RAI Corporation Internship Program

By Janet Lawrence

RAI’s New York office, located in the AT&T building at 32 Avenue of the Americas, is a brick, art deco high rise; its towering antenna is visible throughout Soho. Stepping onto the 25th floor, you are greeted by Italian-American receptionists, the gatekeepers to this island within an island. From here, America falls away and Italy begins.

I pursued an internship at RAI because I wanted to spend the summer speaking my second language while fulfilling the summer internship requirement for my masters in journalism. As an intern at RAI, I have been working in the news production department. Until a week ago I assisted Gerardo Greco, the foreign correspondent for TG2, helping produce one or two packages per day. The stories focus on American culture--stories that portray peculiarities and peccadilloes particular to America. I’ve been told that TG2’s demographic is a slightly younger crowd, interested in entertaining stories, rather than hard news—they adore these color stories from the United States. The deadline for each day’s story is 2:30 PM EST, as TG2 airs at 8:30 PM Italian time.

One of these peculiarities was the story on Debrahlee Lorenzana, the New York banker who alleges she was fired for her curvaceous appearance and revealing clothing. For the story, I did research, accompanied Greco to the Williamsburg Chase branch where Lorenzana works, conducted man-on-the-street interviews, and assisted writing the script. For Italians, dressing in a provocative manner is hardly newsworthy—and it is certainly not a punishable offense, so it was the responsibility of the foreign correspondent and the production team to provide an Italian audience with extra information that might seem obvious or redundant for Americans. For this piece, and for most pieces, as the resident American, Greco called upon me to contextualize these peculiarities. And this is the job I most enjoy at RAI—decoding aspects of American culture for an international audience. The story then loses its New York Post-quality sensationalist shine and unpacks the interests and concerns of a country in a post-feminist society. It becomes a story that demands an understanding of women’s liberation, sexual harassment in the workplace, the American obsession with lawsuits, the rise and fall of political correctness, etc. Thinking about these things while I assist the journalist and producers to compose the piece—and having my ideas included in the script-- is the most rewarding part of the experience.

In the last week, I’ve been working with Giulio Borrelli and I certainly look forward to spending this final month with his production team to experience their unique way of developing a story. With the explosion of the exposed Russian spy ring on the American imagination, we scrambled to keep Italians updated with the latest, from Anna Chapman’s sexy-spy mystique to the deportation of the group back to Russia. We delved into the depths of Russian spy movies to collect images to accompany his scripts, rich with allusions to James Bond thrillers and Cold War dramas.

As for what I will take with me, it has certainly been instructive on how il mondo lavorativo works in Italy. From the language to the friendly staff to the espresso breaks, I feel as though I am in the bel paese. As far as gaining an understanding of how American broadcast news works, I’m not sure that my experiences will translate. But I don’t mind. I got an incredible international experience this summer without having to find a subletter, and for that, I’m grateful.

"From their experience or from the recorded experience of others, men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn"

~Aldous Huxley

Posted by: Tansy

Dear Interns,

congratulations! You've been selected to live the ultimate experience in the Big Apple!

Now jump on the "bruco-mela" and get ready to:

- have chinese, japanese, thai, ethiopian, armenian, vietnamese, mexican, italian, moroccan, french, spanish, etc, food at every hour

- have a burger at Corner Bistro

- buy a hair straightener at 3.43 am

- have a BBQ on a roof top

- watch the sunset on the boat on the W26th

- party on Mondays

- enjoy coffees on the RAI terrace

- gain 10 pounds in 2 months

- see the concert you've always dreamt of

- go to work with a Starbucks hot coffee

- do the laundry once a month

- sleep 4 hrs per night and 24 on the w-e

- make friends all over the world

- be broke after the first month's rent

- get lost in the subway

- have the time of your life

...AND, most importantly,

- meet amazing people at RAI Corp.

Enjoy your ride...and good luck!

Valentina

Dear New Interns,

Arrived at JFK, drop your luggage at the hotel and get ready to live three really important months. It'll be a unique and exciting educational experience working alongside leading professionists. Feel lucky, you are, and try to learn as much as possible by everyone. And in the evening the magic and charm of New York will surely kidnap you.

And remember:

- If you have already found a home, go and see it live before paying.

- To call Italy get a Skype monthly subscription and buy a prepaid AT&T Unlimited Talk & Text Sim card.

- Visit the Met and MOMA at least 2 times.

- Enjoy the most 'can.

Thank you all and good job.

Lorenzo

MADE IN ITALY

An Italian man on the throne of Madison Square Garden. Loved, respected and praised by the local public. I am very proud to be Italian and to be represented by the great athlete Danilo Gallinari.

My New York experience expresses this feeling. I feel at home though I am abroad because most things here are “made in Italy”. Everything Italy produces is exported to the United States. Therefore, here in New York, the Italians are proud to be Italians.

Before leaving a friend of mine said to me: “the first days will be the hardest, you will feel alone, you will go around ny without any destination…but when they end, you will regret them!”

In fact, after a few days, you get used to the city and everything becomes natural and ordinary, even though you live in the city that never sleeps.

However, the “made in Italy” is always appreciated, admired and extremely expensive…it maks us prouder of being Italians…here at RAI Corporation, you feel at home.

It’s arrogant, overimposing and simply marvelous and I just can’t take my eyes off of it. I look out the window and I still can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s a poster right? Is it real or am I dreaming? As I look out, I see the Empire State Building surrounded by other skyscrapers, like a king in his royal court. It stands proud in the middle of Manhattan as if it’s saying “All you masses, kneel before me!”. And we all comply. And I must admit that it is one of the most obvious symbols of the Big Apple. But after almost two months here, I can say with certainty that there are so many things that remind me everyday that I’m in N.Y. Starting with the fascinating world of the subway. It is like an underworld, like a city within the city. Every time I take the L train from Williamsburg I just sit back and enjoy the show. Passing through the East Village on the way to Chelsea people from all over the world are singing, sleeping, listening to music (sometimes a little bit too loud!), reading, wearing colorful clothes and the subway is like a huge and exclusive catwalk! And let’s not forget the sweet and fluffy rats who make their homes between the platforms! Every five minutes they risk their lives because of the trains, but nobody cares! Instead when people look at the squirrels in Central Park they say “Oooo they’re soooo cute!!” when in fact they are just opportunistic! They only run towards you because they want food, not because they like you! And as we know squirrels are rats with a fluffy tail!

Something else which is typical of New York is the melting pot of smells! Sometimes when you’re on the street you smell something that is burning and just when you’re about to scream “Fire!”, you realize that it’s just the hot-dog vendor who forget something on the griddle...But if you want an indelible memory of New York you absolutely have to go to the Colgate Clock (on the Hudson river in New Jersey) as suggested by Mr Brusa (I’m not kidding!). It has the most unbelievable view of Manhattan ever! Or maybe you can come to “my” rooftop in Bushwick for a romantic sunset accompanied by a continual soundtrack of reggaeton and bachata (from the passing cars). In whichever way you decide to experience NY, just make sure you enjoy it. Savor every bite of this tasty, crunchy, juicy Big Apple!

Sara Bindi

Arriving in NYC, the first thing that surprised me, was the wide choice of possibility that the city offers. I live in Rome, but there I never saw so many different events in only one city!

Here, the mixture of cultures brought in the city so many different traditions, like the annual lunar New Year Dragon Parade. Many cultures so far between them can live together.

I’m captivated from the the architecture of the city too. In some places of the downtown area, like Greenwich Village, it’s like being in some neighborhood of London. The variety is impressive.

You can visit many museums around the city, listen to different type of music in the clubs, have a little cruise around Manhattan, try different sorts of new food. But, more than all this, the peculiarity of New York is that in every moment of the day and of the night, you can always find something opened that can be interesting. You really have the feeling that the city never sleeps!

You can feel the freedom in the liberty of expression by looking at the people walking on the street. If you go, for example, in Central Park, like I do many times, living so close this beautiful Park, you can meet every kind of people: besides americans and tourists, you can meet also jewish, arabian, south americans, chinese and, always, so many italians too.

This city is opened to new things and you can assist every day at the development of the fashion, the creation of original ideas. During the Easter`s Parade I saw the apex of the most original liberty of expressions in the people that were wearing strange hats made by themselves, in a nice game of colors!

Here we have the opportunity to join the important experience of work at the Rai Corporation to the strong experience of life, because it’s very hard to be impassive in front of a city full of so many attractions.

Elena Matteucci

I have always loved New York, since I was just 4, when I visited it for the first time.

My memory goes to the wonderful view from the top of the Twin Tower. The Twin Tower...

Now I can say with no doubt that this city deserves all the good adjectives you can imagine. Here you feel yourself at the center of the world. Here, really, “there’s nothing you can’t do”. Here you can meet all the world just in an island, Manhattan, where everybody is free to be himself, where you’re not a foreigner, you’re one of them.

Rai Corporation is like a little Italian embassy. Working here could be exciting, especially if you wanna be a journalist in the future. In this case, the production office is the right choice. I took part in the news, video and music research, then it’s interesting to assist the editing process and, of course, to follow the live broadcast.

What else? My only advice to all the next interns is: enjoy this experience as a unique opportunity in your life. Unique for the job, but also for the location. Don’t waste time, you’ll have a rest when you get back at home!

Just a message for the intern’s group, the employees, (most of them very very friendly with us) and especially to all the TG2 staff: Thanks.

Paolo

A friend recently taught me, "Is the city of Blinding Lights ", You cannot not like New York.

 I didn’t believe him, in my mind it was only a kind of somewhere, nothing more. I’m still not able to consider me really lucky to have been catapulted here.

Talking about the work experience I am really happy, it's amazing, and a thanks for this goes to Gerardo Greco, Enzo Miglino and Angela Treglia, for ever and ever. I mean for the city, New York..

 .. Lights, yes, many lights and beautiful, but before to being thrilled I’d like so much to know, this damn city. I wonder why you must say it’s wonderful just because is called New York.

If they ask you about NY .. It’s always a rhetorical question, the answer is already written as well as.. "Did you spend good holidays?.. A Merry Christmas? How is school going? Good! Very good". Obvious.

But, not having yet discovered, neither lived it, unfortunately I cannot say so much.

I can only say that I found myself one Sunday afternoon in Washington Square Park, a piano placed in the center, an artist who played pop songs using what 's my favorite musical instrument, another man behind the corner with a husky voice who sang fantastically of an old jazz song with some very young and curious spectators who were singing along... children playing politely almost silent.. I loved this ..

The same way I love and I already know I’ll miss that, since I am only a short-term news, the silence of the World Trade Center in the evening, at the end of working time, that unreal and a little touched atmosphere with the last tourists making photos, Battery Park, the sunset on Wall Street, a white and freezing Central Park.

But, I am convinced that, here, for us, there is not only the city. We have every day at our side, even though nobody really makes us feel any weight upon our shoulders, lots of professisonists, we are only interns but we feel as a part of a small world that welcomes the upteenth excited young people with little experience that are here to learn. (Wonderful). Valentina

My fellow americans, italians or wherever you come from,

Well, speaking about NYC is really a great challenge for me.

I can try but I'm sure that I'm not gonna say anything new and I'm pretty sure also that before me other interns have written about that far more eloquently than i'm equipped to do, especially my friend Andrea Alessandrini the interns CSO, Chief Stagista Officer.

So, I'm gonna do the easiest thing, change the subject and use my Arnold Schwarzenegger's english to speak about the city where i live here, Jersey City.

It's a wonderful place, I have no words to express how I love it and how I feel like I'm living in the NICEST City in the World or in Chilltown (which actually my doorman told me that it is one of the Jersey City's nicknames....the others are Jungle City and The Bullets City but i don't think i want to mention them in this post)

It's WORLDWIDE famous for 2 things, that makes me and all the others 242,389 Jersey City's citizens proud of:

- The Colgate Clock, or probably should I have to say the UNBELIEVABLE Colgate Clock.
It is an octagonal clock, The BIGGEST in the world, with a diameter of 50 feet (15.24 meter) and a minute hand weighing 2,200 pounds. It is really astonishing, a landmark of America and humanity. Every time I look at the Colgate Clock I always feel like I'm in the right place and in particular AT THE RIGHT TIME. 

Actually it's just a copy of the original one that was relocated to a Colgate factory in the middle of nowhere in Clarksville, Indiana....ask my doorman for the directions.
...but however the Jersey City's Colgate Clock is still the COPY of the BIGGEST clock in the world and then...who knows where Indiana is?

- The second thing is the FBI's ANNUAL CRIME STATISTICS, here in Jersey City are more awaited by the people then the SuperBowl or  the Academy Awards... We wait all year long to see the results of our city and it's been more than 50 years that it never disappoints us. This year for example, Jersey City was (rate per capita):

EXCELLENT in Robbery... 2.68 times more than the National Average...  The TV says that a lot of robbers are coming from all over the country to train here... My doorman said that it is going to be good for our economy, especially in these hard times, bringing a lot of new jobs.

QUITE GOOD in Murders... 1.30 times more than the National Average... My doorman was a little upset about that, because usually it's 2.20/2.50 the National Average. He wasn't able to figure out why only 42 murders in one year... He told me that probably the very cold winter with a lot of snow is the reason for this result because also the arsons were just 0.70 times more than the National Average, but I'm not really sure about that.

FAIRLY GOOD in Burglary... 1.22 more than the National Average... This really doesn't surprise me because one week ago I realized another unique thing about amazing Jersey City. I came home in the middle of the night and by mistake I put my house key in the wrong lock, in my neighbour's door. And It opened perfectly. I was scared stiff about that but my doorman told me to not be worried at all. Here in Jersey City everyone's apartment's key opens all the other houses. It's a local policy to help the economy in these hard times... One key for all the apartments actually is a great save of money... It's really a great idea. When I go back to Italy I should talk about that with Milan's mayor.

Last week I was a little shocked in the morning because while I was walking to the Subway station a little group of people was yelling and showing a lot banners... I just read one of these and I was completely surprised because it sayed "A Better Jersey City" and I can't even immagine how Jersey City could be better then it is already.

So, when I came back from RAI I told about that at my doorman and he told me...

... "Don't be worried Andrea, tomorrow you are not gonna meet them again... I promise you"

And he was right because the day after I didn't see them... Actually I never saw them again...

I want to conclude my post with a suggestions for all of you. If you are around New York in the evening don't go to the Brooklyn Bridge or to Central Park, they are overestimated. Come here in Jersey City, believe me, come in this wonderful place and sit in front of the Colgate Clock to admire how the sunset gives him a unique unbelievable dark petroleum colour.... Make sure you bring your camera.

Thank God I live here in Jersey City, where in the moring you have a problem and in the evening your doorman has solved it.   

Andrea

I still can't believe it!I'm living and working in the "out of reach" country I would have never thought to go to...America....in the city of New York! while walking in the streets with my nose to the sky I stare at the huge, high buildings that surround me and wonder whether I will ever be able to realize that I am here.I keep repeating to myself "You are in New York, can you believe it?" and New York's skyscrapers, which have been smiling down at me since I set foot in this country, answer my question. This city is gorgeous, I love it, especially at night when its lights make it even more beautiful. New York never sleeps!!! You can go shopping even at midnight and restaurants welcome you at any hour!I also adore New York's way of living. I believe no other city in the world is as open-minded as New York! Nobody judges you for your clothes, car or hairstyle, everybody follows their own personal style and is free to be whatever he/she wants to be. I think this is the coolest part of being "in a New York state of mind". New York is big and so is its way of living. I am very lucky to be here and to have this experience, so if I were you and had the opportunity to enjoy N.Y., I'd jump at it ;)

silvia

Everybody knows it, everyone keeps saying:  New York City is gigantic.

Dimes of districts, hundreds of ethnic groups, thousands of places.... millions of people.

And you feel like a little ant in a new huge world never seen before.

A world whose streets and avenues are called by numbers instead of names!

Well, actually it's quite impossibile to realize you're in the biggest city in the Earth until you're on the roof of one of its surprising skycrapers.

I've been on the Rockefeller Building and I could enjoy an idyllic sight from the 70th floor...wow!

Manhattan was at my feet, the Empire State Building was at my same level ( more or less).

I admit it: it has been one of the most exciting experiences in my whole life.

A new air to breathe, made of change and opportunities, of endless choices.

Then you can feel all New York's life while it's beating: I wondered why every white point in the dark was a story.

The brightness in the night makes you sure of your liberty. Here, everyone is free.

You, too.

Let's go. Stand on the shoulder of giants and breathe the Big Apple.

Ilenia.

I like:

- Doing my groceries at 2am

- Seeing people out at every time of the day&night

- Feeling like Blair Waldorf, Serena Van Der Woodsen, Carrie Bradshaw, Phoebe and all the characters of TV Shows and movies set in NY whenever I see a location seen on TV

- Walking through Central Park and seeing people jog in shorts when it's -2°C

- Feeling like Alice in Wonderland when I walk through Times Square

- Observing men who feel completely at ease wearing skirts, nailpolish, ballerinas.

- Going to work because everyone is so nice and we always have so much fun at lunch time

- Having to watch TV shows and writing about them

- Admiring the beautiful view from the terrace

- Making coffee at the coffee machine in the kitchen and having a hard time drinking it

- Drinking from the "Rai corporation" glass

I don't like:

- Having to go back home in a couple of months time

Giulia

Hi guys!

my name is Andrea Alessandrini, I'm 23 and I come from Rimini, Italy.

Currently, I'm doing a three month internship in the accounting, finance and Internal Control department.

It's definitely been a great experience, I have learnt a lot thanks to people who work here.

My tutor and collegues have always been available and patient with me. Because of all the people that work at Rai Corporation it is a very pleasant environment to be in.

Furthermore, It's a wonderful city that offers a lot of opportunities; you can do whatever you want any time (obviously only legal behavior!!!). Even on monday night, clubs are packed.

In addition to the night life, there are also a lot of museum, concerts, stores...3 month aren't enough to explore all the city.

I would especially recommend that you visit the Metropolitan Museum ( is the most beautiful museum I have ever seen!), the Chrysler and Empire State Building (wich are extremely beautiful at night).

I would heartily recommend this experience, which will help you to grow in both personal and professional aspects.

Andrea Alessandrini

The thing that impressed me since my arrival in New York is recycling.

If you don’t recycle, you are fined. Everything is so meticulous! Almost perfect.

However, everything changes when I go to the supermarket. They give you a lot of plastic and paper bags. Employers fill them only half full. Is it because they may

break? I don’t think so. I can understand cheap supermarkets, but the strange thing is that you are given a lot of plastic bags even for organic and biological food.

Ironically it can be read on the bags: "Reuse". It seems that they don’t know that using a lot of paper bags means to produce a lot of waste, even if it is better for the environment.

Laura