Interneriffic

So yesterday was my first day interning at Today's Parent. It was full of all the great first day stuff, getting lost in the building, forgetting where the washroom is, asking stupid questions, that sort of thing. Today's Parent is in the Roger's building, this big fancy glass building with a green roof, it is connected to another building by way of a bridge, for no other reason than added flair.

There are umpteen other magazines in the building. Today's Parent is on the same floor with a bunch of women's magazines, including Chateleine and Lou Lou. It's either the nature of the business or of the magazine itself, but there is not one guy to be seen in the entire office, which is actually kind of nice. The trouble with the offices is that they are all identical, and being a person with poor directional sense, who relies on landmarks to get around, I was a tad curfuffeled. I found out that not only are all the offices on the same floor identical, all the individual floors are identical as well. I got of on the wrong floor by mistake and couldn't tell until I asked someone where Today's Parent was and they gave me the stupid look.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty good day. There was a story meeting in the morning and though I didn't have anything to contribute, I found it interesting. Then Andrea, the editor that hired me, showed me how the magazine does its fact-checking. I gather this is what I'll be doing most of the time, which is good because it's a real magazine like job and I heard horror stories about interns being made to fetch coffee and other slave labour. Anywho, fact-checking is basically what it sounds like, you check to make sure the facts in an article are correct. This involves marking all the facts, including quotes, calling people and asking them "would you say that blah blah blah is true?" and, if they say no, calling the author and asking "so-and-so denies blah blah blah is true, would you mind checking your research just to make sure?" This will obviously require a little finesse on my part. (ie: not calling writers up and saying "You're wrong!") Unfortunately, the article she was going to get me to start on was corrupted for some reason so she's going to print it out at home and I'll do it Monday. Once I get into it I will actually be useful, which is nice.

Andrea had to leave early and told me that there was no point in me sticking around with nothin to do, so I left at around 2:30.

And that was my day.