There’s Nothing Small About Being a ‘Small Town Reporter’

By Amit Ben-Bassat

Internship Reflection - Fall 2024

For three months, I had the pleasure of interning for Schneps Media, and for three months, I had the pleasure of being able to call myself a true small-town reporter.

Until my work for the Long Island Press, all the journalism I had done was within the Stony Brook world, attending university events, interviewing peers and professors, and having a familiarity with my surroundings. Suffice to say, this internship did not hesitate in pushing me way beyond my comfort zone.

One fact about me is that up until college, I had zero clue about Long Island, never spending much time in it nor knowing anything about the towns or people. However, this internship had me travel across all of Nassau County, seeing all the different villages and local governments, which not only expanded my knowledge of New York but also equipped me with the skills to be able to adapt to unfamiliar situations and environments.

I’ll never forget my first event article. It was the morning of Memorial Day, and while others were waking up, I was racing across three villages, each holding individual Memorial Day parades that I was covering. Not only did I have no clue what places like Floral Park were, but I was terrified out of my mind about trying to approach people at these events.

Although it took me a while, over the course of this experience, I feel I got piece after piece that make the puzzle of Nassau County through event after event, seeing the different corners of the Long Island lifestyle. During the aforementioned events and in general reaching out to different organizations, I was fortunate enough to have many people willing to speak to a young journalist, double-checking that he’s in the right village, with every excited person making me more motivated. I won’t deny that not every board of trustees or board of education meeting I attended was the most newsworthy event; however, something I came to really love about these meetings is that I could always feel the care and dedication these small-town figures had for their respective villages and districts.

Whether it's trustees discussing if a fence counts as decorative for over an hour, a mayor excitedly detailing a new community center, or teachers receiving tenure, I always got motivated to continue going to these late-night events because the people there were motivated. A saying I would use when describing events I would go to is “it’s like watching the last episode of a season for a show I’ve never seen before.” Did I know what Port Washington was for most of my life? No, but interviewing a resident about their beautification of their LRR station and seeing them all happy about the new plants that took a lot of effort to set up made me feel excited to see the fruits of efforts I didn’t even know existed.

Another aspect of this internship that deserves recognition is the office environment with all the other interns and reporters.

I am truly grateful for the help and patience I received from the full-time reporters who always had a friendly face and were open to answering any questions I had. The main reporter I worked with, Isabella Gallo, not only assigned me the articles to do but also always helped offer feedback on how to improve my writing and make sure I’m delivering the important information concisely. Even when I made a mistake, she and the other reporters were always nice and understanding, continuing to encourage me to improve.

I will always look back fondly on our weekly office meetings where everyone would discuss our articles and see which photos are front-page worthy for our plethora of newspapers. These meetings were a great look at what being a journalist looks like, mixed with friendly banter and my boss, Steven Blank, sharing anecdotes comparing baseball and movies to what it means to be a reporter. Through seeing how articles are edited, practicing with tools like WordPress, and most importantly, first-hand experience, this internship gave me so much to look forward to when I graduate.

For three months, I was referred to as “Amit Ben-Bassat from the Long Island Press” by many in Long Island, and I will always be grateful for that.