Ben Kudria » Weblog

I spent this summer programming for the New York Times. The experience was valuable in quite a number of ways, and I really enjoyed myself. Here’s how it went down.

Sometime in March, I saw a post on the Times’ Open Blog, a blog dedicated to technical topics, and written by developers - not suits. The post I noticed explained how the development group in the Times was looking for several technical interns for the summer. I decided to apply, and I emailed the provided address with my resume and some more information.

Seeing as how I’m going to be working for the Times this summer, I’ve put in a bit of thinking about the role of news, newspapers, and journalism in today’s hyperconnected world. The death of paper newsletters has been predicted for a while now, but strangely enough, they are still around. Wired Magazine, in their 15-year anniversary retrospect, highlighted one of their unfulfilled visions: “The Death of Media”. Wired called for the death of “Old Media” over and over again, but Old Media is still around, and rumors of their death are exaggerated…for now.

Whew! My final exam (Algorithms) is done, and the semester is over! It was lots of fun, (except for Physics) and lots of work (mostly, Physics), and I’m glad it’s over. Next semester promises to be lots of fun: highlights include Artificial Intelligence, Communication and Networks, and Software Engineering. That last one might be interesting. While I’ll have to draw endless UML diagrams, the Professor will also let use something other than Java (finally!) to write our web app, so I plan on using the opportunity to learn Ruby on Rails. About time. Anyway, looking forward to next semester, but until then, I have the whole summer.

So, a while back, I applied to a couple of places, in search of a summer internship. I spoke with VMWare, Google, The New York Times, and a few lesser-known places. I applied to the Times’ Summer Internship Program, and after a great interview, I accepted - dropping midway out of the VMWare interview, and turning Google away outright (I might have went to Google if they hadn’t lost my first application, and the second later offer was as attractive as the first). So, this June and July I’ll be working with some talented people on the Platforms team for NYTimes.com, working on … something. They haven’t told me what, exactly, yet. But, I’m convinced it’ll be fun. As a perk, they are even paying for a place for me on Manhattan, in some NYU dorms. Future things I’m allowed to reveal about the internship and The Times will be found on the NYTimes topic page.