Tahlia Scherer, a rising senior at New Canaan High School, starts this week as a reporter working for NewCanaanite.com in its Summer Internship Program. Here’s a Q&A with Scherer on her first day. This year’s Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates.
New Canaanite: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your interest in journalism generally.
Tahlia Scherer: I’m a rising senior at New Canaan High School. I started taking journalism beginning my junior year of high school, and I got into it because I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always loved writing. I love creative writing. I loved writing poetry for a while. I started submitting to contests and then eventually I got into journalism class and I realized that there’s this whole other side to writing. And the class really showed me that journalism and writing can be really collaborative, and you can work with other people.
Tell us a little bit about your background, because I know you didn’t come to New Canaan until you were a freshman.
I was born in New York, and I lived in Scarsdale, N.Y. for about seven years. And then my family moved to a suburb of Chicago, which is Winnetka, Illinois. And I lived there for another seven years. I don’t know if people know this, but it’s where ‘Home Alone’ was filmed.
Looks like a lovely town from the movie.
Yes. That’s where it’s filmed. And then I moved here beginning of my freshman year of high school.
Talk about your experience in journalism at the high school. You’re o=ne of the editors of the Courant?
Yes. I started out as the blogs editor, at the very bottom of the pyramid, and then I worked my way up to features editor. And then this year I became one of the editors-in-chief. I’ve been in the class for n two years now. I really like it. It’s really fun. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve worked with a lot of people that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise worked with if I wasn’t in the class.
Tell me about what you are hoping for or looking forward to in the summer internship.
I’m looking forward to writing a lot of pieces in a real journalism context. And I also want to learn how to write a lot of pieces in a short amount of time, because in journalism at The Courant, we don’t write that many pieces. We do at most five cycles a year. I want to learn to write a lot more per day.
This is going to be an introduction to the daily news grind, as we call it. You just have to get out of your own way, get the articles out there and forget about things quickly. Part of this job is going to be interviewing people in a formal setting where you’ve arranged an interview. Or it could be man-on-the-street interviews or writing about people who are participating in public meetings. Our readers will come to recognize your byline. We’ve already learned a lot about you and your background. What are some of the things you’re interested in other than journalism and writing?
I really love to read in my free time. I haven’t done it so much this year because I’ve had a lot of school work. But I do like to read in my free time. I also love watching movies. I’m really into movies. There was a time where I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter.
What shows and movies?
I’m watching ‘Bridgerton.’ For a while, one of my favorite Christmas movies was ‘Home Alone’. I think that has to do with living there. And there’s all the John Hughes movies. They’re all centered around high school—the high school that I was supposed to go to was what ‘Mean Girls’ is based off of.
Just as well you escaped to New Canaan.
And I really like ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’ That’s Chicago, too.
Feels like you should have been born in 1975, too, based on your tastes.
I like the older movies.