Michael Mullally, graduate student at The University of Akron, went from being an intern to an independent contractor.
Mullally started his first internship at WTAM1100 Cleveland when he was 19 years old. He contacted WTAM and mentioned he was from Mount Union; they quickly asked him to start his internship immediately.
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Michael Mullally, graduate student at The University of Akron, went from being an intern to an independent contractor.
Mullally started his first internship at WTAM1100 Cleveland when he was 19 years old. He contacted WTAM and mentioned he was from Mount Union; they quickly asked him to start his internship immediately.
My first internship was in the summer of 2007. I worked for WTAM as an assistant news reporter, covering my own stories every day, said Mullally. I would walk in with a sheet of stories that I would have to make phone calls on. I would do interviews, record the interviews and cut audio clips from them. I would write the story up so that the newsroom anchor would be able to choose the stories he wants, which clips he wants, and be able to throw it into his radio newscast.
When Mullally did the phone interviews during his first internship, the phone was connected to the computer, which allowed him to record the whole interview in his office on his desk.
That internship was a lot of fun because it was five minutes away from my house. I didn’t have to travel far at all, and I grew up listening to WTAM. It was the station my dad always had on whenever we were driving the car and I would hear all these news anchors. I would know their voice and names, but I would never know who they were. When getting to meet these people and being treated like an employee that summer while covering my own stories, being taught very quickly on how to do it, knowing how to do it, and being trusted to do it made me feel I was ready to go farther.Mullally began his second, paid internship at Warren Tribune Chroniclein in Warren, Ohio. At the Warren Tribune Chronicle, Mullally was a stringer.
Stringing is whenever they need help covering extra stories . . . usually high school football. They would ask somebody to go out to the game. Eventually, they asked me to cover my own collage, which was Mount Union. It was great to be paid to cover a team that I was going to watch anyway, said Mullally.
Mullally finished his second internship when Warren Tribune Chronicle no longer needed any more reporters.
Mullally began his third internship in November 2009 that he worked for three months at SportsTime Ohio. He stopped to continue his education at The University of Akron, but picked it up again over the summer. He was there for almost a year.
Every day we would walk in; we would have a basketball game to cut highlights for, but most of it was answering phones for the talk show hosts on the station. While I was being trained to work for them, I would go to the [Cleveland] Indians ball park and actually work from there. We would broadcast the show — before the game at the ball park and after the game. They would have two interns always at the ballpark to help with the talent to work out any problems. We would only have the Talents and the Interns at the ball park, said Mullally.
Mullally recently completed his third internship, which gave him the opportunity to interview Norris Cole; the interview aired in late January. Now SportsTime Ohio has hired Mullally to work for them as an independent contractor.
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