Jennifer King @ KING 5 Television

An assignment for her fifth grade class that required her to watch the evening news inspired Jennifer King’s career choice. She remembers thinking as she watched the news anchors doing their job, “I can talk, and I could be on TV. I could do that.”

Jennifer, a senior Communications major at Northwest College, still believes she would make a good news anchor, and an internship last fall at Seattle’s King 5 News brought her one step closer to realizing her dream. She applied to three local TV stations for internships, and her determination paid off when King 5, Jennifer’s first choice, offered her the position.

In addition to gaining invaluable experience, Jennifer was able to receive academic credit from Northwest for her internship. Once on the job, Jennifer started out doing research over the phone and on the internet. She called the different beats to get leads on stories and answered phone calls with story tips.

“I worked on the news desk, so that was where most of the calls came through,” she says. Later in the internship she was given more responsibilities, and she began going out to cover stories with reporters.

One memorable story that she helped with involved a man who was administering flu shots without a license. Jennifer did the initial undercover research on the story by going to the man and asking him questions about his practice.

“I was the first person there from King or any of the Seattle stations,” Jennifer says, explaining that the man’s practice was a scam and that the he had been caught practicing unlawfully in other states in the past.

Another incident that stands out in Jennifer’s mind from her internship is the sentencing of Gary Ridgeway, the “Green River Killer.” Jennifer worked as a runner for the King 5 reporters covering the hearing. She says about being at the hearing, where the victims’ families confronted Ridgeway, ”It was very intense. It is one thing to see the edited version on the news and another thing to be right there.”

Jennifer was confronted with the demanding nature of a newscasting career when her boss at King 5 told her she would have to be at the station at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of the Ridgeway hearing. This and other experiences during her internship gave Jennifer a better idea of what it would be like to work as a television reporter.

She says about her internship, “I don’t know if it clarified my goals as much as it gave a realistic hue to my goals. It is such a demanding field. You have to be willing to give everything you can to it.”

Jennifer also realized that some aspects of newscasting that seem effortless for experienced reporters really take a lot of practice. Sometimes the reporters would let her go on camera to practice opening and closing a story. She would then try to edit her footage into a story.

“It was so much more difficult than I thought,” she remembers. Jennifer also found it difficult to face the often tragic news that reporters cover every day. She wonders how reporters function who do not share her faith in God.

“I can’t imagine not having faith in a newsroom,” she says, “because there is a lot of filth that comes through, and it would be really discouraging.”

She was sustained by her sense of hope in Christ, and by her desire to demonstrate that hope to others. Jennifer sees a career in news-casting as an opportunity to make a difference.

“As cheesy as it sounds, I want a worthy career that can help people. I’ve always thought that news is more important than people stop to realize, and I think that as a Christian in the area I could do some good,” she says.

“If I can tell the kind of news that is doing good in the world, then I would like to do that. Another thing I’ve seen through my internship is that there is a huge need for compassion, and that is what Christians could bring to the industry,” Jennifer says.

“If nothing else, a Christian could bring a genuine heart and a sympathetic ear, and that is something.”