{"id":60442,"date":"2012-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-student-finds-his-way-with-al-jazeera-internship\/"},"modified":"2012-10-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T00:00:00","slug":"uri-student-finds-his-way-with-al-jazeera-internship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/10\/uri-student-finds-his-way-with-al-jazeera-internship\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 student finds his way with Al Jazeera internship"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKingston, Oct.5, 2012 \u2013 Eight years ago, Mark Scialla was a 10th grade dropout hanging out with drug dealers and other teenagers whose idea of a good time was drinking on school nights.<\/p>\n


\nNow he\u2019s an aspiring foreign correspondent, thanks to an internship last summer in Washington with Al Jazeera, the international news network that covers the Middle East and the world.<\/p>\n


\n No, Scialla is not Arabic, and he isn\u2019t majoring in Islamic studies at 溏心vlog免费B站, where he\u2019s a 25-year-old senior. Scialla sought out Al Jazeera for one reason: He believes it\u2019s one of the best news organizations on the planet.<\/p>\n


\nThere are two divisions of the network \u2014 the Arab version, which reaches about 40 million viewers, and the English program, launched in 2006 and slowly gaining a presence in the American market. The main base of both programs is in the tiny Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar.<\/p>\n


\nScialla says his experience working for the English version changed his life. Not only did he learn how to whip up a television news story, he got experience that should make him a standout in a job search.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt opened new doors and pathways,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n


\nIt\u2019s been a long journey from his tough days with gangs to a worldly newsroom in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n


\nScialla was a lackluster student at Cranston West High School, where he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. He skipped classes and even his detention.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI just didn\u2019t go to school,\u201d he says. \u201cThe teachers were good, but there wasn\u2019t much room for creativity. It was predictable, not exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAfter a fistfight and other troubles, the school essentially kicked him out. He took his exam for his general equivalency diploma, but still didn\u2019t know what to do. He ended up in Jacksonsville, Fla., and found a job shucking oysters.<\/p>\n


\nWithout the old influences, he dug deep and tried to put meaning back in his life. He took a philosophy course at a local community college. He loved it and soon found himself flipping the pages of Sartre and Nietzsche. From there, he moved on to political theory with Marx, Chomsky, and Smith.<\/p>\n


\nHis mind was full of possibilities.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen I spent time in Jacksonville, it gave me a lot of time to think,\u201d he says. \u201cI needed to realize who I wanted to be. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I had a desire, for the first time, that I wanted to make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nNine months later, he moved back to Rhode Island, fresh with ideas. He enrolled in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of Continuing Education, in Providence, and eventually transferred to the University\u2019s College of Arts and Sciences, in Kingston.<\/p>\n


\nAt first, he pursued a degree in political science, but then switched to environmental and natural resource economics and journalism, a perfect fit for a guy curious about the world. He studied how to create sustainable markets; he wrote for The Good 5\u2284 Cigar, the University\u2019s student newspaper.<\/p>\n


\nBy his junior year, he was restless \u2014 again. He thought about scrapping journalism. Why not? Newspapers were folding all over the country. The celebrity-obsessed reporting was a turnoff.

\n\u201cThen the Arab spring happened,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n


\nThe wave of protests and demonstrations throughout the Arab world in 2010 fascinated him, and he scoured news sites for information. Al Jazeera English, he says, was clearly the best. The Arab version of Al Jazeera has been criticized as anti-American propaganda; Scialla says the reporting for the English-language network is fair and honest.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cI was glued to my computer for weeks watching,\u201d he says. \u201cThey weren\u2019t afraid to do real journalism. There wasn\u2019t any sensational stuff. They tried really hard to report the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHe set his mind on getting an internship in the network\u2019s Washington bureau. It was a long shot. He had no experience, especially with a worldwide news group. Linda Lotridge Levin, a 溏心vlog免费B站 journalism professor, helped him reach someone at the station. Scialla sent his resume, but was told the position he applied for only takes graduate students.<\/p>\n


\nStill, he pressed on. One day, he got an internship application in the mail. An invitation for a phone interview followed. \u201cTell me about yourself in five minutes,\u201d the woman asked. He talked about the community garden he started in his neighborhood and his edible forest garden. A week later, the e-mail arrived.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI was elated,\u201d Scialla says.<\/p>\n


\nHis first assignment was covering a storm that devastated the Washington area. He went out in the field with a cameraman and talked to homeowners. \u201cI finally felt what it was like to be a professional journalist,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n


\nHe was pumped. He covered the National Aids Conference, where he interviewed the civil rights activist Al Sharpton. He spoke to the head of a nonprofit group about sex trafficking in Washington, and he talked to an expert about the stockpiling of chemical weapons in Syria. One day, he stood outside a Chick-fil-A restaurant to interview people about the company president\u2019s controversial comments against gay marriage.<\/p>\n


\nThose troubling days of his youth were in the past.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cAll the people at the station were more than willing to help,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were loaded with experience and advice, people well-trained in their craft.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIt was thrilling. At any given time, he would hear five languages from reporters in the newsroom \u2014 Portuguese, Italian, French, Arabic, and English. Even the interns were a diverse bunch, with some from Australia and France.<\/p>\n


\nHe never appeared on air, but he made three demo tapes and learned how the news business works on the world stage. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI felt like I was part of a larger global network,\u201d he says. \u201cIt made me feel like I was contributing to something that had global implications.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIf all goes as planned, he\u2019ll graduate in December. He\u2019s applying for a six-month internship with his old boss and hopes to return to Al Jazeera in the spring.

\nLevin says there\u2019s one word to describe her student: persistent.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cHe just kept going at it, going at it,\u201d she says. \u201cI was very impressed. He was determined, and he did it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 Marketing & Communications photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kingston, Oct.5, 2012 \u2013 Eight years ago, Mark Scialla was a 10th grade dropout hanging out with drug dealers and other teenagers whose idea of a good time was drinking on school nights. Now he\u2019s an aspiring foreign correspondent, thanks to an internship last summer in Washington with Al Jazeera, the international news network […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}