An inside look at my summer internship at ESPN

Rising senior and double Public Relations and Journalism major Jackie Litowinsky is interning for ESPN this summer in Bristol, CT. Each week during the 10-week program, she will write about her experiences. 

Week 3

A short week this week with the holiday, but with no shortage of great projects I got to work on. I focused a lot these few days on designing the InFRowgraphic and pitching reporters in two different states for SportsCenter’s ‘50 States in 50 Days’.

Monday

After our morning meeting, I split up pitches for the New Jersey SC ‘50/50’ show with Ronce and got some positive responses. On top of handling New Jersey with Ronce, I am also handling coverage for our tour stop in Michigan which is where I secured my first clip with M Live. One of many to come, I hope.

In between all the pitching I was doing, I worked on the InFRowgraphic.

Tuesday

Now that my initial pitches were done, I reached out to the NJ & MI producers for SC 50/50 to introduce myself, offer my support and learn of any additional production details.

Later on, I filled out an application for my media credentials for a very exciting event, so stay tuned to hear more about that.

I also attended an E60 planning meeting for an upcoming release so I could get an idea of what kind of work goes into promoting ESPN original films.

Throughout the day, when I wasn’t in meetings, I worked on a timeline for ESPN Social focused on highlighting major milestones since its inception.

Wednesday

It was an exciting end (at least in person!) to this short week, which culminated in my first byline at ESPN. Check out the InFRowgraphic I’ve been discussing. Thanks to my coworkers, we were able to publish the graphic mid-morning, and I was able to write some copy for the graphic on socials.

I also helped with a test media call and met with another coworker, Katie, to discuss some pitching I’ll start on next week for SEC Nation.

Finally, our department had lunch with Kristina Schake (Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Disney). Later in the day, I joined my fellow female comms colleagues for a “women’s only” mentoring session led by Kristina. It was an amazing opportunity to meet with such a successful and authentic senior executive at TWDC.

Until next week!

Week 2

Week 2 at ESPN is complete! This week, I focused on a few projects and continued to meet with people in the department and sit it in on meetings discussing a variety of ESPN properties. Let’s get into it.

Monday

Week 1

Hello everyone! My name is Jacqueline (Jackie) Litowinsky and I am an intern this summer for ESPN’s PR/Communications department. I’m a rising senior at Seton Hall, where I am double majoring in public relations and journalism. This internship came out of the Center’s new partnership with ESPN, all thanks to Bob Ley and B.J. Schecter.

Every Friday, I’ll be posting here about my experiences, so for the 10 weeks that I’m at the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, CT, this blog will be serving as a sort of a diary.

Here’s an account of my first week at ESPN:

Monday
I got a tour of my home for the summer, Building 16, and the Communications office. I got to meet most of the team, which was my favorite part of the day (in addition to the lunch we had together)! Another highlight: my ESPN swag bag I was generously gifted, and my favorite New Jerseyan Danny DeVito wishing me luck this summer (shoutout to my first supervisor Ronce Rajan for that!).

In between, I had a number of meetings, shadowed my second supervisor Beatrix Panitz and watched her make a title card for Saquon Barkley’s appearance on SportsCenter that night, and attended a Disney “rookie camp” orientation. All in all, it was an amazing first day!

Tuesday
I started my morning with a fantastic tour of the ESPN campus alongside my fellow interns, including one of the control rooms and the SportsCenter studio. Then, I used Canva to create graphics for some internal digital boards welcoming the 2025 summer intern class and the Rhoden Fellows to ESPN. Then, I ended the night with a star-studded sports banquet (hey Dan Hurley!) with a few of my awesome colleagues.

Wednesday
Another jam-packed day! I started the day getting ready for my meetings in front of the lovely Building 16 scoreboard and got some mentoring in from Bea on how to build media lists and pitch for SportsCenter’s upcoming “50 States in 50 Days” series. Then, I got my first Front Row idea approved by Bea as well, where I’ll be writing articles and creating graphics for this summer. I continued working on the welcome graphics throughout the day, but not before getting the opportunity to be in the studio for a pre-tape of E60.

Thursday
The day started with a formal group introduction to some of the internal comms team, who encouraged me to start coming up with as many ideas as possible as ESPN navigates this exciting transition period (we’re currently working on all things direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming offering). This came amid the “Sports Forever” campaign being launched in the morning, which is so interesting to see unfold right in front of me. This week has been all about getting to know all the different sectors of what my colleagues in Communications work on everyday, something that has been truly enlightening for me.