Madison Taylor

Our crop of 2009 interns. Left to right from top: Emily Silva, Tristan Long, Michael Billy, Lindsey Fendt, Erik Kendall, Daniel Sarah Morayati, Daniel Temple, Ashley Melton.

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When I look at the list of people I know on Facebook one of the first things I notice is how many of them I met on their first real jobs after college.

The second thing, is how many others I first met when they were newspaper interns, which a code word for cheap or otherwise free labor provided by college campuses during those times when we need it most — in the summer when our full-time staffers are on vacation or simply spent from months of wrangling with budgets, half-baked studies, raw politics and growers of exotic-looking vegetables. Do not confuse the latter with politicians in their raw state. Or, well, go ahead. What can it hurt?

The names of former interns  bring back memories: Jennifer Brett, C. Mark Brinkley, Curt Simpson, Diana D’Abruzzo, Kinea White-Epps, Dan Schwind … even our own lifestyles editor Charity Apple got her start here at the Times-News after working as an intern one summer while she was enrolled at Elon University. I believe Alex Kreitman began here the same way.

Know this right off. I’ve never met an editor yet who hired a fouled up intern later for a full-time job. Believe me when I tell you that editors have long memories when it comes to sorry interns.

Personally, I’ve been very lucky. I have great memories of nearly all of them. And many have gone on to great things: Jennifer Brett, for example, is a features writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. C. Mark Brinkley is editor of the Marine Corps Times. Diana D’Abruzzo? She’s a copy editor for the Virginia Pilot. And that’s just the short list.

Sure, every single one started out a little rough. Almost none strut in the building ready to be full-time reporters right out of the box. There are fits and starts, a misspelled name or incorrectly identified street here and there and every so often they get a little ahead of themselves and mix up a fact or two.

But I’ve seldom found it to be from lack of effort. And, hard as it is sometimes, learning is what they’re here for. Our jobs are to guide, teach, be patient and encouraging.

At the Times-News we try to give our interns as much real reporting experience as possible. We don’t send them off to retype press releases. We place them in the field where they either succeed or fail. They interview people, track down figures, organize and write stories then deal with the fallout like anyone else.

And most willingly come back for more. That says a lot, mainly because these days they’re working for free. But all want to get the experience, find out if this is what they want to do and develop resumes and a backlog of writing samples for that time when they need to look for a paying job.

From our perspective, interns are more necessary than ever which is why this year we have the highest number at one time in Times-News history. I’m not just making that up. Three years ago I couldn’t imagine a time when any newspaper our size would have eight unpaid interns at one time. Believe me when I say there is more than enough for them to do. With our print and online responsibilities, the need for extra hands has never been greater. In fact, we’re encouraging students to work as interns during the school year these days.

So those of you who are regular readers have no doubt seen the bylines of our newest short-time staff members. Some will be here a month others two or three. Hopefully a handful will be ongoing contributors into the fall.

Our interns this year come from several points and with a variety of experiences. Emily Silva, one of our reporting interns, is a sttudent at Elon University who lives in Chapel Hill. Emily contributed a story and video to our Perspectives edition earlier this year as part of Jana Anderson’s reporting class. Another reporting intern is Michael Billy, a student at California University of Pennsylvania who was placed here via a program operated by the Institute for Humane Studies — the program that gave us Emily Hohenwater last year and Nathan Cohen the year before. IHS has a great track record for providing interns.

Emily and Michael are producing a wide variety of stories. Emily had one this week about a new indoor soccer facility. Michael produced a story last week about two new railroad projects. Michael will also write the occasional editorial for our opinion page.

Tristan Long is a student at the University of North Carolina who lives in Burlington. Tristan’s interest is in sports but at the moment he’s producing news and sports stories. Tristan had a Real People feature this week on the longtime tennis pro at Olde Forest Raquet Club and also produced a story about the job market for high school kids.

Ashley Melton and Sarah Morayati are writing entertainment and lifestyles features for Scene and Accent sections. Ashley and Sarah started here on our Teens and 20s staff working for Charity Apple. Sarah is still a student at the University of North Carolina while Ashley is recent grad of East Carolina University who developing her resume as she looks for a job.

Lindsey Fendt is an Elon University student who wants to be a photojournalist. Lindsey’s work so far has included an excellent photo of a blind academic tutor at Alamance Community College that was published this past Sunday. She also supplied the photo that accompanied Tristan’s story about the tennis pro.

And online content editor Alex Kreitman has two interns Daniel Temple and Eric Kendall. So far they specialize in producing videos online — including good work on our high school graduations and the Hospice Flea Market. They have also helped Alex put together information for speciality Web pages on the Burlington Royals and online photo galleries.

So far I would characterize the contributions of our interns this year as formidable and then some.

We’ll miss them when they’re gone.

So we almost didn’t get out a newspaper Friday night. Well, that’s probably an exaggeration. We were going to get out a Saturday copy of the Times-News by hook, crook or trucking the staff to our sister paper in Gastonia in order to use their equipment to do it.

Luckily, it didn’t come to that.

How we got into this mess is how most might suspect — equipment failure on an epic scale. Lack of electrical power is the most frequent culprit. If it goes, obviously nothing works. Hurricane-induced power failures were the usual cause of such events when I lived on the coast. In 1996 the Daily News of Jacksonville published at the New Bern office.

So it happens.

Otherwise it comes down to one of three tings: A malfunction in our press, plate-making equipment or the computer system. Friday, it was Door No. 3.

We had off-and-on problems with our computer system much of the day Friday. The system, provided by APT and called “Falcon”  slowed to a crawl between 3 and 4 p.m. Fearing that something major was wrong I talked to our IT guy Jay Murray who offered to restart the system because in these situations it usually helps.

This time it was a disaster.

Inside of 30 minutes I could tell Jay was nervous. About five minutes later he told  me why. “Falcon can’t connect to the data base,” he said with a touch of alarm. In fact, he couldn’t find the data base at all.

I’m not a computer guy but I know that a misplaced data base ain’t good. It’s like losing all your stuff in a fire. There are lots of highly technical reasons for why this happened but the easiest way to explain it is this. Something contained in the system Falcon replaced was never eliminated so it simply sat there waiting for a chance to create havoc.

Friday was the day.

By 6 p.m., and with no sign of our data base yet, I began to look for alternatives. I talked to news editor Joe Jurney and we determined that we could produce pages without using the Falcon system. It would mean eliminating a few things or delaying publication on a story or two. But it could be done, mainly because our inDesign page-building system can operate on its own.

We got lucky because some of our reporters had started to type their stories in programs installed on their laptop computers outside of the downed Falcon system. They could then e-mail the stories to our copydesk. Frances Woody retyped in our obituaries for the day in her e-mail account then sent them to our desk. We retrieved Associated Press photos and stories from the AP’s online service (something we’ll be doing next year anyway).

I’ll say right here I was proud of all our newsroom staff for digging in to make our plan work without hesitation. Joe Jurney and R.J. Beatty on the news copydesk and Stephen Schramm on our sports desk played major roles. City editor Brent Lancaster got the stories we could retype in and to the desk while reporter Roselee Papandrea redid a story that was already turned in but lost to us for those hours. Frances Woody got the obits completed and her husband Tom brought in some pizzas. Lifestyles editor Charity Apple came back on Saturday to complete tasks she could not finish for Sunday’s paper while the computers weren’t operating on Friday. Linda Bowden came in and helped us find some items we thought lost.

The biggest obstacle was in our sports agate, which can only be set for publication in the Falcon system. Jay Murray, with technical help from friends in Gastonia, got the system back up after 9 p.m. but it was barely functioning. Sports was able to assemble some of its features — but not all in time for our 12:15 deadline.

The good news is we got out on time — or very close — and our readers couldn’t really tell there was an epic problem at all. Our computer system was operating normally on Saturday. The better news is, we learned some things about our computers we didn’t already know — things that will help us from here on in.

And most of all we learned what we can do under duress. Our team performed well. I offer them my applause and gratitude.