Last week officially meant a month that I’ve been working full-time as an intern at The Colorado Springs Gazette. While most of my days are spent working with the digital team, on the slower days, I’m continuing to learn about the inner-workings of a newsroom as a whole.

In the last few weeks, I’ve had the chance to shadow some reporters, do some reporting of my own, and try my hand at video production. Later on, I may even have the chance to work with the page designers to learn some of the layout basics for a newspaper. I’m making an effort to learn all I can.

Although the days where I can break the routine are exciting, I am feeling settled and happy managing (or rather, assisting in managing), all the tasks of the digital team. I am continuously updating the website, checking for breaking news or interesting stories on Twitter, aggregating content from the AP, formatting stories, scheduling social media posts, following site analytics and sending alerts. In my down time, I’m creating some SEO-boosting content and helping reporters with sidebar elements (like maps) for their stories.

I’m really loving this work now that I’m feeling more adjusted to it. There’s certainly a lot more that goes into getting the news out there than just writing the stories or shooting the photos.

Of course, as soon as one gets comfortable, change comes knocking — at the end of the month, we are updating to a new Content Management System (CMS).

Basically, that means that most of what I do on a daily basis will be done in an entirely new system. It’s like trading your car out for a helicopter; you’re still getting from point A to point B, but how you do that is completely different.

That said, helicopters are awesome. We’ve received training through various webinars, and the team is feeling confident. Plus, I’m lucky that I get exposure to two different systems in one summer.

It’s sort of unbelievable that a month has already flew by. It won’t be long before I’m saying my goodbyes to all the kind people I have the pleasure of getting to know. That, I believe, will be the biggest challenge of all.

One more update coming later this summer.