Noah Apodaca did not get to go to Paris, France, for his internship with NBC Sports’ presentation of the 2024 Olympic games.
Instead, he was shipped off to the coastal town of Stamford, Conn., where, for 12 hours a day, Apodaca helped produce the network’s presentation of the world’s grandest sporting spectacle.
Less glamorous, maybe, but Apodaca said that his internship in Stamford offered the New Mexico State University journalism student plenty of value and growth.
“I think the biggest takeaway that I have from this experience is just knowing what's out there,” Apodaca said. “Working for NBC and NBC Sports was something that was a really big privilege.”
As he returns to his hometown of Las Cruces to begin his senior year at NMSU, he does so as both a member of the university’s News22 broadcast and the news editor of The Round-Up. Both outlets depend on students to bring the campus community news about NMSU and the surrounding area.
Born and raised in Las Cruces and an Organ Mountain High School graduate, Apodaca said he’s always been drawn to the media. Even as a child, Apodaca said that he and his sister could be found at the kitchen table writing up mock scripts for a TV news broadcast centered around household happenings.
“We used to pretend our parents were celebrities, and we used to do interviews with them,” he said.
Despite his consistent interest throughout most of his childhood, Apodaca said he couldn’t figure out why the media and the news had drawn him in.
“The best answer I can give is, I don't know. I'm not sure, but I want to find out what that is,” Apodaca said, adding that an internship with a local TV news station and now with NBC Sports solidified his interest. The internship required Apodaca’s presence from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., when his job was to insert ads into live broadcasts, primarily for NBC Sports’s streaming presentations and broadcast TV.
“Our workload was pretty stacked for the course of the Olympics,” he said.
But the internship was not so restrictive that Apodaca missed out on exploring the area. Stamford, a town of about 136,000 people, is just north of New York City across Long Island Sound. Apodaca said he made sure to visit the Big Apple and sample a few eateries along the east coast.
Stamford was no Paris, but Apodaca said his most cherished memories would be the ones made with his fellow interns.
Thousands of students applied for internships with NBC Sports. As might be expected, students from larger schools with bigger, more prestigious journalism programs often fill the ranks. Apodaca worked with students from the University of Southern California, the University of California Los Angeles and New York University.
“I was very nervous because I was like, ‘How will I hold up? How are my skills going to hold up? But they did,” he said.
And as Apodaca prepares for the start of his final semester at NMSU, he said the lessons learned from his time in Stamford covering Paris will be front of mind.
Aside from his classes, much of Apodaca’s free time will be consumed by his role as news editor of the Round Up.
“I think it'll be a good opportunity. Just taking the skills that I learned from NBC Sports, and bringing them here back to NMSU, is something that I'm really excited about,” Apodaca said.
