching stories, and interviewing.

Overall, this experience has left me with an entirely new outlook on my major and I have nothing but hope and excitement for my future and the way it will turn out. One day I hope to work with people just like those at Inside Edition, and I look forward to keeping in touch with some of the people I have been working with throughout my time here. My internship adviser, Liliya Patarinski, has also made this experience extremely valuable and made sure that every day I learned something new and took something away from my time spent in the office.

This was definitely an experience I will never forget.