My bTV Internship, or “Quit journalism before it’s not too late”

During the summer of 2011, I did a three-month internship in a private Bulgarian TV station – bTV. I considered it to be the best place to practice journalism in Bulgaria and an analysis of stories from the four major stations (BNT, bTV, Nova and TV7) showed that bTV’s stories resembled the most the American model of reporting, or what I had been taught in Missouri Journalism School last year.

So I applied and after a competitive selection and a short interview, I settled in bTV’s newsroom. My supervisor was the station’s anchor and producer Venelin Petkov (whom I have admired a lot and who also got his master degree from Missouri – such a happy coincidence). However, from the very first day Venelin told me what I would hear again and again from many of the journalists there, “If you are smart enough, quit journalism.” And yes, I met a lot of discontent journalists, unhappy with their job; I also had to deal with very unprofessional and not too intelligent producers. So it was an important experience, still not a too pleasant one.

Some of the interns I worked with in bTV's newsroom

I started by shadowing reporters and transcribing footage; interns were also supposed to shoot the “little comment,” a 40 seconds commentary by kids on a topic of the day. I also translated and wrote a number of stories for the world news desk (which was extremely useful and interesting) and reported on several paid stories. What stroke me the most from the beginning is that they didn’t have a critiquing session after the newscasts and also they do not encourage or accept story ideas there; so my first attempt to propose something on a story meeting failed badly (with the experienced ones shouting at me to shut up). Later on, I made my way and was allowed to develop several of my ideas. I had to adjust to not-one-man banding, i.e. to work with a camera man and a visual editor. Certainly, my skills in these areas helped me a lot but I might have also irritated the professionals a bit. I did stories on the risks of riding a bike in Sofia, the bad situation in school restrooms, a new hacker’s attack, the use of social networks and how that affects job seeking, the Facebook profiles of Bulgarian revolutionaries, etc. The video stories (in Bulgarian) are posted in the Broadcast News section.

I think I managed to establish good relationship with the camera men and I also got to talk to journalists I have admired much. I shouldn’t say the internship was disappointing, I was given a chance to work with some of the best professionals in the country; however, the internship helped me make my mind that I do not want to work as a journalist in Bulgaria. At least not in the current settings – who knows, maybe a positive change will come towards increased standards and more enthusiasm will be instilled into journalists.