In the past 16 of my 20 years in business, I’ve supervised over 30 interns, many of them from Westfield State, my alma mater. The majority of these young and capable students have come to me via Michael Filas, an English professor and the internship coordinator for the English department at the university.

Michael has been involved with the internship program for about 10 years, so we could say he’s sent about 20 of the 30 interns to me. This semester, he referred interns Colleen Looby and Nick St. Pierre to me. I asked Colleen to interview Michael—Professor Filas to her—about what it’s been like for him to work with Beetle Press over the years.

When interns come to me each semester, I teach them about writing press releases and blogs, and editing client’s manuscripts—and sometimes my own, if I have one in the works. Part of this writing work also involves learning what to ask during an interview and interview technique. I also like to take interns to live events as well, so they can learn to interact with professionals.

Michael likes to place students with Beetle Press for this range of experience. “Students do a combination of creative and public relations work with Janice,” he said. “It’s a unique opportunity that the students get to experience. She also gives students the opportunity to write and have their writing published and circulated in a public domain.”

He also values that I often offer students freelance work after the internship is over. Several students—Shannon Grossman and Shelby Ashline—still work for me years after they interned with me.

Mentoring students is very gratifying for Michael. “I like seeing students develop skills that are ‘money skills’ that will take them far,” he said. “I know that I’m helping them in a concrete way to move forward in their career.”

Michael has a bachelor’s degree in business management from California State University at Long Beach, a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from San Diego State University, and he has a doctoral degree in American literature and culture from the University of Washington.

I didn’t hear much from Michael in the past few years, as he took on the role of interim associate dean of the Westfield State Experience, which helps get first-year students involved on campus and in the community. I collaborated with a colleague of Michael’s instead, George Layng.

In addition to serving as a professor and dean, Michael has also worked for a Fortune 100 company on accounting software, and as a technical writer in the software industry. He has also worked as a carpenter, computer programmer, middle manager in the aerospace industry, a janitor, and even had his own cabinet and furniture making business a couple of years out of high school.

Michael offers a key part of the internship experience. While I help mentor students in growing their skill-set, he is also building their confidence and professionalism. Colleen says Professor Filas has been a huge asset in helping her with her writing minor. “I’m looking forward to taking his Advanced Prose class in my last semester of college this spring,” she says.

My other intern for the fall semester, Nick, holds similar regards towards Professor Filas. “I admire his attention to the minutiae of quality writing,” Nick says. “Professor Filas taught me to slow down and really think about the importance of each sentence.”

At the end of each semester, the students and I sit down with Michael to discuss the learnings, as well as any challenges that arose. We had a great meeting in December with Colleen and Nick. Toward the end, we discussed the intern candidate for spring. That is our cycle of learning.

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In my first year as a reporter for Granby and South Hadley, Massachusetts, I wrote about everything from DUIs to zoning squabbles to what life was like for priests living at a longtime Catholic seminary.

I tell interns the good news is that you don’t have to know everything before you start a job, that working is about learning. And I tell them the story of my first day on the job as a part-time correspondent at the Springfield Morning Union.

I knew almost nothing then about how town government functions or what a board of selectmen might be apt to discuss. I was 22 years old. Nevertheless, on my first day on the job, I was sent to cover the Granby Board of Selectmen. I was told only what time it met, and where.

First, of course, I had to figure out where Granby was in the Pioneer Valley and find its Town Hall. Then, I had to get my hands on the board’s agenda and try to figure out what on earth it all meant.

The meeting began at 7 p.m. My deadline for filing a story was 9:30 p.m., and the office where I needed to write and file that story was 25 minutes away. This gave me very little time to gather the news.

Fortunately, Granby is a small town, and not a whole lot happened during that meeting. The board appointed two people to town positions and also referred some agenda items to other boards.

I hustled back to my office, wrote a story that included background information on each of the folks who were appointed to new positions, and had my story in a few minutes early.

In the next few years, I got extremely good at writing on deadline. Sometimes I would have only an hour or so at a meeting, and by the time I returned to my office to get the story down, I might have only 15 or 20 minutes before the deadline. I got good at taking in detailed concepts and being able to write about them succinctly—very, very fast.

Writing budget stories was a particular specialty, which is unusual given that I am terrible at numbers; when making a deposit at the bank, for instance, I almost never get the math correct on the deposit slip.

When I left the news business in 1998 to start Beetle Press, the new learning I had to embrace was that I didn’t have to write stories—or produce other materials for clients—in 20 minutes or less.

I had discovered a new world in which I had time to do research in a thorough manner and time to really think through a piece. It’s a luxury I sometimes still need to remind myself about, but cranking out a press release for a client in a pinch is still a superpower I can own.

I spent 15 years in the news business in western Massachusetts, working for the Springfield paper and later the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton. I wrote about everything from pinching pierogis on an assembly line in Chicopee to mayoral elections in Northampton and Holyoke. I met people like Bill Cosby (who was not untoward with me), and I was on a first-name basis with state representatives, area mayors and city councilors.

Working as a journalist was a thrilling, fast-paced life, but I don’t miss being out every night at zoning and planning board meetings.

I am thrilled now that a former intern, Shelby Ashline, who continues to work for me at Beetle Press, recently started her job as a reporter at the Greenfield Recorder after graduating from the University of Massachusetts. In our next blog in two weeks, let’s hear about what Shelby’s work is like and what she is learning!

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