Goshen High students gain newsroom experience through local internships

Goshen High School’s internship pipeline was on display inside a Chester newsroom, where two students were learning the accounting and IT work that keeps a local operation running long before readers ever see a finished story. Danielle Linguanti, the school’s business teacher and Work-Based Learning coordinator, stopped by Straus News to check on Klaus Depestre and Brandon Moreno as they rotated through departments that mirror the office systems many employers need.

The placement gave Depestre a look at financial recordkeeping, billing and administrative procedures in accounting, while Moreno worked around the technical backbone of the operation in information technology. In a field where the final product is what most people notice, the internship showed the hidden side of newsroom management: deadlines, internal support and the daily routines that keep staff connected and publication moving.

The visit also showed how Goshen’s program is being used as more than a one-day career snapshot. The district’s work-based learning model is built around regular contact with professionals, giving students a chance to see how office expectations, schedules and workplace communication operate in real time. The photo caption from the visit identified Straus News CFO Robin Robinson, Managing Editor Gail Hoffer-Loibl and Digital/IT Director Peter Pinto alongside Linguanti, Depestre and Moreno, suggesting the students were being introduced to more than one corner of the business.

The internship effort has deeper roots in Goshen. A Chronicle archive story said then-principal Kurtis Kotes proposed creating internships so students could see how professionals do their jobs in the real world, and he asked Danielle Dziedzic to start the program. The district later said its Career and Technical Education internship program had placed more than 250 students over nine years, a sign that the model has become a steady part of how Goshen prepares teenagers for life after graduation.

That broader preparation is built into the district’s academic mission. Goshen High School says it offers a wide selection of elective and college-level classes, and its 21st-century learning focus emphasizes collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. Career-focused clubs such as the Business and Marketing Honor Society, FBLA-related programming, Coding Club and Robotics Club extend that same message beyond the classroom.

The timing also fits a wider Orange County workforce strategy. Orange County Government said in March it would again host a paid Summer Internship Program for residents 15 and older, with up to 25 positions in 2026 at $16 an hour in departments including Finance and Information Technology. For Goshen students, the newsroom placement put those ideas into practice, linking school, municipal government and local employers in a pipeline aimed at the next generation of workers.