Patrick Bernal’s big day this summer came when Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) held a press conference about predatory airfare pricing—only to be bounced from the top of the news by a gunman who killed two people at the U.S. Capitol.

"You can be the top story for a while. But all of a sudden, you can be erased by something bigger," said Bernal, a fourth-year English major who serves as The Cavalier Daily’s life editor.

Bernal was the 1998 recipient of the Cavalier Daily Alumni Association’s Herring Scholarship of $1,000, which allowed him to take an unpaid job as an intern to the congresswoman’s press secretary.

In this position, Bernal said he did his share of making coffee and updating a media fax list, but he also wrote several press releases.

The most glamorous part, though, was arranging press conferences, such as the one at the Transportation Department the day of the Capitol shootings.

The internship "gave me a good idea how the news is made and what goes on on the other side—from the newsmaker’s perspective," Bernal said.

A former news associate editor, Bernal said future Hill work is definitely a possibility, but a journalism career also could come after his graduation next year.

This summer also proved inspiring to Cavalier Daily Opinion Editor Masha Herbst, who received a $500 scholarship from the CDAA to help fund her summer internship.

Herbst had never written a news story before she walked into the Associated Press’ Jerusalem bureau this summer, and she didn’t speak much Hebrew or Arabic. But she didn’t let that stop her.

"At times I’d jab the guy next to me and ask what they were saying" at press conferences, said Herbst.

For her first 200-word story, her editor gave her a list of questions and people to call, she said.

"I labored over that thing for hours, and of course, they changed everything," said Herbst, a third-year English and music double major.

She did some typical intern tasks such as filing stories in a large binder, transcribing tapes, researching for the bureau chief, and confirming and rewriting published reports. But most of the time, she worked on features or spot news, writing 20 to 25 stories over the summer.

"The internship really solidified my goals," Herbst said. "Now I know I want to be a journalist, and I want to work overseas for a wire service."

Herbst lived about an hour northeast of Jerusalem in Tel Aviv from 1990 to 1993, so she had learned already that she could work among the international press knowing just English. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, gives most press conferences in English, she said. And knowing some Russian helped Herbst talk with the region’s large Russian population, she said.

It also helped that her family lives in Jerusalem, where she said her father runs the U.S. consulate; she applied for internships while home for winter break.

Cavalier Daily News Editor Lauren Shepherd also shifted gears from her academic year job and worked unpaid for The Connection, a weekly newspaper group in Vienna, Va.

"Even though I liked working for a weekly because it gave you a lot more time to work on a story, I guess I just really like the whole intensity of daily production," said Shepherd, a third-year English major and psychology minor.

Shepherd also won a $500 scholarship from the CDAA, which she used to take a statistics class on Friday nights and Saturday mornings at the University’s Northern Virginia center in Falls Church.

At The Connection, she wrote three stories over the summer, typed marriage and birth announcements, learned PageMaker and followed reporters to the courthouse to read search warrants.

"It’s nice to be know how to do that from reporters who do it every day of the week," she said.

One assignment was to cover a drunken driving accident late at night on I-395. The Washington Post and other daily papers had already gotten the scoop, and The Connection needed to do more than just rerun all the details. Instead, they dug deeper, Shepherd said, finding that the driver was a second-time offender and talking to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving for their take on the issue.