Sam Fortier, a sophomore magazine journalism major, will be an assistant web editor for the sports section this fall. This summer, he landed an internship at Esquire magazine. He spoke with sports editor Sam Blum about his internship.

The D.O.: Tell us about how you got the internship at Esquire.

S.F.: It was essentially a ton of luck. I went to the chair of the magazine department. I was talking to her about having just transferred into the department, and she was asking me what I had planned for the summer. She put me in contact with a Syracuse graduate from two years ago who works at Esquire. I interviewed, I told them about writing for The Daily Orange, and he, having graduated from there, knew about The D.O. He said he was impressed.

Esquire does a “What We Learned” (feature) every year. And they did one from the 50 states in 2009, and my grandfather was from the state of Maine. From the time he was 12 to the day before he died when he was 81, which was later in 2009, he worked on a lobster boat and didn’t know how to swim. So they thought he was kind of a character, so he was profiled in Esquire. So I was telling them about that, about how much it meant to me that I would get that job at Esquire and I would hopefully begin my professional career at the same place that my grandfather got his big break.

The D.O.: What have been your favorite parts of the summer internship?

S.F.: The time I got to hit — hit is what we call it when we write something based on a web story — the MLB rule changes for the home run derby, that was fun. And it was the longest thing I got to write. It was just like, I know a decent amount about baseball, it’s fun. It was just a cool experience, and definitely something when you go to the article online and look on the site, there’s like 300 shares — that made me feel good.

The morning after I woke up to a tweet  that called me an idiot for something that I had written. And it made me smile, and I texted my dad, and my dad’s like, ‘You made it!’ I know from the other people at Esquire that it gets pretty old pretty quick.

The D.O.: What are you enjoying about New York City?

S.F.: This is the first summer I’ve ever been away from home. And especially going from a town of 3,000 people in the summer to the Big Apple is definitely a big difference. There’s a lot of changes. Getting used to the pace is half the battle.

Published on September 10, 2015 at 3:06 pm

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3