Richard Levitt, a second-year graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, began a three and a half month internship program once a week at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this week. Levitt, 24, is from Los Angeles, Calif., but says he’s been “a native New Yorker” for almost two years.
Levitt specializes in Western European affairs at Columbia, and recently finished a three-month assignment for the Bureau of European Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. Assigned to the Political Section of the American Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium, Levitt said he had a small taste of government work and decided to try to find his niche in journalism instead.
In the past year, he has also interned at Facts on File, a weekly news digest, and the research department of Newsweek. But Levitt said he grew or reading JTA columns in the Jewish paper in Los Angeles, The Heritage, and figures “this is the kind of place where you learn to become a reporter. Not in school and not at a publication that has a huge staff and no patience.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.