Downtown Devil has never been the typical news publication.
Our team is made up of student journalists who share a dedication to quality reporting, a passion for the downtown Phoenix community and often a zeal for instructing, through both journalism itself and mentorship of less experienced journalists.
This semester, we’re excited to expand our team and continue our commitment to mentorship and community involvement.
Downtown Devil launched the publication’s first ever internship program in collaboration with Bioscience High School. Ruby Ramirez, a Bioscience senior, is Downtown Devil’s inaugural editorial intern. The internship will last through May 2014.
Ramirez approached us in April and inquired about working with Downtown Devil as part of the capstone program all Bioscience seniors must complete. Among the program’s requirements are 200 hours spent working with a Phoenix business and a series of essays discussing how work completed during the internship meaningfully contributes to society.
As an intern, Ramirez will have the opportunity to report and write news stories alongside the rest of Downtown Devil’s reporting staff, but will also work closely with editors to learn the elements of news writing, photography, ethics and history that most of our reporters have covered in classes at the Walter Cronkite School.
We think Ramirez will be a valuable asset to both the Downtown Devil staff and the downtown community. Already she is as tuned in to the downtown community as some of Downtown Devil’s most active members. She has been attending First Fridays art walks since the seventh grade and has volunteered with downtown projects and events such as the Phoenix Pie Social, Art Detour 25, Feast on the Street and Valley of the Sunflowers. This year she helped organize the Roosevelt Row Chile Pepper Festival.
The program is intended to fill a gap that has become apparent in the downtown community. Bioscience’s emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics paves the way for internships with local hospitals and research labs, but for students like Ramirez, who is a cofounder of her school’s literary magazine and is interested in journalism as a career, opportunities to work with local organizations in their fields of interest are limited.
The creation of this program is not the first step Downtown Devil has taken to better serve the community. Downtown Devil was originally founded because its publishers saw a need in the community for focused, comprehensive news coverage. Subsequent efforts include Downtown Devil Discussions, a monthly forum for community members to share their ideas for downtown’s improvement; exclusive comprehensive coverage of the annual Phoenix Urban Design Week; and a team effort with Short Leash Hot Dogs to create the reader-voted specialty Devil Dog, which still exists on the menu at Sit…Stay.
It is the nature of student-run publications to see constant change in staffing. We hope that this internship will enable us to better serve our readers by training a new wave of young journalists. Because as a news publication, Downtown Devil is a learning tool for the entire downtown community, including student reporters.
