Our summer intern, rising New Canaan High School senior Valentina Baldini, starts this week.
Valentina Baldini. Credit: Michael Dinan
Sponsored for the second straight summer by Karp Associates, the NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program sees developing journalists write a wide variety of community news stories for the site. Her debut article is about a new pilates studio coming to Elm Street.
Joining Baldini as an intern this summer is Donovan West, a 2025 NCHS graduate whose byline is already familiar to our readers as a longtime contributor and recent high school Senior Internship Program participant.
“We look forward to supporting local journalism,” Karp Associates Founder and President Arnold Karp said.
Here’s a quick introduction to Baldini.
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New Canaanite: Tell us about your interest in journalism. Where did it start? What has your experience been like at the high school?
Valentina Baldini: I started as a sophomore. I was thinking of starting as a freshman at the school, but I just ended up taking art classes, STEM. So sophomore year I joined the school newspaper, and since then I’ve just grown with the subject and writing and I was able to become a section editor this year—the arts and tech section editor. So I’ve been writing stuff on school plays, clubs, art shows. Then I started to get more interested in actually having a bigger leadership position, because I really liked helping the new students and the reporters and also crafting ideas. Not only the writing, we also started using a podcast room. And then this [upcoming] year they gave me the editor-in-chief position, so I was really happy about that. So next year I’ll help run the class.
What is it about the journalism work that you enjoy? What brought you to it?
I definitely like writing. English is my favorite subject in school, and so I think I wanted to do something related to that. I can combine things, like I had a dance blog at one point, so I could combine things that I like out of school with the NCHS coverage. It’s a very big area—I could do media, but I could also write and edit. There’s just so much to it. It’s interesting.
What are you looking forward to about the summer internship?
It’s my first real job and I’m excited to write stories about the wider community. Our paper is focused all on school stuff and students. This will be the first time I can write for the town and actually help the community and I’m really excited for that.
What are some of the things you’ve learned under Mr. [Mike] McAteer and Mr. [Roman] Cebulski that you feel like are going to be useful to you?
They definitely have shown me the importance of creating relationships with the students and the teachers and that it really helps you. Communication skills. Also it’s not a class where you can just do whatever you want, it’s a real class where you build skills.
People will start seeing your byline this week. What is something about you—doesn’t have to be related to journalism—that you want people to know about you as a person.
I’m a competitive dancer and this will be, I think, my sixth year with the New Canaan Dance Academy company. So that’s definitely a very big part of my life. I also help run a tutoring business.
I can’t wait to read your pieces Valentina. I know you will bring an interesting fresh perspective and our family are already big fans of yours