NEUFELD: First, I guess just to give our listeners an idea, what kind of journalism experience did you have prior to this internship?
SIEGENTHALER: Yeah. So before I started this internship, the only experience I really had was academic. I had just wrapped up my sophomore year of college, so really just starting to get into my degree. So a couple classes where I was writing and producing articles, but very, very minimal, and I had only had one article published before starting working here.
NEUFELD: So then, obviously, while doing your internship this summer, you did spots for our newscast, you had a feature and then you also wrote some articles for our website. What was your favorite story that you worked on and why?
SIEGENTHALER: I had the honor of covering the anniversary, the 150th anniversary, of Pittsburg, and that was just a really amazing experience. I got to talk to people who know a lot about Pittsburg's history and the mining, and then I also got to talk to people who did past celebrations, some people who took part in the new celebrations, and then stuff that they're going to start going forward, so things that hadn't been done before. And it was really interesting to— I'm from Oklahoma and I moved to Kansas, and I just fell in love with this area, and so getting to interact with people who truly love this area, as much as I do, was really fun. And then just being able to weave all of those different stories together, with the center of it being this town was super fun.
NEUFELD: Was there anything that really stood out to you that you learned, like you didn't know beforehand before working on that story?
SIEGENTHALER: The mining conditions. They were really, really gruesome, and mining is what made this area. And just hearing about what it was like down there and then having to carry up all of the tons of coal that they did, was just really— it made me really grateful for what we have today and the technology because they just didn't have that back then.
NEUFELD: Right. And if I remember correctly, you hadn't had much experience with public radio before this internship. So what did you learn about public radio and then also working in a small newsroom?
SIEGENTHALER: Yeah. So before starting here, the only journalism I had ever done was written. And so writing for, like, written journalism to audio is very different. So adapting how I was writing journalistically to fit the audio format was really, really challenging, but fun. I learned how to make every single word count in a story, so that was really cool.
NEUFELD: So you said that prior to this internship you had finished your sophomore year here at Pitt State. What are your goals then for this next year?
SIEGENTHALER: Yeah. So taking what I've learned over the summer working as a reporter back into the classroom again. That will kind of— I'm anticipating it being a little bit funky to go from classroom to newsroom back to classroom. And even though I won't be working in a newsroom for the next few months, just keeping everything that I was doing relatively the same. I'll still be producing content, it just won't be, it won't be published, but I'll still be writing. And so keeping, basically my mindset the exact same. Yeah, and then just working towards my degree so I can get back out here.
NEUFELD: Well, we've enjoyed having you, and thanks for talking with me.
SIEGENTHALER: Yeah, I've enjoyed working here. It's been such an honor and one of the coolest things I've done so far, so thank you so much.
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