Interns assigned to cover the Legislature

OLYMPIA – Three students are covering the state Legislature in Olympia this year for the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation.

They are Sydney Brown, from Washington State University, Joseph Claypoole from the University of Washington, and Patric Haerle, also from the University of Washington.

Brown, who graduated from WSU in December, served as Editor in Chief, Managing Editor, section editor and reporter at the Daily Evergreen, the student newspaper at WSU. She’s been involved in journalism since high school.

Claypoole became interested in journalism after a couple years at the University of Washington and was a writer for the The Daily, the UW student newspaper. He also was a co-host of Husky Dash, a live PAC-12 football commentary show. He hopes to eventually work in New York or Washington D.C.

Haerle also was a writer for The Daily at the UW, participating last summer in the Communication Department’s Election Reporting Project. Last fall, he was a beat writer covering politics for The Daily’s news section.

As participants in the legislative intern program, the students become members of the Washington State press corps and are guided by professional editors with WNPA and their university mentors. The stories they write are distributed to WNPA member newspapers across the state and published on the Washington State Journal, a nonprofit news website operated by the WNPA Foundation (wastatejournal.org).

– WNPA Foundation internships are funded by generous donations from supporters and by an endowment fund established over several decades by community newspaper publishers.