Internship Wrap Up

Sometimes I just want to punch someone in the face and then eat some Korean BBQ. Yup, that sounds about right.

The semester is nearing it's end, and I've had quite a good one in fact. While I may still be lacking spiritually, I strive to grow rather than rescind. I spent the day at home doing homework and one of my assignments was to summarize what my internship experience was. Here it is:

My internship took place at the comedy internet website in Santa Monica, Comedy.com. I did not know what to expect going into the internship other than my supervisors, Danielle Evenson and Josh Spector, telling me, “You get what you put into it here. Some people work hard and learn a lot, while other people don’t do much and come and go.” I’ve always prided myself in being a hard worker, and I was determined to give this internship 100 percent.
After the first two weeks I was starting to think to myself if it was all worth it. The drive to and from Santa Monica was over an hour both ways. Traffic was miserable and working in the office for four hours doing nothing but searching the internet was feeling like a complete waste of time and gas. I was anxious to let my talents show, and I think they could sense that. Danielle told me to choose a topic that I found funny and make a list about it.
My first list was “10 Funniest Charles Barkley TV Moments.” I got my inspiration for the list when watching TNT’s “Inside the NBA” starring Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson. The three worked really well together, and Barkley’s comments were always hilarious. I found the videos, wrote the list, and published it to a good response from my supervisors. They told me that they liked it so much that they wanted me to do another list. My friends had recently told me about Steve Nash being one of the funniest players in the NBA, and that he had a bunch of ridiculous commercials, which got me thinking about who the other funny players were in the NBA. Sure enough I found at least 10 of them and wrote a post about the “10 Funniest Players in the NBA.”
The post was so well-written and funny that Sports Illustrated posted a link to it on their website. A well-respected and viewed website like Sports Illustrated promoting your content is a huge deal in the internet world, which got our website lots of views. I sent a link to NBA superstar Dwyane Wade, who reposted it on his Twitter account, which got us even more feedback. In three weeks, I had gone from regular intern to a guy who was really helping out the website, and my supervisors began giving me even more freedom. On top of writing daily posts focusing on funny sports content, I could start writing a big list each week.
The next list that I wrote also got reposted on Sports Illustrated’s website. The list was “12 Funniest Sports Celebrity Look-a-Likes.” After having two out of three of my lists becoming a big deal, I was starting to think that getting content reposted on Sports Illustrated’s website was something that was quite common. I was told by my supervisors that Sports Illustrated rarely posts links to our website, and that I was doing a very good job. This gave me the confidence that I needed, and I began working really hard on making the sports side of the website even bigger.
The guys in charge of the website had been watching what I was doing, and they really liked it. Matt Komen and Josh brought me in and asked if it was something I’d be interested in working five days a week and being in charge of everything sports-related. They offered to pay me a certain amount of money to work from home on my days off to keep the sports section alive.
I began posting a few links from home each day while still going to the Comedy.com office in Santa Monica three days a week. I was starting to think that the drive was becoming pointless again because I was doing just as much work on the days I was at home compared to the days I drove an 80-mile round-trip to and from Santa Monica. After thinking about it for awhile, I came to the conclusion that when one works for somebody, that person is expected to show up to work. I was getting used to the drive, and I also knew that I was more focused outside my home too.
Things began changing at Comedy.com. They started going for a new look on the website, and we started changing from writing articles about funny videos to posting links to other sites. I was told this would be a good way to post more content and get websites to advertise more on our site, but I did not think it was a very good plan because we would be giving other people a reason not to come to our website anymore. The change in direction ended up being much easier, but we started losing viewers.
Due to budget and money reasons, I’m guessing, Danielle, who had brought me into the internship, was let go. This was very surprising to me, and I did not know what to think about it. I learned from this that despite being a fun place to work at, running a website is still a business, and a business needs to make money in order to pay its employees. I no longer had a mentor to ask for help, so I was on my own. I continued to produce and promote funny sports content. Once we switched back to writing, instead of posting links to other websites, I started having a lot more fun again.
I reached the final two weeks of my internship and let Matt know that my time was coming to a close. He asked how I liked what I was doing, and I told him that I was having an awesome time. He asked me if I would be interested in continuing once my internship was over, and I said that would be great. He told me that we would meet next week to talk about it. Then Matt got married, and I didn’t see him my entire last week.
Josh called me into his office on my last day, and we talked more about my future with Comedy.com. He told me that they were very impressed with everything I had accomplished in the last few months, and that they were looking to hire me. He told me that they would have to wait until Matt got back from his honeymoon so that they could go over the budget and see if they have enough money to hire me. Josh told me to take the next week off and that they would get back to me the following week if they could hire me. I thanked him and left.
I learned a lot through my experience with Comedy.com. I learned how to promote things through Facebook and Twitter. I learned how to produce content in a structured way and to bring viewers to a website. I learned how websites work and how they make money through advertising. I learned how competing websites use shady tricks in order to increase their viewer count in order to charge advertisers more. The internship was a great experience that allowed me to network and get real world experience in the entertainment industry. Halfway through, I ended up getting paid, and at the end they told me that they wanted to hire me. I’m proud of what I accomplished the last few months and hope that it will lead to something in the future.