The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal again this year will provide paid summer internships to high school and college students who want to learn about reporting and editing at a weekly newspaper. Nine students will join our newsroom next week for a six-week experience. On Day One, they will attend our weekly Tuesday news meeting, watching and listening as we plan the next week’s coverage and talk about how and who will cover the news and events in our community.
Also from Day One, they will be given assignments. In some cases in the beginning, they will be paired with a reporter to shadow, and they will work independently with an editor. Every Thursday for the course of the program they will come together for in-person class workshops that will be held in the newsroom. The Thursday sessions provide instruction on how to pitch a story, better ways to photograph, as well as Associated Press style and topics on libel, ethics and the all-important matter of actually writing the story!
Workshop instructors include experts in their fields, but the learning for the interns really happens through the interaction with editors throughout the week. Nathan Miller, managing editor of The News, and Riley Klein, managing editor of The Journal, will be on the other end of the phone and email as the interns fan out into our communities to cover meetings and events, discovering the nuances of our community journalism.
It’s refreshing for us as editors to see our own world through new eyes. This spring, as we chronicled this month in The Journal, we worked with students at Housatonic Valley Regional High School as they created their own newspaper, HVRHS Today. The Housy program will continue in the fall.
Our 2025 summer interns include high school students from New York and Connecticut, but the greater number are college students who aspire to learn how journalism serves as a witness to history.
Interns and schools include:
Linus Barnes — Vassar College, Poughkeepsie
Jules Williams — University of Virginia, Charlottesville
David Carley — Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio
Copey Rollins — The Hotchkiss School, Salisbury
Mia DiRocco — Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Falls Village
Simon Markow — Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Falls Village
Charlie Greenberg — Riverdale Country School, Bronx, New York
Theo Maniatis — Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont
We’re also proud to be selected by Marist University in Poughkeepsie, New York, to host one of its students as part of a new partnership. Marist student Grace DeMarco has already started her internship.
Last year, when the interns concluded their summer program, they wrote about their experience and we will share that with you again this year before they return to the classroom.
With the newspaper industry facing so many challenges, and even existential threats, it was heartening to receive big interest from students wanting to try a journalism internship. Please welcome our 2025 Lakeville Journal/Millerton News summer apprentices.
Justine and Victor Valla in their studio with a painting of Victor’s,”Jonah and the Whale.” Robin Roraback 
