More on interns

I am not done with this internship idea yet so hold on.

Another former MBC intern is my friend Jay Smith. Jay came to the museum as a college senior at Indiana University. At school he was a TV major and had a clear plan on how to get a job in the business. His first step was to get an internship at the museum.

The museum internship was critical to Jay's overall plan because MBC president Brice DuMont was also a correspondent and producer at Chicago's PBS affiliate WTTW. Jay knew that if he got in good with Bruce he would have a better shot at getting one of WTTW's paid internships after graduation the following year.

Sure enough his plan worked. He parlayed his free MBC intenship to a paid internship the next summer. When that internship expired WTTW hired him full time on their flagship news program, Chicago Tonight. 18 years later he is going strong and is now the managing producer of that program. Over these 18 years he has also written and produced many other programs and documentaries for WTTW, but it all started with a vision he had while in college on the steps he needed to take to get the job he wanted.

So, like former intern Dan in my previous post, this too comes full circle. When I got my Flashpoint job I told Jay he needed to do a piece on the school- the first new college in Chicago in 40 years. He said he would when the time was right. The time was right this past Tuesday. Mayor Daley did the official ribbon cutting at Flashpoint and that evening on Chicago Tonight there was a piece on Flashpoint Academy and brief snippet of the dumb filmmaker. A quid pro quo of sorts.

PeterH