Intern Chronicles

For the second semester of my senior year, I interned here at Countywide and Sun for my last class of the day, Monday through Wednesday, every week for about eighteen weeks. During my time, I learned more and more about writing every day. I was mentored by Suzie Campbell, Natasha Dunagan, Julie Talton, and Danny Chambers. I learned so much from each of these amazing people working for Countywide and Sun.

Campbell taught me how important it is to meet story deadlines and gave me people to interview for stories. Dunagan taught me how to interview and what questions to ask during interviews to get the most information I can for the story I was writing. Talton taught me how to edit stories to fix punctuation and many other things to make the story better, and she helped me make my stories longer by going into more detail about what I was writing about, so it would fit in the paper’s template. I would go watch sporting events with Danny Chambers, and he taught me how to keep stats and what to watch for at games; to find something to write about at the event we were at.

While I was interning, I got to interview multiple coaches and players for my stories, which was probably my favorite thing, other than actually writing. It was one of my favorite things I did because getting an inside look at things for my story was great, and getting to interview people in person led to great learning opportunities, great relationships, and great conversations.

Chambers would also teach broadcasting to me, and how he does it for Tecumseh’s high school softball team. Any time I had any questions about writing a story, I could always ask them, and they would help me and teach me.

I want to work in the sports media field, so getting to learn more about it from people who have been doing it for a long time was a great experience. I am going to college at Northern Oklahoma College in Stillwater for my first two years. Then, I am going to go to Oklahoma State University and major in sports broadcasting, so learning as much as I can about sports media before I dive into it full-time was great. I wrote for the sports page mostly. However, sometimes I wrote other kinds of stories, which was great because I learned so much more about what happens in this great county we live in and its people. I wanna say thank you so much to all my mentors for all the support I had from them and all the knowledge they shared with me.

Tecumseh High School senior Shane Blankenship speaks about interning at the Countywide & Sun newspaper this semester, on May 14. Blankenship plans to attend Northern OK College:Stillwater and Oklahoma State University to pursue a career in sports broadcasting. Also shown is Internship Director Justin Wood, who is operating the slide show. Wood said THS had 60 interns at 30 different sites for the 2025-26 school year, and 11 of them gave presentations about their experiences that morning.