As one of Oregon State's top gymnasts, Jami Lanz spent a good chunk of time doing television and newspaper interviews during the past few seasons.

When she was wrapping up her senior season last spring, Lanz was asked by a reporter from Eugene's KMTR-TV what she planned when she moved on from her gymnastics career. Lanz answered that she wanted to go into sports broadcasting.

The reply resulted in an internship with the KMTR sports team for Lanz.

"They took a liking to that and they were kind of short-staffed this summer and so they contacted Tanya (Chaplin) and invited me to do an internship with them," Lanz said. "They thought I could help them a little bit while learning and it would be a really good opportunity for me."

The internship was 180 hours over two months this summer. KMTR's Scott Fleishman and Darren Fabre had Lanz shadow them at first to give her a taste of a typical day.

After getting acclimated, Lanz was put to work. At first, her tasks tended to be the mundane side of the business.

"I held a lot of cam cords and a lot of microphone cords and ran papers in and out of the studio for the anchors," she said.

But Lanz also went out in the field with them to shoot video, then rush back to edit and write scripts.

Soon she was writing highlights, helping with the editing and working the camera.

"They'd talk me through everything," Lanz said. "They really informed me on everything they were doing and why they were doing it. I think that was the best part of learning was getting to practice it and getting critiqued."

Although Lanz did not appear on TV, she trained to do stand-ups and was able to put together a resume tape. She said it was weird to get in front of the camera rather than the other side for an interview.

She knew what kind of questions were asked during interviews but struggled to take the opposite role.

Lanz described her first attempt as horrible.

"I did not do very good," she said. "I was unsure. I was uncomfortable a little bit and I didn't know what to say."

She wound up doing four stand-ups, one at Oregon State football practice, one at a hockey rink and two baseball stories.

She had gotten the hang of it by the end of the summer.

"I was sounding more confident and looking more confident and that was something that he really helped critique me with also," she said.

Lanz was able to create an entire package. It was on the OSU quarterbacks and she put together the story, wrote the script and edited the video.

She also went through a mock session as an anchor to add to her resume tape.

"So I got to sit at the desk (and) I got to read the teleprompter along with the video ... and that was hard," she said. "It was hard not to stumble over words while the prompter is going up and having to keep up with the video at the same time and sound good with your tones."

The experience inspired Lanz to stick with her media goals, though she wants to focus on college sports. She will continue to work with Beavers All-Access this year as she finishes two minors, and she wants to be a part of the OSU gymnastics live Web feed if and when it gets off the ground.

Her dream job?

"I'd like to commentate for international gymnastics," she said.