Introduction

Welcome! Contained on these virtual pages over the next few weeks will be a chronicle of my internship with the Indianapolis Business Journal during the summer of 2011.

I'm very excited to be taking on this role and a new challenge in journalism, and I want to thank Dennis Cripe and Diana Hadley with the Indiana High School Press Association, the Hoosier State Press Association and Andrea Davis with the IBJ for giving me this opportunity.

As the publications adviser at New Palestine High School, I intend to use this experience to spend time back in the "real world" of professional journalism, and use these experiences to better prepare my students for the world of journalism they will enter.

For me, this is a chance to return "home." For nine years, I was a professional journalist, a news/sports reports reporter at two small Indiana dailies and later sports editor at the Daily Reporter in Greenfield. After four years away from print journalism, I returned to the craft in 2010 as the publications adviser at NPHS. In the meantime, I taught history at New Palestine and did some freelance writing and broadcasting in my spare time.

As a small-town journalist, I did virtually everything, so this is an opportunity for me to see a different side of the craft, and also to see how much the craft has evolved since I left the business (at least on the print side) full-time in 2006. At that time, Internet journalism was an emerging phenomenon, social media hadn't come to dominate newsgathering and dissemination as much as it has done now, and newspaper staffs were significantly larger. Today's journalism is significantly different, and I hope to experience that and take those experiences back to my students this fall.

This is an exciting opportunity. I'm looking forward to the journey, and also looking forward to sharing it with you!