Intern Spotlight: Andrew Zhang

In this blog series, we’ll be spotlighting our interns throughout the year to share more about their backgrounds and highlight the impact they’re contributing to POLITICO’s growth and success.

This week, we asked Andrew Zhang a few questions about his Breaking News Internship experience. Learn more about Andrew and his time with POLITICO below!

What drew you to the breaking news internship at POLITICO?  Everyone in Washington and the political world reads POLITICO, and I relied heavily on newsletters like Playbook and Huddle to understand the daily environment when I did Capitol Hill reporting in the past. So when the time came to apply for summer internships, throwing my hat in the ring for POLTICO felt like a no brainer. After all, I had read Playbook since — perhaps embarrassingly — my junior year of high school. When the time came to choose what news desk I wanted to work on, I went with breaking because it felt the most natural fit. During my time in journalism, I’ve always loved the rush of pushing yourself to report out and write a story on deadline, and I thought doing that for my internship would help create an exciting summer experience.

Tell us about what a typical day is like as a breaking news intern. Every day, my editor assigns everyone on the team particular events and speeches to monitor for interesting tidbits, and we’re constantly watching various television shows and Twitter feeds for potential news that we might want to jump on. The breaking team touches many parts of the newsroom, especially the politics team, so when news pops on a particular beat but the typical reporter can’t cover it, that assignment oftentimes falls to us. This helps make the position exciting, as I could cover anything from elections to China to Joe Biden on a particular day, but I wouldn’t know it until the moment news around a particular subject pops.

What exciting projects have you been working on so far? I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to cover Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress in July. I sat in the House chamber as POLITICO’s representative, and I got to write the outlet’s main story on one of the biggest events in Washington over the summer. I also greatly enjoyed doing a quick immersion into stories around the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the mini coup that erupted over a weekend in June allowed me a chance to write an explainer on its perpetrator and the shocking events that had captured the world’s attention.

What have you enjoyed most about your internship experience? I’ve loved being in a big newsroom that still maintains a communal and collegiate atmosphere. Having only worked at a smaller, nonprofit outlet in a professional capacity, I was worried that I would get lost, but I have felt nothing of the sort while I have been here. The internship program does a wonderful job of making sure that the interns get to meet some of the most important people in the newsroom, from section editors to the editor-in-chief, but everyone that I’ve spoken to — no matter how senior — has been gracious with their time.

Any advice you’d like to share with potential internship applicants or future POLITICO interns? POLITICO embraces a different form of journalism than a more typical outlet: the writing is very snappy, story angles are distinct and the target audience is an informed politics follower. I think being able to showcase how you can embrace that — both through experience on your resume and the story that you tell on your cover letter — can really make you stand out as an applicant. If you’re lucky enough to land here, make sure to think about how you want to carve out a space for yourself, both in the work that are doing and also the work that you want to do. Within your beat or position, make it known what you’re interested in covering, and don’t be afraid to ask beat reporters and editors who do work that interests you to talk about how to pave a career path.