My time at CapX gave me a first real taste of writing for the everyday reader rather than an academic one.
Working within the Centre for Policy Studies’ media outlet during my internship, I learned to compress an idea into something a busy reader would actually stop for.
Day to day, I wrote the “Stat of the Day” for social media, daily blurbs for the email newsletter, and sourced links for the “What We’re Reading” sidebar. I also put together a summer reading recommendations piece, which was a nice change of pace from the policy work.
Halfway through the internship, Andy Burnham became prime minister, which kept Westminster alive even through recess and gave me a front-row seat to how a publication like CapX covers a story like that as it breaks. I researched and wrote a longer piece on automation in the North Sea oil and gas industry, something I found deeply interesting, and I really enjoyed getting to write a policy piece on it, which is now with CapX’s editors.
Alongside the writing, I took on a larger project to track down nearly three thousand missing author attributions across CapX’s back catalogue, using AI and code to sort and match articles far faster than manually, and the team now has it to keep using going forward.
Beyond the writing itself, being based at Tufton Street in Westminster, home to much of the UK’s think tank world, let me see where policy ideas actually begin, in offices and conversations, long before they reach a headline. Thursday evenings at the Marquis of Granby, walks along the Thames past Big Ben, and time at the Carlton and East India Club gave me a sense of a world where relationships move at their own pace, and where a business card does more work than a LinkedIn connection.
Looking back, this internship taught me more than I expected it to, how to hook a reader, how to work fast without cutting corners, and what good judgement actually looks like day to day. I’m genuinely grateful for the chance to have been part of it, and for everything it taught me along the way.
– Chloe Walsh, 2026 Mannkal scholar
