Interning at Dix & Eaton

With all of the excitement surrounding the city’s resurgence, the Cavaliers’ world championship title and the Republican National Convention, I couldn’t have chosen a better time to intern in Cleveland. During the summer, I hoped to gain real experience with client work, determine which area of public relations I wanted to work in and grow more confident in my abilities. As one of four summer interns at Dix & Eaton, I have definitely accomplished these goals.

I was able to work with many of Dix & Eaton’s practice groups, including media relations, marketing communications, crisis communications and investor relations. I mostly worked with the media relations group, where some of my responsibilities included developing media lists, writing pitches and making follow-up contact with journalists. I also conducted daily media monitoring, drafted social media posts for Dix & Eaton’s accounts and completed various research projects.
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The most exciting part of the internship was being involved with for the Republican National Convention. The RNC team helped tell Cleveland’s story to the media coming for the convention, securing 74 placements in national media as a result. In addition to other RNC-related client projects, The other interns and I also pitched more than 400 reporters from national publications, attended events hosted by the Atlantic and Politico and walked around East 4th St. to distribute business cards and flash drives to journalists. I was surprised to have such a hands-on role for the convention and was excited to make contact with prominent journalists.

My advice to future interns is to be open to any experience. Don’t say no to a project because even if it doesn’t seem important to you, it will help out an account executive down the road. Saying yes to every opportunity and always maintaining an optimistic attitude helped me to build a positive reputation among my colleagues. This is especially important in an agency environment, where you have the opportunity to work on a variety of projects. Because they trusted my abilities, they asked me to work on some really cool client work. My time at Dix & Eaton helped grow my portfolio, my professional network and my communication abilities. I am so grateful for everything I have learned here and feel well prepared for a career in public relations.  

-- Hanna Moore, Senior Public Relations Major

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