This year we’re doing something different with the summer version of our year-round Camp Alleghany Blog.
As I’ve mentioned a few times on the blog this year, we wanted to make summers an opportunity for counselors to combine their paid work as staff counselors with chances to do internship level work as well. Those internships could be in almost anything that the counselor intern might hope to do — gain medical knowledge by assisting in the infirmary, explore dietary and nutrition issues in the Dining Hall, work with administration to streamline communication, etc.
Journalism interns
Well, in this case, we proposed offering some journalism, photojournalism, and marketing internships through our blog, which is managed by Curren Media Group Creative Director Lindsay Curren (whose mom, Bonnie LaPLante — née Carow — was at camp in 1948-49, and whose two daughters have attended camp and been counselors here. Her daughter Chloë Cook is our current co-head of Rifle).
Lindsay works with me year-round to develop an editorial calendar, find new ways to tell our story, streamline our content-based marketing, and invite our staff, alums, counselors, and even campers to join the blog by sending in submissions for editing and publication.
In this case, what she and I have been doing together is coming up with ways for our journalism/marketing interns to find their own takes on our stories, to report “from the field,” and to document life at camp through photo series’ on specific topics as well as more in-depth photography of daily life at camp.
Lindsay helped teach the counselors how to use our WordPress-based content management system for the Web, which itself is a great skill for our interns to walk away with after this summer!
Then she helped suggest an editorial calendar in keeping with the topics I always think are important to cover each summer, while leaving open room for the interns to come up with blog topics and photo-essay topics of their own.
After writing pieces, the interns will have their pieces edited by Lindsay, who has deep experience in the journalism world. This way they can learn how to improve their writing and storytelling ability while building real-world resume experience on an established blog (this is the fourth year of ours!).
The Alleghany Rattler, revived!
Finally, the J-Team, as they are called, are going to keep “Newspaper” in reserve as a rainy-day activity option for campers.
Here they would help campers learn to be reporters and storytellers themselves, and even to frame a shot and take a picture (or make a short video) for what might become a revived edition of an old camp favorite, The Alleghany Rattler.
So stay tuned to the blog for something different — real on-the-ground reportage by a great team of counselor-interns. They are:
- Zoë Bennett
- Camryn Bindra
- Rebecca Dodd
- Katherine Kromer
- Jessie Richmond
- Kate Snyder
- Whitley Taylor
Of course I’ll share my thoughts over the summer, too. But hey, you get to read stuff by me all the time! It will be great fun to hear the voice of our counselors and see the camp world through their camera lenses as well.
— Elizabeth Dawson Shreckhise, Assistant Director, Camp Alleghany for Girls
