Since January, I’ve had the privilege of working with Ms. Magazine. Founded by activist Gloria Steinem in 1971, Ms. has since operated as a non-profit print magazine and news site with a uniquely feminist angle on current events, politics, healthcare, and reproductive issues. My daily responsibilities at Ms. mainly consist of getting articles ready for edits, working on new pages for the website, and pitching original piece ideas.
Working with Ms. has also taught me a lot about reporting on legislative issues. As a pre-law student aspiring to go into healthcare law, I knew I wanted to report on issues of anti-abortion legislation and threats to women’s healthcare access, and Ms. has provided me the opportunity to do that. As a co-writer of the monthly War on Women column, I’ve been able to highlight each month’s most critical current events related to feminism and threats to gender equality in the U.S. With increasing threats to reproductive rights, education, and economic justice, it is becoming increasingly important to highlight these issues.
Ms. has already taught me so much about the world of journalism and politics, such as how to cover and report on press conferences, how to keep track of guest authors’ citations to prevent plagiarism, and how to prepare a piece for review by the editor.
My favorite part of the internship so far has been the opportunities to make original contributions to the website. Along with my contributions to the War on Women column, the experience of writing my own original piece for the site allowed me to further improve the skills I’ve acquired or improved this semester. My most recent ongoing project has been to create pillar pages, a new type of webpage, for the site’s most popular articles and links. These pages will allow users to find resources on the Ms. site more easily and make important Ms. archives, essential hotlines, and other critical resources more easily accessible.
I am so grateful to the Newcomb Institute and Ms. Magazine for this invaluable opportunity, and I can’t wait to continue my work into the summer!
