Columbia GS Student Interns with CBS News on White House Beat
Sean Conlon ‘23GS, a former competitive figure skater now aspiring political journalist, spent this summer as a White House intern for CBS News. He shares his experience and advice on marrying professional aspirations with personal growth.
Sean Conlon ‘23GS may have started his professional life as a competitive figure skater, but he has always dreamed of a career in political journalism. “This is going to sound like a very ‘interview-like’ response,” he said with a laugh, “but I’ve known I wanted to be a political journalist since I was eight years old,” attributing two moments from his childhood that spurred an interest in politics and journalism: an encounter with an activist collecting petition signatures on a city street and a fateful trip to a Children’s Museum where he stepped into a broadcast reporter’s shoes. This summer, he took a major step towards fulfilling this goal by completing a 10-week internship with CBS News in Washington D.C. as a White House intern.
On his very first day, Conlon found himself at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Throughout the summer, Conlon was in the thick of the fast-paced D.C. news cycle, regularly attending official White House press briefings where he met Karine Jean-Pierre (a former Columbia SIPA professor!) and bonded with her over NYC life, supporting CBS reporters with research needs, and creating weekly write-ups for the CBS News podcast The Takeout. Conlon also successfully pitched and penned articles on the fight for LGBTQ rights in Romania and an initiative from the Department of Energy supporting the development of ground-breaking technologies to make buildings more environmentally friendly.
His experience at CBS was a huge professional opportunity and empowered Conlon to hone his ability to tailor his writing to an organization’s specific approach. “What journalism has taught me is that each outlet has a different way of communicating with its audience, a unique style through which to articulate and relay information to their own group of viewers,” Conlon said. “For me, this has emphasized that one must work to fully understand others as people first if you wish to truly reach them.”
While at GS, Conlon has continued to exercise his journalistic muscles with internships at New York Post news last summer, with CNN working on Fareed Zakaria GPS in fall 2021, and right before landing at CBS, at the think tank ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation)—all organizations with markedly different content and tones. “Because audiences vary from outlet to outlet, I’ve learned that detecting what is newsworthy is an ever-changing process,” Conlon shared, citing the opportunities to further develop that skill as one of the most challenging but valuable part of his internship experiences.
Conlon’s CBS experience also fed into valuable personal growth. “I tend to be very self-critical, and I think much of that comes from being a competitive figure skater for 12 years,” he said. “But my biggest takeaway from the internship is to learn to be fully present, not just when it comes to working in an intimidating, grand space such as the White House, but also when it comes to one’s growth in performance. At the end of the day, I believe it’s about practicing to embrace the fact that even though I'm a student and in a place in my life where society dictates I should be constantly making mistakes, I’m always going to be learning.”
As an example, Conlon cited teaching himself to receive constructive criticism “and instead of taking it as ‘you have to do better, you’re doing a terrible job,’ using it rather to simply acknowledge that these are the areas where I could grow not only as a journalist but as a person.”
“Don’t fixate on picking and choosing opportunities based on whether you’re over- or underqualified, but do pick and choose when it comes to whether such opportunities actually fit your interests. Essentially, be strategic about how and when you choose to put yourself out there."
Balancing the pursuit of professional excellence with the cultivation of a healthy, growth-oriented mindset, two seemingly separate goals that actually massively benefit each other, is an approach Conlon applies to his whole GS experience. As a GS student, Conlon is enthusiastic and proactive about taking advantage of all the opportunities available to him, balancing his studies as a political science major with numerous internships and being part of the Columbia Spectator’s Opinion section. At the same time, Conlon’s advice for his fellow GSers is to go for any opportunity that interests them, but don’t feel pressured to say yes to everything. “Don’t fixate on picking and choosing opportunities based on whether you’re over- or underqualified,” he said, “but do pick and choose when it comes to whether such opportunities actually fit your interests. Essentially, be strategic about how and when you choose to put yourself out there.”
While the speed of the newsroom is thrilling, Conlon shared that he’s also focusing on moving forward and advancing his career in a decidedly un-rushed way. “I like to remind myself that there’s always time,” he said, “so I’m just taking my career as a journey. There’s no set end-date to get any job you’ve been dreaming about, you know?”
Conlon’s own story, a full-circle path that is bringing him closer to fulfilling his childhood aspirations, alongside the paths of countless other GSers, are proof that Conlon has a good point: Much of the fun comes from the journey itself, and for those who are willing to embrace the ride, there’s no due date or final deadline for realizing your goals.