Don’t be intimidated. Be Prepared: A Journalism Junior’s Experience Working for NBC During the 2024 Paralympics

By Liana Handler, Journalism junior

In August 2024, 15 University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications students traveled to Paris to cover the 2024 Paralympic Games. Eight were selected as paid interns for NBC Sports. The group was part of a semester-long study-aboard program that also includes programs in Spain and Ireland.

Feeling overwhelmed in a newsroom is easy, particularly if you’ve never been a journalist. When I first entered the Innovation News Center (INC) at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC), I knew I had chosen the right major. I also felt vastly underprepared because I had never taken journalism classes in high school.

While I have since met some of my closest friends in the newsroom, I still felt like I had a chip on my shoulder as recently as this past summer semester. I was constantly trying to prove that I deserved to be called a journalist. Maybe if I produce an audio segment that is played during WUFT’s Morning Edition, then I’ll be a reporter. Or maybe if my story is included in The Point newsletter, I’ll finally earn the title.

I spent hours rewriting my stories, but the “imposter syndrome” feelings remained.

It took traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris and walking into Stade de France – an 80,000-seat multi-sport stadium which hosted para athletics competitions – for me to finally feel like a reporter.

I worked for NBC as a runner during the 2024 Paralympics. The job description was pretty straightforward: take water, food or anything else the production team needed to the stadium and make sure the broadcast runs smoothly.

I woke up every morning around 6:30 a.m., picked up a croissant and a cup of tea, and took the nearest train to the International Broadcast Center (IBC) in a suburb outside of Paris. In NBC’s temporary offices in the IBC, I printed and laminated a copy of the day’s Team USA athlete’s headshots. And only after I arrived at the venue, my morning – and the chaos that comes with covering the most premier athletics competitions – officially started.

Running up and down the stairs separating the mixed zone from the seats, I delivered batteries to camera operators and start lists to my producer. I researched athletes, pulling their lane and heat information. I texted the crew in charge of technology and arranged times to pick up and drop off headsets.

Every day, I interacted with new people. Each time I answered the same set of questions: Yes, I love Paris. I love the food here, and the metro is convenient. I’m from Florida, a state in the United States (Have you heard of Disney World?). I constantly had to repeat the same refrain: I’m a student-journalist. Before I knew it, I was telling paralympic volunteers and the ground transportation drivers about the sports stories I had written.

When my NBC boss asked what type of stories I wanted to cover after graduation, I told him about the girls’ baseball story that I wrote for the Tampa Bay Times with the help of professors at UFCJC.

On another day, I shrugged after my colleagues joked about the long hours traveling on the Paris metro. It was nothing compared to covering a multiday murder trial for WUFT, I  said.

When asked about my experience with track and field events, I referred people to my stories published in The Independent Florida Alligator.

Through these interactions, I slowly started to realize that I have been a reporter for months. I felt calm about my career path for the first time since I started my first class at UFCJC. I didn’t feel as if I needed to prove why I belonged in a press box or at a postgame presser.

Equally as important, my crew, a group of four strangers that had known each other less than a week, trusted me. Their unwavering confidence in my abilities forced me to reexamine the way I looked at my experiences at UF. And, upon further inspection, I decided I was a reporter.

The other big lesson from my experiences in Paris is less personal, more practical: Don’t be intimidated. Be prepared.

One day at Stade de France, my producer poked her eye with a mascara wand and needed me to run to the pharmacy to pick up eye drops while we waited for the day’s events to end.

I couldn’t help but feel intimidated. Outside of Paris, few French residents speak English fluently, and I could only speak enough French to tell people I couldn’t speak the language. I didn’t know the brands of medication that were common in the country, and I didn’t know if the small pharmacy would even have the product.

So, I Googled a picture of the packaging and the exact type of droplets I wanted. I figured that maybe if I showed someone the product I needed, they could tell me if it was in stock. When I entered the store, I showed it to an incredibly patient pharmacist while explaining my co-worker had scratched her eye and needed something to flush it. The worker nodded and brought me the exact product I was looking for from the multi-tiered shelf of medication behind the counter.

A couple of euros later, my producer was able to get back to the action. By the end of the day’s events, I had also arranged transportation for her to meet with NBC’s medical team (luckily, nothing was severely wrong).

In addition, some of my favorite experiences in Paris occurred right in front of me, and I had my phone camera ready to capture the moment:

• USA Paralympian Ezra Frech won gold in the Men’s High Jump – T63, and, during his interview with NBC, his coach and fellow Paralympian Rodrick Townsend tackled him in a hug.
• Team USA wife-husband duo Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall celebrated with lots of hugs and large smiles after Hunter, a 400m-T62 sprinter, won his first gold in the Paralympics. Tara won gold in the long jump competition.
• Team Cuba’s Omara Durand Elías won three gold medals across her three events for the third consecutive time as a Paralympian.

As I was leaving the Closing Ceremony and Stade de France for the last time, a bittersweet feeling washed over me. I was incredibly sad to leave behind my coworkers and crew who treated me with kindness and empathy. But I was proud because I had a small role in producing a broadcast for a national outlet about the largest international track and field competition. I felt like I earned the title of being a journalist, and I started to dream about my next career goal: covering the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles.

Posted: September 30, 2024
Category: College News, Profiles
Tagged as: Liana Handler, NBC, Paralympics