When the black Suburban driving Martha Stewart and Dole Foods mogul David Murdock pulled to a stop in front of me, I almost didn’t know what to do. Camera in hand, I had spent several hours scouting the North Carolina Research Campus for the pair. And having found them, I had just chased after the car down the campus’s streets until it stopped along the curb. Stewart rolled down her window and pulled her sunglasses down just low enough for the two of us to make eye contact.

“I guess you’re a reporter,” she said dryly. I landed a brief interview for my efforts: Murdock said he felt obligated since I was the only reporter to have found them that day, though several had been searching.

I’ve had so many moments like this in my short time reporting - experiences that are bizarre, one-of-a-kind, unusual and often leave me shaking my head with thoughts of “only in journalism can I get to do things like this” swirling through my head. I’m a senior now at UNC-Chapel Hill who will graduate in May 2010 with four years of experience at my school paper, The Daily Tar Heel and three summer reporting internships.  I want a job in journalism so I can keep going to work each day wondering what’s next.

Recent journalism experience

The St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.

  • General Assignment Intern (May ‘10 – present)

The Daily Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, N.C.

  • Managing Editor for Online (May ‘09 – May ‘10): Member of three-person newsroom leadership team that oversees daily operations for a staff of about 200. Part of newsroom team that led the launch of new Drupal-based Web site in August 2009 and responsible for promoting a “think online” attitude among all staff.Daily responsibilities include teaching staff best Web practices, including hyperlinking within stories, blogging, the use of tagging and topic pages and the use of social media. Produced multimedia project honoring 100 years of basketball at UNC-Chapel Hill.
  • Managing Editor for Print (May ‘08 – May ‘09): Responsible for daily newsroom operations for a staff of about 200. This includes helping the editor-in-chief lead daily meetings, editing stories for content, clarity, accuracy and AP style and coordinating coverage with writing and visual desks to create packages for both daily and long-term stories in print and online.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, Ark.

  • General Assignment Intern (May ‘09 – August ‘09): Covered spot news, cops and municipal government. Pitched several longer-term stories that ran on A1 of the state edition. Stories were routinely noted as among the paper’s top 10 in the deputy managing editor’s daily critique.