About My Practicum
For my practicum, I had an internship with Representative Tom Malinowski’s 2022 re-election campaign. I worked on his 2020 campaign as a field intern this past Summer and returned at the beginning of the semester as a finance team intern. In this role, I researched campaign donors and wrote biographies for Representative Malinowski and his finance director, Brooke Zindulka. For this research, I used the Federal Election Commission Database to look at donor history and various search engines and social media sites to find more information on campaign donors. Working with other finance interns, we compiled our research into a spreadsheet.
Over the semester, my responsibilities grew to encompass media based work and help connect donors to the work Representative Malinowski is doing on Capitol Hill. One aspect of the campaign I began to work on was the biweekly email sent to Rep. Malinowski’s donors. Every day, I compiled the local and national TV, radio, and print press of Representative Malinowski that I received from his D.C. office into a document. I read or watched each piece of news to find excerpts that our donor base could read. From there, I flagged the news clips I thought were important for donors to have easy access to in order to showcase Rep. Malinowski’s work. I then met with my supervisor and the finance director, Brooke, to go over the selected clips from the past two weeks. Afterwards, I drafted copy for the email, formatted it, and inputted all the information into NGP VAN—the database Democratic campaigns use for fundraising, compliance, field, organizing, digital, and social networking work. Another responsibility I took on was uploading all of Rep. Malinowski’s TV press clips from the D.C. office YouTube channel to the campaign’s YouTube channel.
I Found My Practicum...
I found my current internship through prior experience working on Rep. Malinowski’s 2020 re-election campaign. Over the summer, I was a field intern on the campaign and spent around fifteen hours a week making cold calls to voters and providing voters with information on how to vote by mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. As I was looking for an internship for my scholars colloquium, I received an email from Brooke, the campaign’s finance director, as she was looking for interns to stay on and help out with various projects over the next few months.
My advice for future Media Scholars on finding a practicum site would be to start with what you know. If you have any prior experience in an area you are interested in, never hesitate to reach out to the people who work there! Even if you are started from scratch, cold emailing people you find online and on a platform like Linkedin is something that truly opens the door to opportunities. My advice is to filter your search to find UMD alum that work at companies or organizations that you are interested in and then reach out to them! I have found that UMD alum are always happy to help a fellow Terp!
I Have Learned...
I have learned so much about how campaign finance intersects with news and how a campaign can use media to bring money in for their candidate. Through the hundreds of news clips I have read and the many emails I have drafted, I have come to understand how to maximize donor participation. The emails I have written have helped me find my tone of voice when writing to donors and understanding what content donors should be seeing on a bi-weekly basis. Additionally, I have learned how to use the Federal Election Commission’s database to find donors and NGP VAN, the database used by democratic campaigns. I have also sharpened my research skills by working on donor biographies and working on Excel.
My Work
I have grown as a person and a professional throughout my internship with Malinowski for Congress. I have improved my writing and research skills, while learning how campaign finance engagement works. I have chosen to include my most recent email that I sent to our donors to show how important the language you use is and what news clips portray the important work Rep. Malinowski is doing on the Hill. This finished product encompasses two weeks of analyzing news and using our NGP database to format and schedule the finished email release. I have also included a picture of what my daily press document includes. It is currently over 100 pages of news that has been compiled! My reading and researching skills have sharpened because I am constantly looking at the news from a new angle. As a person, I have grown through connecting with voters from across New Jersey Congressional District 7. The time I spent talking to voters and helping them vote during the pandemic is a job that has made the most astonishing impact. From helping people fill out vote by mail forms to helping host phone banks and zoom information sessions, all of the campaign's hard work was worth it when Rep. Malinowski and President Biden won!
