Seneca Valley High grad interns at D.C. TV station
Being the daughter of two journalists, Sarah Donaldson was familiar with the fast-paced nature of the 24-hour news cycle.
In September, the Seneca Valley Senior High School alumna felt that cycle accelerate when she got an internship with an ABC news station in Washington, D.C., and found herself within a few yards of President Joe Biden on her second day of work.
“They had me standing around trying to get interviews with elected officials, and my second day on the hill the president came over,” Donaldson said. “When we saw Biden, my boss said, 'Yell a question. Yell it loud.'”
Donaldson yelled out a question about the pending infrastructure bill, which she said was probably the most invigorating situation she had been in up to that point.
Donaldson spent about three months living in Washington, D.C., for her internship with ABC News, where she posted 12 bylines online and interviewed multiple elected officials working on Capitol Hill and the surrounding areas during pivotal legislative sessions.
Now, she is rounding out her senior year at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where she majors in journalism and has written for school publications. Donaldson said her experience at the university as well as her previous three internships at The Columbus Dispatch, The Athens News and her hometown Butler Eagle helped her develop her reporting and writing skills.
Through these internships, she has gotten experience covering different topics from local news and crime to business and economics at The Columbus Dispatch, and she said she has honed her craft in writing at each publication.
“At every internship, I have been so relieved to find talking to people is a lot easier than it seems,” Donaldson said. “They all totally propelled me to be able to do the D.C. internship.”
Donaldson said she chose Ohio University because of its renowned journalism program, but she credits two teachers at Seneca Valley High School for furthering her interest in politics and journalism.She said she took an AP government class with Jim Lucot, which inspired her interest in the ins and outs of political news and processes.Lucot said Donaldson was immediately focused and engaged with the class to the point where he had to make sure to keep himself updated in terms of current events.“She was outstanding,” Lucot said. “Her presence and knowledge and writing ability are just amazing.”During her senior year at Seneca Valley, Donaldson took a video production class in which she learned how to report on and produce news.Dan McKosky, her high school video production teacher, also remembers Donaldson as a good student, and one who was able to not only keep up with, but lead, other people in the class who had been involved for several years.“It can be kind of hard to keep up with kids who had been taking them for years, but she took to it right away,” he said. “She seemed from the beginning to be really good at it and she was highly motivated.”Lucot said he also took Donaldson's class to Pittsburgh to meet with elected officials. The students were surprised when he asked community leaders the “hard” questions.Her writing ability was also evident in her high school classes.“I try to grade without looking at names and be totally unbiased,” Lucot said. “But I would routinely put Sarah's on the bottom of the pile to have something to look forward to.”
Donaldson said that while she wanted to get as much professional experience as possible through her internship, she also wanted to take in the grandeur of the happenings in the nation's Capitol.She specifically asked her news director to attend the annual Thanksgiving tradition, the pardoning of the turkey, and she got to watch Air Force One take off from the White House.Donaldson lived eight minutes away from Capitol Hill, so her intermittent walks to work were always interesting.“I was grateful there were opportunities to just have those cool moments,” Donaldson said. “No matter anyone's feelings about it, it's cool to see very traditional aspects of being in D.C.”While Donaldson was in the governmental center of the country, she found people were more approachable than she expected.“A big takeaway was that people are willing to help you and take time out of their day if you ask,” she said. “My favorite part was just meeting other members of the press; it was cool to follow their reporting and see how they did everything.”As for her future aspirations, Donaldson said her plans for after graduation aren't clear, but she can see herself returning to the Capitol for a career.Having experience in print, broadcast and production, Donaldson said she is open to almost anything.“I definitely would be interested, I would be happy to end up in D.C. later in life,” Donaldson said.As for her former teachers, Donaldson's accomplishments in the news world do not come as a surprise.“She is very, very smart; I know she'll end up on the news desk,” Lucot said. “I always told my students rules that aren't enforced are ready to be broken. We would go right up to the politicians and ask hard questions. Sarah is on the forefront of that.”McKosky agreed.“I also see her as someone who wants to make a change,” McKosky said. “She was so committed to social justice and using journalism as a force for good. She really adheres to that as something that can help people.”
