MyRye.com welcomes college and high school interns from the City of Rye throughout the year. One of our interns in the summer of 2025 was Claire Curran, currently a senior at Rye High School. She completed this Q&A interview with us at the conclusion of her internship.
You can read interviews with various MyRye.com interns. If you have an interest in writing, editing, photography or marketing, please apply to our internship program. We are currently accepting applications for summer 2026.
Your Name: Claire Curran
Your Title: MyRye.com intern
MyRye.com: Describe yourself in one word: Curious
What appealed to you about local journalism and the MyRye.com internship?
Curran: I like to write, and I was interested in MyRye.com because it offered a hands-on journalism experience. The nice thing about local journalism is that all of the issues you end up covering are relevant to you and your life. It makes every event/problem much more engaging.
Describe a typical day during your internship.
Curran: I work as a camp counselor during the day, so I usually start work for MyRye.com around 3:20. I like to go into town right after camp to ask local restaurants to participate in our Q & A series. I’ll occasionally visit cafes and breakfast spots before camp, but most of the time I go in the afternoon. I try to hit one to three before I drive home to make the daily standup meeting at 4. Usually the meeting is online, so I can start emailing the restaurants I visited right after it finishes.
Tell us about one or two of your assignments.
Curran: My main job with MyRye.com was to ask restaurants around town to participate in our online Q & A series, and my favorite part of my assignments was getting to visit new restaurants. One of the nice things about working with local eateries is that it gives you an excuse to go into places you haven’t been in or don’t have time to visit.
What happens at the daily stand-up meeting?
Curran: Usually before the meeting really begins, Jay (who manages the program) and whoever joins early will discuss a piece of local news Jay has just heard about. When the meeting starts, each intern takes a turn speaking about the work they’ve done that day and asks Jay or Beatrice (who’s the head of the interns) any questions they might have.
The MyRye.com interns heard from various guest speakers, all with connections to local media. What were three of the more interesting things you learned?
Curran:
- Todd Smith explained that his old job with the magazine Outdoor Life allowed him to explore nature around the world while simultaneously getting paid to be a writer, which I thought was really cool. I’ve always loved both outdoor travel and writing, and I had never really thought that there was a profession where I could combine both.
- Randall Rothenberg worked as a journalist before going back to college to get a degree in law, and he said that his training as a journalist allowed him to avoid a lot of the intense study sessions his classmates did (all nighters, for example) because he was able to focus more directly on the key facts of each lesson.
- Ethan Sears, who works as a sports writer with the New York Post, said that if you wanted to be a good sports journalist, you could never get too invested in any of the teams you covered– if you’re a journalist for a team, you can’t be a fan.
Where are you headed to college?
Curran: I’m going into my senior year of high school, so I’m not totally sure what college I’ll go to yet. I’m excited for what the future brings, though!
Do you plan to study writing, English or journalism as part of your academic and extracurricular activities?
Curran: Yes, definitely. I’m looking forward to my senior year as a club officer for Zephyr, Rye High School’s art and literature club, and Garnet and Black, our school newspaper. In the classroom, I plan on taking AP Lit in addition to Rhetoric, our speech and debate class. In college, I hope to be a double major in English and political science. I’m also interested in participating in the school paper wherever I end up.
