COLLEGE PARK — The Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism has selected its 2024 class of interns who will spend the summer working at local news outlets.
Eight Merrill College students were chosen to participate in the internship program, which serves the LNN’s mission to strengthen local news coverage while providing students with invaluable experience in local news reporting.
Six students will be interning at Maryland news outlets, one will be interning at a local news outlet in Pittsburgh and one will be interning at Washington Business Journal.
The cohort includes (internship outlets are in parentheses): Lizzy Alspach ’26 (The Baltimore Sun), Isabella Carrero-Baptista ’26 (The Frederick News-Post), Jessica Daninhirsch ’26 (PublicSource), Devin Etta ’26 (Montgomery Community Media), Adam Hudacek ’26 (Washington Business Journal), Ela Jalil ’26 (The Baltimore Banner), Fiona Roy ’25 (WMAR-2 News Baltimore) and Christina Walker ’25 (Southern Maryland News).
The Local News Network internship program provides stipends for each student to intern at the listed local news outlet. The stipends cover living expenses and summer tuition credits.
Merrill College launched the Local News Network in 2022 thanks to an anchor commitment from the Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund. The college created the LNN to aid locally focused news outlets by creating important localized news content and by teaming those news outlets with student reporters.
Award-winning journalist Jerry Zremski leads the Local News Network. Zremski serves as lead instructor for a midlevel reporting course focused on beat reporting. Every semester, dozens of Merrill students who take that course take part in a project that aims to provide important content to support overtaxed Maryland news outlets.
Follow the Local News Network on X at @LNNMaryland. For more information on the Local News network, email Zremski at jzremski@umd.edu. Applications for the 2025 internship program will open in December.
Meet the 2024 LNN Interns
Lizzy Alspach ’26 is a journalism major and Spanish language, literature and culture minor concentrating on investigative and data journalism. She is also a managing editor at The Diamondback and will be interning with The Baltimore Sun this summer.
Isabella Carrero-Baptista ’26 is a journalism student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism with an interest in copy editing, web design and audience engagement. She’s currently working as the copy chief at The Diamondback and will be interning at The Frederick News-Post this summer.
Jess Daninhirsch ’26 is a journalism major and history minor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a visual journalist who loves photography, videography, writing and broadcast. Outside of Merrill, she is in the Jewish a cappella group Kol Sasson and Avirah, the Israeli dance company. Daninhirsch is also a photography intern with the UMD Office of Marketing and Communications, and will be interning at PublicSource in Pittsburgh.
Devin Etta ’26 is a Merrill College student with a minor in sociology from Silver Spring, Maryland. He has an interest in radio and video editing, web design and audience engagement, and will intern at Montgomery Community Media this summer.
Adam Hudacek ’26 is a native of Towson, Maryland, and is a double major in journalism and cinema and media studies. He currently writes about arts, culture and entertainment for The Diamondback and has an interest in feature writing. Hudacek will intern this summer at Washington Business Journal.
Ela Jalil ’26 is working on a dual-degree in journalism, and philosophy, politics and economics with a minor in Asian American studies. She is interested in data and investigative journalism, and is a tour guide for UMD and Merrill College. Jalil will be interning at The Baltimore Banner.
Fiona Roy ’25 is a journalism major from Massachusetts. She wants to become a journalist because she loves the process of conducting research. One of her career goals is to share her research with her audience in an engaging manner, creating a sense of community and keeping the enchantment of learning something new alive. Roy will be interning at WMAR-2 Baltimore this summer.
Christina Walker ’25 is a journalism and philosophy double major from Charles County, Maryland. She is interested in attending law school after getting her bachelor's degree. Walker spends her time outside of the classroom riding horses on the University of Maryland's equestrian team and tutoring elementary school students in math. She will be interning at Southern Maryland News this summer.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land
joshland@umd.edu
301-405-1321