Meet the interns

We have two unpaid interns who will be working in the newsroom. Laura Toledo is earning college credit at Hofstra University. On her first day at TVM she conducted a phone interview in English with the foreign minister, who had just given a speech at the United Nations on what the international community should do about the threat posed by global warming in the Maldives. Because of rising sea levels, the entire country could end up below water, so officials are calling for a new international agreement on climate change. Here's Laura with Moosa Waseem, the capable afternoon anchor who interviewed the foreign minister in Dhivehi.

The other intern is Andrew Clement, a high school student nearly the same age as some of the newsroom personnel. In the interest of full disclosure, he is my son. He'll be working on the business desk and you see him here with the business editor, Hamda.

Hamda has transformed the business desk with her reports on how the economy affects real people. For example, due to rising gas prices the government approved an increase in taxi fares, from 20 to 25 rf, a tiny raise equivalent to less than 50 US cents. But inflation is rampant and people struggling to buy food are taking fewer taxis, so the taxi drivers are no better off. A big improvement for a TV station where business reporting once consisted of reading corporate press releases on the air, verbatim, and calling it news. TVM journalists learned in our training that the press release is only the starting point for developing the story and Andrew's task will be to develop business stories for the English newscast.