Bob CollinsYou have to really want to be a journalist to end up in journalism. And if you want to cover the federal courts of the low-tech United States, you have to be a track star.
Meet Cassie Semyon, a Temple University student currently interning for NBC News. She’s got news about a corrupt political insider to share. And she somehow missed being included in NPR’s six takeaways from yesterday’s big news.
The sprint from the Manafort courthouse after the verdict: guilty on 8 felony counts; hung jury on 10 counts. (No phones allowed in courthouse, so news comes via fleet feet.) pic.twitter.com/JDc8QyMBxs
— melissa block (@NPRmelissablock) August 21, 2018
Like its Supreme Court big brother, the nation’s federal district courts live in the dark ages. They don’t allow technology like cameras or microphones in the court buildings, so when something big happens, a young journalist is assigned to run the news to civilization as if we’re living in the Roman Empire.
She’s literally going places in this business.
Yes, it is me, the journalist in the blue dress, running after the #ManafortTrial verdict. Thank you @Jacquelyn_M for the photo! #GoBlueDressGo pic.twitter.com/IkOM7VbWC5
— Cassie Semyon (@casssemyon) August 21, 2018
Semyon was, in fact, a track star in high school. She still holds her high school’s record in the 1600 and 3200 meters, which she set in 2013.
She’s one of those “kids” who older people don’t think about when blustering about the problem with kids today. A year ago she interned with ABC News after applying to 40 other internship programs and not hearing from a single one. That’s the common courtesy problem older people have.
“Sometimes, you just have to be patient and wait for the right opportunity for you, which is something I am slowly learning,” she wrote on her blog.
