An aspiring photojournalist and editor have joined The Daily Progress newsroom as summer interns to acquire real-world experience and delve into the nuts and bolts of Charlottesville’s newspaper of record.
Cal Tobias of the University of Missouri has been filling the pages of The Daily Progress with his photos for nearly two months. Eva Pappas, a recent graduate of the University of Lynchburg, joined the team earlier this month as editorial intern, editing the paper’s news and opinion pieces for content, clarity and concision.
Tobias’ internship started off on May 18, a “wild day” as he put it. He spent the morning shadowing fellow Daily Progress reporters at the University of Virginia’s Final Exercises before racing off to the baseball diamond where the Hoos were taking on their archrival Virginia Tech in the last regular season game.
“The graduation was really fun,” said Tobias. “People were so eager to have their picture taken because they were celebrating such a great day of joy.”
While he’s studying photojournalism in the Midwest, Tobias is also quite familiar with Virginia. A native of Silver Spring, Maryland, he’s at home in the mountains of Central Virginia having worked at the Boy Scouts of America’s Camp Ross in Goshen for the past several summers.
“I have lived in Virginia every summer for five years,” said Tobias, a certified Eagle Scout. “I love the state of Virginia, its people and its scenery. I have always been drawn to this great state.”
It wasn’t only the state that brought him to Charlottesville this summer. Tobias said he was eager to develop his photo skills at The Daily Progress where he’d have the opportunity to shoot all different types of events: festivals, press conferences, architecture and even spend a day on the water covering the annual James River Batteau Festival.
“I had been doing a lot of sports coverage and not a lot of news coverage,” he said. “So I wanted to come here to master the art, to really get a lot better at news coverage, and just get more experience in it.”
And plenty of experience he has had. Having already photographed “a lot of really cool things,” some of his favorite projects include following the UVa baseball team through the Charlottesville Super Regional in addition to capturing the the grand estates of Keswick during the Beyond the Gates annual fundraising benefit held in the eastern Albemarle County village.
Tobias even found himself right in the middle of some political crossfire when U.S. Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene visited Albemarle County last month to rally for her fellow Republican John McGuire. At the time, the state senator was challenging incumbent Bob Good for the GOP nomination in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District.
“They had a crazy rally where everybody shouted each other down,” recalled Tobias. “That was really fun.”
In his free time, Tobias has taken advantage of the region’s parks and wildlife for cycling as well as some birding practice. He’s also enjoyed getting a taste of Charlottesville’s culinary scene with his colleagues, who have recommended local staples such as the Whiskey Jar, Continental Divide and, of course, Bodo’s Bagels.
Pappas, a longtime Charlottesville resident and graduate of Western Albemarle High School, studied English writing and literature in college while tutoring in the University of Lynchburg’s writing center and editing a student-run creative writing journal, the Prism.
As an editorial intern, Pappas fills her days reviewing and editing the paper’s house style guide, which has for decades established the best standards and practices for the paper when it comes to grammar, punctuation and citations. The guide she works on is specifically tailored for Daily Progress reporting, and includes entries specifically for the Dave Matthews Band (typically takes the article before the name), Central Virginia (always capitalized) and UVa Grounds (never campus).
“Editing the style guide is cool, because people will use it for years to come,” said Pappas.
With a background in editing fiction, even a soon-to-be-released novel, Pappas is eager to try her hand editing news stories and opinion columns and getting a taste of the industry.
“I’m excited to learn the reporters’ voices and develop an editor-writer relationship where I basically realize what it is like to edit for a newspaper,” she said.
When she’s not editing, Pappas spends time with her family, who still live in the area, heads to Ix Art Park for dance parties and escapes to the Rivanna River to escape the heat.
As for her next chapter, Pappas is open to staying in Charlottesville to get more of a foothold in the world of journalism or exploring freelance editing for a paper or publishing house.
Daily Progress editor Reynolds Hutchins said he is already impressed by the work Tobias and Pappas have contributed.
“For the past two summers I’ve been here, The Daily Progress has attracted some of the best and brightest young writers, editors and photographers. I can safely say that Cal and Eva are no different,” Hutchins said. “Our interns are not gofers or understudies, they are a very real part of the newsroom; as such, they share in the incredible work but also the incredible honor of serving the Charlottesville community.”
Hutchins pointed out that last summer’s interns, Luke Fountain and Haley Sandlow, both took home first-place prizes at this year’s Virginia Press Association contest — the same contest in which The Daily Progress took home the most prizes for a paper of its size and was named the top newspaper in its category.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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