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NPR interns have produced their own show, called “i.e.: NPR in other words,” and it premieres today.
This Intern Edition isn’t like any you’ve seen before. This session’s program features candid and often comical multimedia presentations from young journalists who bring a fresh perspective to their reporting.
Click here to see the show in its entirety.
Photo by kikfoto
Sports writer Jeff Pearlman joins NPR’s i.e. for another installment of In Your Shoes in which we ask guest contributors to write a post reflecting on their 20s: how they got here and what they encountered along the way.
We hope you enjoy.
I was the hot shot.
Really, I was. Twenty-two years old, straight out of the University of Delaware, hired by a major metropolitan newspaper to cover food and fashion for its features section. “I’ll be out of there in two years,” I told people. “It’s just a stop on the route toward greatness.”
Yes, as pathetic as it now seems, I uttered those words—“A stop on the route toward greatness.” Why? Primarily because I believed that some literal world of greatness actually existed (Welcome to Greatness! Would you like ice cream or Jell-O to accompany your spectacular aura?), but also because I was the world’s biggest tool; a kid who genuinely thought my relatively mediocre writing ability made me something … special.
Hence, when I arrived for my first day of work at The (Nashville) Tennessean on June 5, 1994, I came with a New Yorker’s swagger and a fool’s ignorance. I took advice from nobody. I complained aloud about my editors’ incompetence. When I was assigned what I believed to be lame stories, I’d moan … gripe … ask if, perhaps, some other writer could do it. Hell, as a senior at my college paper I had been The Man—editor, columnist, dated the curvaceous hottie. Who were these Tennessean yokels to treat me any differently?
Then—BAM.
Portrait of the author with four eyes
When I was newly-minted preschooler, I showed up on the first day wearing glasses. They were made for little kids, because they had soft rubber ends that curled around my ears so I wouldn’t lose them. The concave lenses made my eyes a bit buggy. But I was four — who really cared or noticed? Except maybe Josh, the nose-picker who always tried standing next to me. Soon enough I got used to wearing the glasses – especially because they matched everything I wore; they were rainbow-colored, after all.
My glasses were soon put to the test. It was my great-grandmother’s birthday celebration. We called her Munchie; it was a nickname my dad and uncles had given her because of the sounds she made with her dentures (just think about it for a second). We visited her in a nursing home on the north side of Chicago, but when the party was over my glasses came under attack.
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