For award-winning journalist Carol Marin and producer Don Moseley, co-founders of the DePaul Documentary Project (DDP), proof of their impact on students was delivered to their doorstep.

Ben Welsh, who interned with DDP before graduating from the College of Communication in 2004, mailed to Marin and Moseley his Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for excellence in Web reporting along with his thanks.

Welsh, who works for the Los Angeles Times, said his internship with the nationally prominent mentors taught him that journalism “could be rewarding and fun, something I could actually do.”

Through DDP internships, Marin and Moseley teach DePaul communication students  how to research and put together news stories for a variety of media platforms that Marin is associated with, including WMAQ-Channel 5, WTTW-Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight” and the Chicago Sun-Times.

“There is no such thing as print journalism anymore; there is no such thing as television anymore. If you are going to do one, you are going to do all,” Marin said. “Our students can play into all those platforms. They have print experience, television experience and, ultimately, long-form documentary experience.”

The program gives students frontline opportunities to work on stories, rather than tasks such as logging tapes or writing transcripts. “We really try to get them involved in the editorial aspect of it, rather than the secretarial,” Moseley said.

The day before the International Olympic Committee chose the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, interns Heidi Wigdahl, Chelsea Stevens and Ryan Fitzpatrick were “cramming” to learn as much about the subject as possible to provide background information for Marin as she discussed the matter on WMAQ.

“The fact that we have such responsibility makes us all work harder and work to a higher degree because we don’t want to mess up,” Stevens said.

The internship program has proven beneficial to both the students and their mentors.

“It helps when students come in because they see things differently. It pushes our own assumptions of so many things,” Marin said.

“It’s really nice for Heidi and me being interested in broadcast journalism to have Carol and Don as a resource to critique us and help us grow and help us develop our broadcast voices,” Stevens said.

Fitzpatrick, who is interested in communication and film, said the internship has many indirect benefits as well. His work habits have improved “dramatically,” and he is more goal-oriented. “It’s definitely shaping my interests.”

Wigdahl said DDP has opened her eyes to the work and in-depth research that goes into telling a story. She currently is working on a story about how the statewide smoking ban has led to decreased revenue from riverboat casinos and how that has in turn led to a drop in funding for charitable programs, such as Catholic Charities and Stepping Stones. Fitzpatrick is working on a story on post-traumatic stress disorder among military veterans and incapacitation pay from employers. Stevens is looking at towns that have opted out of allowing video gambling, which is supposed to help fund myriad public projects.

When Fitzpatrick and Stevens complete their internships, DDP will have 27 “graduates,” 17 of whom are working in media in one form or another, Marin said. On the other hand, one student was “so horrified by the pressures of media that he went into library science.”

Marin, political editor for WMAQ-Channel 5, Chicago Sun-Times columnist and a host of WTTW-Channel 11’s “Chicago Tonight,” and Moseley, a producer for WMAQ-Channel 5, joined with DePaul in 2003 to create DDP. Based at DePaul’s Lincoln Park Campus, the program draws its interns from the College of Communication’s student body.

Offered only to juniors and seniors, the internships last for two quarters. While interning, students do research and experience the media on multiple platforms, including “running and gunning with us on stories,” Marin said. Interns also receive a crash course in civics, including how to ask questions, research matters and file Freedom of Information Act requests.   

“The most harrowing thing for them in the beginning is they are forced to critique my two columns in the Sun-Times every week,” Marin said. “And there are a couple rules here. One is they have to learn how to use the phone, and they have to abandon student language. It’s time to talk like an adult.

“They know how to Google, but that’s different than doing deeper research and getting Freedom of Information requests or actually talking to human beings,” Marin said. “And when you ask for something, you’ve got to be very careful about how you ask for it so they can’t wiggle through your words” to avoid providing the information.

“What you really see are the tensions that exist in a newsroom because it isn’t pretty a lot of the time,” Marin said. “Ryan’s eyes lit up when he was in the control room one day and all hell broke loose. And he came out of there and said, ‘That was wonderful!’ It really is how the sausage is made.”