<b>Silo Editor Interns with Hudson Valley News</b>
Adi Fracchia is an ambitious VI form student with many other roles at Millbrook. She is also the editor of the school newspaper, The Silo, a dorm leader in Guest House, a diversity leader for Uncensored, and a jv lacrosse player during the spring term. To top it all off, Adi is now a published writer and intern for The Hudson Valley News. Working out of their Hyde Park office, Adi is writing a column on the "high school experience/perspective" that is being published weekly or bi-weekly.
Since becoming editor of The Silo this school year, Adi realized that she might want to pursue a career in journalism, and that an internship with a newspaper would help confirm that decision. A day student at Millbrook and resident of Pleasant Valley, she contacted all of the local papers in hopes of landing a summer job. Upon reading samples of Adi's editorials, the editor of the The Hudson Valley News, a local newspaper founded about a year ago, asked her to start right away as a columnist. While her column focuses on teenage life, she has the flexibility and creative license to write about pretty much anything that has to do with teenagers, high school, and college life.
To date, Adi has written four columns on a fairly wide range of topics: college admissions, technology, the media, and violence in video games. She's not quite used to seeing her picture in the paper, but she has come to enjoy working for the paper and writing to her heart's content. She particularly likes the fact that Hudson Valley News is "more opinionated, with a wide variety of views of what's happening in the Hudson Valley." Adi has plenty of opinions to share!
Over the summer Adi's responsibilities will become more of a full-time job, as she will continue with her column while also covering local news stories as a cub reporter. She is expected to have her cell phone within reach at all times and camera on hand. When a story breaks, she'll grab her press pass and be prepared to write. She'll also get to join the other writers and editorial staff during their roundtable editing process which takes place on Mondays and Tuesdays before publication of each Wednesday issue.
This opportunity has built on the lessons Adi has learned at Millbrook: the importance of collaborative efforts, meeting deadlines, and using technology to gain efficiency. As in her work on The Silo, The Hudson Valley News gives her a lot of freedom in the writing process, something she expects will likely be different if and when she enters a larger market as a journalist.
For now, Adi is busy enjoying the last weeks of her senior year at Millbrook, preparing for her CES (Culminating Experience for Seniors), prom, and graduation, while writing and writing some more (final Silo issues, senior history Blaine essay, and papers for three AP classes). It's obvious that her passion for writing will remain with her after Millbrook; currently she has plans to take a gap year and travel before starting college in the fall of 2011. While she hasn't made a final decision on which college she'll attend, she already knows she wants to write for the school's paper.
To read two of Adi's recently published articles, click the links below. To read Adi's ongoing column, pick up a weekly copy of The Hudson Valley News at your local newstand, or go online to order a subscription: www.thehudsonvalleynews.com.
