Many readers will recognize the name of our New Canaan High School senior intern, Valentina Baldini, from last summer.
Our 2025 intern under a summer program generously sponsored by New Canaan’s Karp Associates, Baldini returns for the next month—her final weeks at NCHS—under the school’s hugely popular Senior Internship Program, or “SIP.”
The program starts May 19, when Baldini will attend a Board of Selectmen meeting at Town Hall (look to Wednesday’s newsletter for her coverage).
We met with Baldini on Monday afternoon in New Canaan Library’s café to talk about the SIP internship.
Here’s a transcription of our conversation.
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For readers who may have missed our intro last year, please tell us a little about yourself. What are some things you’d like our readers to know about you?
Valentina Baldini: I am about to graduate from New Canaan High School, and I’m going to be a freshman at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. Currently I dance and I do journalism, so I’m going to be majoring in both of those. I do dance in all styles, and I’ll obviously be continuing in college. This year I was the editor-in-chief of my school paper, The Courant, so I’m just going tp continue pursuing both of those next year.
How are you feeling as your senior year at NCHS winds down?
I’m excited. I’m feeling ready for college. It’s been a long process, but I’m excited to continue doing everything I love in LA and at LMU.
Tell us about your experience as an editor at the NCHS paper, The Courant. What’s your advice to an incoming student who’s interested in writing for the high school paper?
It’s been a wonderful experience. I started sophomore year, and I didn’t really know anything about journalism going into the class, and I learned a lot about social media and writing. I covered lots of journalistic stuff that I didn’t used to know. It was great. Some advice I would give for people who are interested in the class or in journalism in general is to not be afraid of learning different media, because journalism isn’t just writing. It’s a lot of things, like video stories, podcasts, social media. Just be open-minded.
Tell us more about your plans for next year. What made Loyola Marymount a good fit for you?
First of all, I love Los Angeles, and I was just kind of drawn to everything about that and the school and the campus. And then it was also very good for both my majors, dance and journalism. I have some friends who dance with me at my studio in New Canaan who are there currently. I was just drawn to it.
What are you most looking forward to about this next month interning at the New Canaanite?
I’m excited to learn more about the town. Last summer when I did this internship, I didn’t even know about the Board of Selectmen meetings and about all the stuff going on in town, so it’s just exciting to do that and meet new people and get to talk to them. It’s cool.
What types of stories do you like to write? What do you like to cover?
My favorite stories that I got to write last year were the ones about the restaurant openings. Those ones were fun because I got to go in and talk to them about that. There was this one I did about the gardens at the cemetery, and I got to interview a really cool lady. In general, I found those ones the most interesting.