IDCCA Week 5: Personal Contribution Reflection

A new responsibility which the other interns and I were given this week is the opportunity to draft press releases on the organization’s behalf. If, while keeping up with the day’s political news we see something worthy of a press release, we can write a draft and send it to our supervisors who will make any necessary changes before deciding (along with other officials outside the organization whom I do not work with) whether to publish.

On Wednesday, I wrote the first such press release: a brief memo criticizing Illinois Congressmen Mike Bost and Darin LaHood for voting to keep a bust of former Chief Justice Roger Taney (author of the infamous Dred Scott decision) in the U.S. Capitol Building. I saw on Tuesday that the House would vote on the measure that evening, so on Wednesday, I checked the results of that vote so that I could write a release criticizing the members of the Illinois delegation who voted against it. Ultimately, my contribution to this project was to write the rough draft and pass it up the chain. The final product is almost entirely my own work, although the people that reviewed it (which included my supervisors, the president of the organization, and a member of Sen. Dick Durbin’s communications team) condensed it from three paragraphs to two.

I certainly hope to continue writing our press releases in the future. This will be an ongoing project until the internship concludes in August, so I will keep my eyes on the news in search of release-worthy topics. However, even when I am not the primary author of press releases, I will contribute to this project in other ways. On Thursday of this week, for example, I met with another of our interns over Zoom to discuss the project. She was out of the office when I wrote this initial press release on Wednesday, but going forward, we agreed to proofread each other’s press releases before sending them in for approval. When she begins to write them, I will be happy to contribute to the success of the final project in this way as well. Having now seen a release that I have written undergo the revision process, and seen the value that the team places on concision, I can apply that lesson not only to future releases that I write but also to releases that other interns write that I may have the opportunity to read. These observations will strengthen final products that I have the opportunity to shape going forward.