Career Building: Early Career Tips From ONA’s MJ Bear Fellows
6:00PM Aug 23, 2023
Speakers:
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and the images are like lotion and you're getting a pat down whenever you're ready. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the There we go. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this session. Our chat with the MJ bear fellows. This is one of my favorite parts. Of this convention. I've been away for a while but I have been moderating this program this particular panel for a few years now. So first, I want to acknowledge the person who's overseeing the program Laura Miko.
So I want this to be a discussion. I'm going to ask the fellows some questions, but then we're going to open it up to everyone else, and I hope that we can have a really good conversation. I'm going to introduce the fellows first. Laura, can you raise your hand Laura Laura Aiyana Morga is a general assignment reporter at the Long Beach post working on relaunching the Spanish section of the Spanish language section of the website Wooga or I'm sorry, we've just had this discussion who were Darsan is a newsletter editor and Impact Manager at Bay City News, creating a newsletter that highlights the journalists covering the Bay Area. Burton Burton is a multimedia journalist who just moved from Australia to the UK last month. Congratulations his project revolves around making reporting more accessible and digestible through video. Maria. Okay, I'm gonna be back so everybody can see. Maria is a service and engagement reporter at the Texas Tribune running a texting line to engage with their audience and then last but not least Blake Blake Stoner is the founder and chief reporter of Fingal Fingal. Oh yay. Vinko grassroots news agency, a visual content newswire that trains diverse constituencies on how to capture verified hyperlocal insights to aid newsrooms in combating under representation and most importantly, misinformation. Oh, for I'm sorry, Alice. Sorry. Alice is a producer for the American Public Media Group, publishing a newsletter for early career audio journalists, we need to talk after this. So alright, so my first question is, how did you all learn about the fellowship and what made you apply for it? We'll start from this end.
So I got sent a link. So I got sent a link from my manager. She was like, Oh, maybe I should apply for this. And at first I kind of thought, like no way anything I was doing could have been like, considered innovative or or interesting enough to warn a fellowship. But I I was like, you might as well apply like, couldn't her and I applied for and it went through and it's it was quite interesting. And because I'm no longer working on that project now. But it was it was something that I was intending to kind of kind of extend if I had stayed in that position. And it's something that I continue to be very passionate about, even though I no longer do that specific kind of role.
So the fellowship application got sent to me through one of my leadership, she's on an editor, but she works in our advertising department and she follows OMA and the reason I applied for it was because I am working on relaunching the Spanish section at our small digital paper in Long Beach, California. And our population, our Latino population, Hispanic Spanish speakers is around like 40 to 43% and that translates in our newsroom because there's out of maybe 20 Reporters only two of us speak Spanish. And so this was important for me to apply to just because I think it's really valuable to get some guidance from people who have either done similar projects or can walk me through, you know, being in charge of such a big project that's going to serve a lot of people when it feels like you're kind of lonely in your own newsroom.
I originally learned about fellowship through Nikita Patel who was on on a board, big supporter of mine, and just always encouraged me to take next steps on my journey. of building Vinkle. And specifically, my goal for applying was to just gain the support in the community to help find the best ways to serve newsrooms across America. Right now. We're based in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia for I'm home my home and eventually want to moving into the 2024 election wants to help bring our coverage, our grassroots coverage to more of Georgia and in more other battleground states. And that's why you know, given that this conference was in Pennsylvania this year, I thought this would be a great opportunity to connect with news folks here in Philly in the greater Pennsylvania and to begin starting those conversations.
My manager also told me about the fellowship. Thank you, Zoe. And I applied because I've been writing my newsletter for a couple years now, but I'm not really have experience in newsletters, like in a newsroom space. And so I just don't know what I don't know. And I want to figure out how to make it more helpful and connect more deeply with the people who are reading it. Because there's no point in writing and publishing something if it doesn't actually do the thing that I want it to do which is help people so
I guess we're on the same boat there because I when I started my job, I didn't really know newsletters or have any idea of like what that would mean. I started as a reporter and then kind of that evolved into me being involved in fundraising and newsletters and producing all of our newsletters now so I get I applied to this because my coworker sent it to me who is kind of the in charge of the fundraising efforts for our nonprofit sites. I was like I'm applying and I'm going to learn how to do this and more effective more effectively and more efficiently.
Um, yeah, I think I saw the link to the fellowship posted in our Slack channel or company Slack channel. And I was hesitant about applying I also really didn't think that I would have much of a chance but I figured, you know, I'm at a place where I'm trying to come up with a long term strategy for our texting line. It was also something that kind of was just handed to me in my new job. And so I really was interested in the mentorship and the opportunity to network with individuals already, you know, knowledgeable in the field. So yeah, and so, yeah, just apply even if you don't think you have a chance.
Thank you so much, because you set me up perfectly for the next question. We all have these bad habits sometimes of not applying for fellowships or other programs, or other opportunities because we think not gonna get it. So I wanted to know what would you say to those who are hesitant to apply for these programs
I guess if you miss 100% of the shots you don't take right. At most it's gonna take you depending on how fast try maybe an hour in the afternoon to just like hash out and and if you're really passionate about journalism and and kind of this industry then then it shouldn't be that hard to explain why you're why you're here what you want to do, what your aspirations are. And, and what Sorry, what was the question?
Oh, why should people apply?
Yeah, so yeah, to yourself out I feel like if you're better off applying and not getting it, they're not applying at all is Yeah.
I agree. I also think that if you have a an idea and you're passionate about it, there is going to be people out there who are also just as passionate or believe in you. And it takes a lot of courage to apply for these things and to you know, have the confidence to go for it. It's important to acknowledge that as well and be proud of yourself for it.
Yeah, I've I've applied to a lot of fellowships, but I've been rejected to way more than I've been accepted. So like I only reason I share that is that you do have to take the shot, you know, because like, you know, I guess it comes down to like, do you want to progress, your career, your trajectory and get the support you need to take those next steps? If so, you got to take the chance of putting yourself out there or you know, you're just going to be where you are
the only thing I'd add to that is that like the process of filling out the application was really generative for me of like, answering the questions like what does my project need, where where am I at currently, and what kind of things do I need to do where like, even if I hadn't gotten the fellowship, the process of thinking dedicating time to thinking really deeply about my project and about what kind of resources I need, what kind of changes I want to make where I can improve was just really helpful for me so I think even if you don't get it dedicating that time, you're still gonna get something out of it.
I agree with that fully. I don't know what else there's to add but
I'll just add that I agree and like applying for the fellowship forced me to like spruce up my resume, you know, I wasn't looking for a job but it helped me like stay on top of that, which is always nice to do as well
as as someone that's like, correctly shy as well and not good at kind of talking yourself up. It was really good practice for that because I really tried to be like an interview, you'd be quiet. I'd be quite humble and kind of like play down my achievements when in reality, it should be the opposite. And I feel like the application process really helps you do that.
All right, um, journalism. I started my career in 1985 on a typewriter. Obviously journalism has changed a lot since then. I wanted to ask you Well, what do you think are the most pressing issues facing the industry right now?
Start, I think one of the biggest issues in journalism is that anyone can pretend to be a journalist, and just create content and call it news and college journalism and just grift their way into the media industry. And I think what I'm doing with my project is to kind of familiarize our readers with the journalists and put a face to all of the names they see when they read the headlines and byline even if they don't read the articles, they know who the who the news is coming from and, and yeah, they just kind of connect with the stories that we tell better. So that was kind of the goal of the newsletter project as well.
I think a big issue is overwhelm, you know, in the public. I think there's so much out there these days and you know, not just journalists, but also other content creators. And so I think it's become imperative for us to help our audiences sift through all of that. And so that's why I appreciate you know, texting, for example, as a method to connect with audiences. Some of the feedback that we get from the members of our texting line is you know, thank you I'm really busy but just getting quick you know, little updates via via your texting line once a week really helps me so I think that's a big issue for us.
I think something that I see in my field which is like, podcasts primarily, is a permit training culture where people get stuck in this cycle of internships and fellowships, not this fellowship. for a really long time, where there the one of the questions I hear most often is I've had this many internships, but no one will hire me for an associate producer role or an assistant the very basic entry level role. And I think that like if I could say anything to hiring managers, it would be that like, just give somebody that shot to actually get hired into a role and understand that no one is going to come in on day one perfect, but neither did you and like that is how you learn is by being given the chance to make some mistakes and go into a new role. And so I think that there's a lot of talent that gets just waylaid in like years of internships. And when the reality is people just need jobs.
I think one of the biggest challenges was kind of two part but the first I would say is newsletters, which hopefully everybody's heard about by now. Just decline of local news. Just how, how severe that really is, you know, we talk about that we throw that term out, but like that's a huge problem like over 64% of American counties do not get daily coverage. So like at any given point in time, we don't actually have a comprehensive view of what's going on in America. And that's all this was a geographic geographic, that's not demographic. So it's not talking about all those sub communities in these areas that aren't covered. So you got to think about that. And then given there's so many gaps, what is filling those gaps, misinformation? So it's like it's for me, and what we might seem to focus on is to start it's a two sided problem. It's the under representation and the misinformation.
He pretty much said what I was going to say, especially in Latino communities, misinformation and media distrust is is a big thing. But it takes journalists who know these communities and speak their language to sort of be the one to relay this information.
I found I think the funding model is a big issue and people aren't always willing to pay for the news that they need, and figuring out how would we fund the news going forward? Is a very interesting problem. At the Guardian we have I shouldn't say we anymore, but at the Guardian, they had a subscription model where people volunteer to donate volunteer their own money to pay any amount from $1 up to whatever they wanted. And and because people saw the value of the journalism they saw the value of the reporting people were willing to put that money and I think around a third of the Guardians revenues now from subscribers and they turn up they've recently turned a profit in Australia in the UK. And so I query if if that kind of subscriber model where where people volunteer to pay to pay money out of their own pocket for something that is already free, is the way to go forward. I think social media has shown stuff like Patreon and these other kind of ways of funding content has been quite successful for content producers, maybe that's a way forward for journalism as well.
So then, on the other side of the coin, what do you think that journalism is doing correctly these days? Nothing.
Something you said actually brought to mind like the rise of worker owned media outlets like defector comes to mind places that have a revenue sharing model? That is really inspiring to me. I'm a member of my union, sag AFTRA, and I know unionized newsrooms, which is growing all across the country right now has been a massive increase in my quality of life as a worker. And I also think that it benefits our audiences to have because when you pay people such low pay that they can only afford to take those jobs if they have generational wealth than you have newsrooms that do not represent those communities. And it also makes it unsustainable for people to stay in this industry. So big fan of unions and also I really love the like worker owned news outlets that are coming up right now.
I definitely agree with that. In our newsroom. We had around 95% Union density. People were paid well, and we were the fifth or sixth largest news provider in Australia. So I don't think that narrative that you can't pay your people properly and hire a lot of people makes much sense to me because because we did it and our our audience base is growing every month.
I think one thing that gives me hope is that I think a lot of news outlets are now investing in service journalism or you know, really serving their audiences by like providing them news you can use and explainers and guides on how to tackle different problem problems in their everyday lives. So that gives me hope, and also we're seeing a lot of like smaller, entrepreneurial newsrooms pop up you know that are meeting communities where they are and so hopefully we can support more of that.
Yeah, just just to add to that, I think of the the influx of news local newsrooms, smaller local newsrooms is really cool to see because for a while it looked like local news was dying completely and it's coming back and I'm really happy to be a part of that.
Okay, let's talk about your projects. I'd like you to kind of, say what your project is and why you chose it as your project
so I come from a video background. I found my niche within the garden with with doing explanatory video journalism. And one of the things I loved about our coverage was data and how we did that on the site. But I always felt that it was limited on the site as as there are way larger audiences on YouTube way larger audience audiences on Instagram, Tik Tok and all the other social media platforms. So I really wanted to take that from the site and push it towards larger a larger audience. And so I kind of sat down with charts and maps and, and, and all these kinds of things. And I kind of just like explain to people what these meant and how that illustrated a particular news topic. And that that was the that was my I don't have anything else to say.
Can you tell us why you chose it?
Oh, I chose it because I feel like data journalism is really important because it it always is this like mathematical window into the world that also has this human angle and I find that quite profound.
So like I mentioned earlier, my project is relaunching our Spanish section and finding a way to better serve our large Latino population in Long Beach where 43% Latino and the highest conversation the highest concentration of them live in areas of the city that are high impacted by high rates of crime, poverty, gang violence, health inequities, like all these things that we've heard before. And there's no local news organization or anywhere for them to get news. on what's happening in their city. And I know there's potential there and at the Long Beach post we have a Spanish section but before it was we were kind of just translating stories, and figuring out just sifting through the public the stories that we had published in English and figuring out what would be relevant to the Spanish speaking community. But I realized that that doesn't really work a lot of the time. A lot of it you know, people are more receptive to things on Facebook or Instagram videos, maybe so it's just about figuring out what ways are Yeah, just figuring out what ways to serve this community and how they're going to engage with and digest that news.
So my project is a healthcare focus initiative and based in the state of Georgia, Georgia has a lot of healthcare disparity issues going on about hospital closures was last year was the third most dangerous place to give birth, which is a lot of different issues. And, you know, given the grassroots nature of my organization, we we came together and said maybe we could do something to help give more cultural view on what different communities the realities they live in when it comes to health care. Given that, you know, someone that lives in urban Atlanta has a completely different reality from from others in rural Georgia has to drive an hour to get proper health care. So, you know, we got some support from Stanford and USC, they have a something called starting lab for data integrity to help kick the initiative off, but we wanted, you know, more support. So that's kind of why we applied to the fellowship to see how we how far how far we could take the initiative.
I started writing like the first version of my newsletter, when I was an intern, and and then relaunched it in 2020 with transom and it's basically like interviews with experienced podcast people host producers, sound designers, composers, and then resource guides things like you know how to write a cover letter how to like prepare for a job interview, or you know how to use different software on the cheap for podcasts. And then there's like job postings, which are only paid opportunities and they're all early career things. And so, as I've been doing it I've been asking myself like you know, I don't want this to be a vanity project. Like I don't want it to just be me interviewing people who I'm who I think are really cool in podcasts because the point of the newsletter is to help early career people but as I get further along in my career, I get further away from the audience of the newsletter. So basically the purpose of why I applied for this fellowship is I want to figure out how to engage more deeply with the readership understand what they need, and like, keep in perspective, you know, it's very different to be early career in 2023 than it was in 2017. So I'm hoping to kind of get more skills and engaging with the audience and making sure it's not just like a fun thing. For me, but it's like concretely helpful for them.
So our nonprofit news site is called local news matters. And the main mission of it is to serve the Bay Area communities that that need to be that need to be represented in In local news. So going off of that I think I wanted to just connect the stories that we tell with the reporters that tell the stories, especially when you're launching our Stockton coverage and increasing that and we have the reporters based in Stockton now that are doing incredible work there. And I wanted to highlight them and kind of showcase that they are from Stockton and they know what they're talking about. And kind of just showing that that there's there's more of a significance behind the stories and just kind of parachuting ourselves into a new city and covering it. And yeah, so that's, that's that's why I started doing a Saturday newsletter. That's just profiling our reporters and telling readers about it.
When I joined the Texas Tribune, about a year and a half ago, I was tasked with relaunching our texting line, which was launched during Texas's infamous 2021 winter storm or freeze, you know, as the emergency measure to provide information to people at a time when a lot of people didn't have Wi Fi or good service. And so yeah, what we ended up doing is we texted during the elections and reminded people of like, when to register to vote when early voting was happening and all the all the different deadlines. And once the election was over, we were kind of at a place that was like, what do we do next? You know, and we surveyed the members of our texting nine, and a lot of them wanted it to continue, but we weren't sure what service to provide. So I applied to the fellowship hoping to find a long term strategy and serve the various needs and wants from our audiences. Some people have told us they want us to text them like every day, some people want us to only text them during emergencies. So we've been trying to figure out like how do we personalize this product to to people's different needs. So yeah, I'm really excited to learn about that.
Thank you. Anyone who knows me knows that I think that mentoring young journalist is very, very important. It can be the difference between a journalist doing well in their career or leaving the industry. And one of the things that I love about this fellowship program is you all do get mentors as part of it. So I wanted to ask, you know, I know it's at the beginning of your fellowship, but what do you hope to get as far as professional growth and achieving your long term? career goals?
Yeah, I'm excited to learn about like leadership skills and more about like strategy and workflows. I started out, you know, just as a reporter and so, you know, getting into like, more of this brainstorming and like executive, you know, implementing projects and things like that is kind of different and is different from like, you know, just the daily grind of reporting news. So I'm excited to learn about
I'm excited to kind of have someone helped me navigate through through different roles that I'm currently responsible for and just doing impact tracking and newsletters and on top of that, I do arts and entertainment coverage because I'm really interested in music and music coverage. So I do a lot of different things and I kind of want to figure out which path I really want to go down. It's not necessarily I think an either or situation but um, yeah, I kind of want that guidance.
I think like, the role that I'm currently in, which is the producer title, I've been in for about three years now. And I think the natural next step for most podcasts Productions is to be a senior producer, which is a manager role. And I don't want to be a manager, but I do want to advance in my career. So I'm trying to figure out is that possible? To do, how do you progress in your career without necessarily having to do that because I don't want to be a manager. So hopefully, there's an answer to that.
I'm trying to find the easiest way to say this. So
I guess the easiest way to say is I'm trying to get better and understanding how to help serve other newsrooms. And what I mean by that is that you know, a lot of mentorship when it comes to journalism is like kind of a b2c like newsrooms are serving subscribers or serving readers or whatever. But it's not too much mentorship around how does a new news agency support other newsrooms so that I thought that fellowship could be an ultimate way for me to begin, surrounding myself with the right mentors for us to me as the founder to be able to lead properly and given you know, all the upcoming election, I can begin creating the strategy to help support newsrooms across country.
I would say not only am I looking for guidance on how to run a big project that serves a lot of people, but I think also looking for tips or strategies on how to advocate for yourself in your newsroom or to really back up your ideas and get your voice heard. I guess, because I still feel quite young in my newsroom. And so I would really like just some general advice on on, you know, what steps you can take to get to that point where you can, you know, put your foot down.
I'm going to quite some quite a similar boat to Alice. I recently was, I recently got into a senior producer role, and I'm trying to work out how to do the management part of my job and do reporting at the same time because there was so many stories in the last two months, eight months. I just had to give the reporters even though I did all the groundwork, just because I had to do on my other job, right. I call it v reporting. So yeah, that's my query.
Thank you. Um, one of the things well, at the beginning of my career, there was no such thing as burnout. No such thing as mental health. It was like suck it up and keep moving. But to the credit of the industry, they are now realizing that these two things are real. So how do you all deal with mental health and the possibility of burnout?
I went to a time management panel this morning hoping to answer that question for myself. I am a huge advocate for therapy. I've been in therapy for two years and I love it. It's just an like, just gives you an hour to talk through your thoughts and that's how I got there. I don't know if anyone's speak Spanish but that just means like vent pretty much. So that's been super helpful. But then in terms of like, not burning out in my job. I've developed some strategies for like time management, but there's always space to learn.
Yeah, that's a hard one.
You know, I think it's all about just being realistic with your time and making sure you schedule time for yourself. You know, realize that you're a human being not a machine. And you just have to prioritize yourself to a degree. Today. You can't get me you can. You just You just got to make sure you don't explode. That's that's, I think, your goal in life. Is still survive. And if you don't prioritize yourself, even, you know, you're just not going to make it.
If anybody has a solution to this, I would love to talk to you. I don't know the answer is like, I'm still figuring it out. But I can say something that's worked for me in the past, I spent several years covering the Trump administration and like violent white supremacists and extremism, which I wouldn't recommend doing for mental health. But I the strategy I used at the time was like, if I'm covering this stuff, if I'm spending eight hours a day or more than that at work covering this stuff, anytime outside of work, I'm only consuming fun light things. I'm reading romance novels. I'm watching reality TV. I'm like purposefully consuming, fun, delightful things because I don't have a ton of control over what happens in eight hours of the day. But what I do have control over is like, when I clock out of work, I'm not going to sit down and read the long read about like, a horrific human rights violation, even if it's very important because I just know that if I do that, I won't be able to go into work the next day and do the work I need to do so. I think just giving yourself permission to like, pursue joyfulness and fun whenever you can.
Those are all great recommendations. I wanted to say finding a workplace that is going to value your mental health is really important. And that's something I even remember in college when I was applying for internships, one of my mentors that I had asked her if I should put my pronouns in my resume because I was like, Are they gonna be turned off if I say them, and she was like, Do you want to work for someone who would be turned off? And I was like, No, I wouldn't. But also Wellbutrin helps with any other problems.
Yeah, I'm a big proponent of like daily walks that's really helped me like, at least set some time to like just like, debrief and think maybe about work, maybe not about work. And then I think one big lesson for me has been to just learn to be honest about what you can and can't do. I think I was raised to be the type of person that like, I don't know what to say up to get the project done. And so I used to do that with stories and then I turn it into the editor, and they would be too busy to read it like and I'd be like, Why did I stay up? You know? And so a good way to do that is you know, just be more honest with your managers. If possible, about like your bandwidth. And that's really important because I think whenever we force ourselves to overwork, we perpetuate a cycle. Because you know, when you see your coworker or your manager, overworking, you're like, oh, then I have to do that, you know, like, how dare I take a break, you know? So I think it's not just about taking care of yourself, but also your co workers.
I want to say one more thing, just the founder in me just wants to say like if if anyone in here is interested in like starting an organization, I think one key thing is really quickly find your community, whether that's the team you build, whether that's just your supporters and everything, because that's going to really be like the makeup break, because it gets hard. It gets some low moments, some high moments, and the only consistency you may have is your community. So yeah, just felt I needed to say that.
I think it's important to clearly delineate, delineate what is working what is not. And especially during COVID When we were all working from home, it was very easy just to like continue working until like dinnertime. And one of the things I implemented when I started my new role was like being very clear to the reporters that I'm not approving over time, and don't expect you to finish it if you don't want it if you want to finish it on time if you can't finish it on time, but just be aware that if you do it well over time, you're not getting that you're not getting that back because but so so I tried to like really force him to stop working, which was interesting because they wanted to keep working.
I have two more questions, and then I'm going to open it up to the audience. So if you guys can start thinking about your questions. I wanted to ask you, how do you think this fellowship could influence your perspective of the journalism industry?
Well, for me, I'm quite insulated from kind of us journalism freeing from the UK and Australia. I think that gives me quite good perspective on how the other hemisphere does it, which I thought was quite interesting because there's a lot more media diversity. I feel here then in Australia where there is like three or four major players and that's about it.
I think for me, it will. I don't want to say give me hope, but give me more hope that there are journalists out there who are dedicated to helping people up. I think that's always been a big thing when I was a student. I was leaning on mentors and meeting people and it was super overwhelming. But there was certain like, female Latina journalists who opened doors for for me and so this will definitely like motivate me to do that. later in my career as well.
I think when it comes to really having a holistic perspective on what works and what's not working in journalism today, I think that's more than more than anything what I'm hoping to get out of the fellowship, and how to just quickly you know, like I said before, find ways to better serve newsrooms so they can do their jobs better.
I think I'm really excited to learn from everybody who's up here right now on their individual projects. And I am a big believer in the fact that like some of the most important networking you can do is with the people who are at around the same level as you, especially because those are people you can be really honest with about, you know, your struggles and all that stuff. So I'm excited about that. And also, you know, I'm very much in podcast and public radio world. So I'm excited to talk to people and other types of journalism and I know that there's a lot I can learn.
I'm kind of going to repeat what Alice had said earlier, but um, I think even applying for this fellowship was a great way to set goals and understand what I want from journalism and what I want for my career. So I think getting it and kind of being here and learning from other people, especially people on this panel has been great to kind of hear different perspectives and those are gonna be added to my toolbox for later and just preparing myself for the rest of my career.
I think it'll be really helpful to see what everybody else is doing. You know, I was just in a panel about local journalism and like, took notes of a lot of different initiatives and that I want to go back and research and I've also like, you know, started networking and things like that. So it'll be really helpful in terms of learning how people get where they are.
And my last question, where do you see your career 10 years from now? Knowing that's going to change.
I think I would like to continue working towards more work, thinking, you know, about journalism, big picture and how we can better serve communities. I think I want to stay in Texas since I was raised there, and I want to figure out a way to better serve underserved communities there. And I also want to serve as a mentor to other young journalists. I get to do that from time to time and it's always refreshing I would say, which makes me sound old now.
If the world doesn't like burned into a crisp in 10 years, I think I see myself still in service journalism or nonprofit journalism, because I think it's really valuable as an opportunity to like not have to chase clicks all the time, necessarily, or kind of create these sensational headlines for for again, clicks and popularity and whatnot. I think just fundraising is its own challenge. Don't get me wrong, but I think it's just just a very fulfilling way of doing journalism, and I appreciate that.
I have no idea. I think like I being honest, I'm really interested in other types of journalism. So I don't know if I'll be in podcasts forever. I like print and multimedia and a bunch of different other things. So I'm excited to kind of maybe explore those waters a little bit. I work from home in North Carolina, and I think like, you know, the best part of my life is getting to be out in my garden with my little dog and hanging out with my friends and that's the stuff I'm most looking forward to. And so I think like, you know, any any job that I have, it allows me to keep living the life that I want, and is you know, something that feels ethical and fairly compensated and I like my coworkers like that's something I'm generally happy with.
In 10 years, I would like to think that I'll be operating a global news organization, helping to bring coverage to underrepresented parts of the world, serving news or helping to you know, strengthen the news ecosystem in different parts of the world. And in doing so, you know, one way or another, you know, just helping to build stronger communities and more informed citizens in different parts of the world and just really just being a collaborative partner. For for you know, the world.
10 years is a really long time, but it goes by in the blink of an eye. And so I have this vision for the relaunch of the Spanish section and I want it to become like be a place where Latinos in Long Beach and even the surrounding communities come for their news, and I believe in it, and I want to stick with that for as long as I can. But I also just love local news in general. So they see the value in it and so in 10 years, I assume that I will be doing the same thing, and just trying to better serve these communities. And hopefully those issues that we're facing now have been solved and there's more problems that we can tackle.
I think in 10 years, I definitely want to get back to Australia. And I think I want to go back into like local journalism which was where my career started. I feel like local journalism is such a kind of essential I feel like it's such an essential service to communities that often don't get the information they need. And I would love to go back to Australia or maybe go to a country town and kind of revitalized the paper or whatever news organization is out there.
Now it's time for questions.
What would you say is the most valuable valuable valuable lessons you've learned in your career so far?
Make really, really good friends with the people on your level as like, because often, you often you're dealing with management who are less than pleasant, and if you have allies, I mean, not allies, but like, friends that you can, can vent to and complain with it usually makes the most bad management bearable.
I think mine I might have said this earlier, but I learned this when I was a student like freaking out about everything, networking, finding a job, whatever. And it was just to acknowledge that these things take courage. So you need to you know, believe in yourself because if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. And so I try to remember that.
Yeah, actually building on that just like really like believing yourself but in that, not being afraid to go your own way. Because when you go off the wellbeing path, you may very well be doing something the world needs. And if you if you don't do it won't be done. So you got to be yourself. And believe in yourself.
Advice I did not take that I was given early in my career was that you should like not be so obsessed and stressed about work all the time. And it took like a global pandemic for me to have that realization. So yeah, I think like being able to have balance and realize that when you have a full life, you're a better reporter. And a better friend and happier so that would be my advice.
This is really simple, but if you want a raise, ask for a raise. The worst that's gonna happen is your boss is gonna say no, but you might miss out on some more money. For your work if you don't ask for it.
I would say to not be afraid to put yourself out there go for opportunities. I early in my career, I you know, was really passionate reporter that you know, was interested in immigration. education, politics in lots of different stuff. And so I ended up like doing a series of different jobs in each of those in a lot of those fields. And, you know, that's all helped me now as a service reporter. Now I have a little bit of perspective with all these different fields that helps me write better service journalism. So I would say don't be afraid to take opportunities and it'll all work out and help you in the end.
I think it's also very important to find a niche that that needs feeling. For me that was thought of video. And I've noticed that we'll a lot of a lot of places where a young person has done something really, really cool is when they've they've found something that was missing in a news organization. It kind of filled that in that space and, and often that time, it's not that they don't want to do it. It's just that I haven't even been around to do it and no one's no one kind of has the peace of mind to kind of push for it and you just got to be that champion.
Might be a year or maybe too late in asking this question, but maybe that offers the benefit of perspective. My question is about the pandemic and how it changed how you thought about your careers, and any challenges that are put in front of you professionally, how you overcame those to be where you are now, because it's been a bumpy road for many years for many.
Sir in the summer of 20, I was supposed to do an internship at the Seattle Times. And that got cancelled because of the pandemics I had to figure out like what I was doing with my grant money and Stanford wasn't gonna give me my money if I didn't find a job. So I went back to Kat rowland's who was my boss to summer before at localhost matters and basically news and I asked if she needed any help with anything and she said, I really want to build this COVID info hub project that we have in mind and I don't have anything yet for it. But here's a spreadsheet you can start working on it. And I was like, Okay, sure. So that whole summer I worked on that and it was it was an award winning wonderful project that we did to just inform communities and journalists in the Bay Area. And being a part of such a historic event. I don't think I we anyone expected that right when we were starting journalism, so that was intense. But yeah, I'm glad we're on the other side of it now for the most part. And I'm still working from home. So that's a that's a change, for sure. But that's I think that's a good perk.
I got laid off early in the pandemic and it was definitely it was a big heartbreak. It was like my first layoff but it was also a really like I went on the rollercoaster of getting like a lot of praise and you know, positive affirmation at work and then being like one of the first people to get laid off and the lesson that it taught me and I hope this does not sound cynical, I just mean it like it was ultimately empowering for me it was that like, as much as you love your workplace and you have positive relationships with people like it's not your family, and they are ultimately have a bottom line that is outside of you as an individual. And I think that was helpful for me because I was putting too much of my identity and my self esteem my self worth in my workplace and it really needed to be in me that is independent of if I have a job or where the job is or etc. And so, and also I think it allowed me to let other people show up for me and support me as a producer like a big part of my job is anticipating people's needs and being there for them and organizing stuff. And so it was a real role reversal to have friends show up to my door with beer and pizza or allow people to send me job postings or you know, Venmo me like 20 bucks to go get a drink or something like that. Just it was very like it was a good reality check and a very like humbling experience. And I think that it like made me happier in the long term.
Well, the pandemic completely changed. My company. We were we operated very differently. And I mean, honestly, it actually helped because it made me focus. Because, you know, just being a small team, at the time just being supportive, you know, just bootstrap being supported by some friends. A lot of the goals I was hoping to achieve, which are not we're just not reached anymore, because obviously the pandemic so it's I had to figure out what do you do in the meantime, that was like the only thing I could do really it just poured on my community I grew up in and and it just continue to learn because that's the thing. I didn't actually come from a traditional journalism background. At first I was like everything like self taught and so forth. So like the pandemic was like a real accelerate celebrator for that. And then it just kind of helped focus me and get me prepared for what we're about to do now. So long story short, it actually kind of helped in a way
I was still a student during the pandemic, I was a junior in college. And I was at a point where I had no professional I guess, journalism experience. I hadn't had any internships and the school I was at didn't have a journalism program. So it was just our school newspaper and I think it kind of forced me into finding people to talk to finding journalists who I admired and just reaching out. And it helped me see the value in conferences like this one. That summer, I was freaking out. I didn't know what to do and I saw that NH J. was hosting their conference online. And so on a whim like I signed up for it and I met so many people and it was an overwhelming couple of days, but it really gave me like that path that it gave me a good idea of the path I needed. To take to get to where I'm at.
I think the pandemic was a huge opportunity for me because at the time I was freelancing for the local paper and at the same time I was working at a private school and earning way more money, just doing outdoor education with kids. And I was kind of at a point before the pandemic wondering if I really should do journalism because it wasn't paying very well. And then the pandemic hit, I lost that private school job and it was kind of like a moment where I had to decide where my life was gonna go. And I just decided that I would put 100% into journalism and I started making stuff in my have my own interest started posting on YouTube started sending my my portfolio to editors I looked up to and eventually that turned into a job so that disaster can be an opportunity.
You hear me better if I'd known that some of you are very cool. So thanks for sharing your work. My question is, because it sounded to me at the beginning that many of you have this program referred to you by managers and mentors. What advice would you give to people can have great relationships with work that are still interested in developing their
I would say to go and look for those resources yourself like this was posted on our Slack channel but I also saw it in a few different newsletters that I'm signed up for. There's like a few different job ones. There's like journalism jobs and a photo of my dog I think is the name of one of them. Yes. And I think there's another one called inside the newsroom. But yeah, there's these there's a lot of places where, you know, people are like regularly recruiting for either jobs or fellowships. So I would say like, subscribe to that. It's also just helpful to see like, what's going on in the news world and like what types of jobs and roles are happening, which can be inspiration?
Yeah, just to build on that, just like, continuously, like, be curious and like what's out there and just keep searching like, like, though, someone encouraged me to apply to the fellowship I already knew about the fellowship because I was curious because I was like, what is on a let me look into what it was what kind of programs I got. I was interested. And it just like, you know, I try my best I think this is more kind of an entrepreneur, I have to know what's out there to see like, what like what resources I can use to further like my work. So yeah, there's long story short, just like just explore
I think, depending on the size of your organization, it's also valuable to kind of find allies that are of same kind of hierarchy level to that your direct line manager because I have had colleagues who had bad relationships with their direct line managers where they would go to maybe a senior reporter or to a another editor, that they had a good relationship and they would kind of help them or mentor them to kind of move their career forward or provide a reference or something like that.
Just to add to that, a little bit, I was gonna say, not just colleagues or peers in journalism, but just friends in general that that support you and hold you up. Having those is really important, as important as having a supportive manager so I love being that friend for my friends just like sending them okay, I saw this job posting or I saw this fellowship or I saw this I don't know advertisement for this thing you were looking for. So and I think they reciprocate once you start doing that and sending them things and ideas.
Another thing I would add is finding like your local chapter of a news organization, I know nhg is a big one but they have local chapters everywhere. And I'm sure there's so many more to just meet people and find people that are on your same level. And I've I've learned a lot through them and like found jobs through them as well. So
I was wondering what social media strategies that you've employed or are planning on leaving before
I can start so for my project specifically it serves the Spanish speaking Latino population we before we sort of did the relaunch we surveyed people to figure out where they're finding their news and a lot of it is from through Facebook and Instagram. And so video is a big part of that Instagram reels is a big thing that we do. And also just like going out into the community and interviewing the community and posting that has been pretty successful so far.
Yeah, so a lot of our growth has in Tik Tok space. We had great reporters who were able to build those power like parasocial relationships with audiences and so when their faces came on the screen people knew that this was a particular story from this particular reporter. And that gave us kind of permission to kind of do perhaps not the most grabby kind of journalism and also allowed us to kind of build an audience around these people.
Are social strategies gonna be kind of similar to what Laura was just talking about? It's just like really just kind of showing the narratives of communities but also give them like a insider look into our team since we're like a small organization still growing and just like build like one of our goals is really to build our community. So we want it to like really just show like, you know, like, hey, like, this is the work we're doing, but this is how we're getting it done. It just kind of created a unique presence like that.
I was gonna say it for social media stuff. Our organization is a nonprofit, and it's very fresh. It was started in 2018. And when I was an intern in 2019, is when I started the Instagram and Twitter accounts were for the organization. It wasn't they weren't kept up really well through it through the year because a lot of people that work for us are just busy doing the reporting. And we don't have a social media manager that's taking care of it. And I think our perspective currently is that especially with how things are turning out for Twitter, and Elon Musk and X or whatever it's called now I deactivated myself I'm not on there anymore, but um so so we're just thinking, we can't really rely on social media platforms for our fundraising and audience reach just because they don't really prioritize news at all. This is, I guess, post dot news is, but who was using that? So it's kind of a we're trying to figure out what to do with that Reddit has been really successful lately and posting news and kind of getting some conversation out of our stories, but good, that's what I would say.
Obviously, this conferences, we want to talk more about your projects and what's going to be the best way to reach out especially in Twitter is
wow, I'm just gonna say LinkedIn, it's best for me.
Come find me after the end of this panel and I have business cards but that the newsletter is called starting out and it's starting out that substack.com So it's free and always well being so
you can also find me on LinkedIn but my email address is we're at Bay City news.com. That's ug you are at basically knows that com reach out to me.
I also have business cards. If anybody wants them. I also am on Twitter as at anxious Maria underscore Maria. So that's probably pretty memorable.
Yeah, I'm also on Twitter. Email is probably good for me to my email. It's super simple. It's just Laura at lb post.com
via Twitter as Twitter as well, but my email is my first name dot last name at BBC Dakota, UK.
Were there any more questions? From pre career a little bit I feel like because I'm working in social media for journalism, so still in college, and I was kind of wondering either, you know, what advice do you have something that you feel like you did well to get to this position or what is something a mistake? That you made that you really love?
Think it's I think it's good to be unafraid to like leave the comfort of your home town or your home city or your home state. The reason I even got this job at the BBC was because I decided to move into the middle of nowhere in the UK. And I have a lot of family. I found that a lot of opportunities in journalism were in cities that were less populated and, and less and, and just less of a hub. And I feel like in those situations, you can also make a larger impact and kind of show people that you're more capable of things that that might not be visible on a resume. Because with a smaller news news organization or a smaller team, I feel like there's a lot more remit to kind of do more and, and there's more opportunity for managers to allow you to kind of experiment because they just did just I don't know if it's a bad thing to say but just don't have the time to kind of like micromanage you.
I think my biggest piece of advice is to reach out to people whose work that you see value in and people who you just want to have a conversation with. Ask them about you know what it was like for them coming up. Tell them about what your goals are as well. And then when you're hiring for a job or when you're applying for a job. Talk to the people who are hiring for those jobs, talk to the editors talk to the hiring managers, just to even before your first interview just to tell them more about yourself. So you have that connection already.
My voice might be a little different because I had to start something. But it seems simple, but it's really really trying to put a lot of emphasis on it but it's like, my advice would be like if I was talking to myself and I was starting like to just start just go because like there's so much you're not going to know until you get started so much about how the market is and just it's just so much you know, and it's just like it's easy to to just like have it in your brain just like oh you know, that's cool idea. But it's just like it the world changes. When you actually start you know, like your world changes I should say.
I think if you're a student, I imagine you have friends who are in a similar field as you potentially I think like or you know, as you go on you'll have more and more peers who are doing this work and I think not having a competitive mindset is huge. I think you it's easy to get caught in the trap of like me and my friend applied for the same internship and they got it and I did it in public law and like you know, or if this if someone got this thing that it means that it took something away from me and I think having the mindset that like a rising tide lifts all boats, we want everybody to succeed and you know, being generous with your friends, sharing opportunities and just trying as much as you can to like, focus on your path and not on what other people are doing is just like way better psychologically and then it also helps you build a community that is like healthy and supportive.
I think just trying not to stick like this might be counterintuitive, but like not trying to stick with what you're passionate about. But exploring other things that might be of interest to you to some level is really important. Because my first time ever doing any hard news coverage was during my internship, and I just kind of like was given random stories to write about like crime and fire and I got nightmares the first week at that job. But then I got used to it and I now manage the news desk on Saturdays on top of what I'm doing, which is a lot but I'm really really interesting and fun.
Are there any more questions?
I was thinking of my students and I'm trying to get dates for them. What do you think the main reason why fellowship, I mean, the small details are taken for granted. And they do realize some of the things about I wrote about this and I said this is most important, but if it was
I think it always helps to tell the story of yourself. I think that has been like really big career advice that I got in college is like, you know, when you're writing an application, a cover letter like don't just tell them you know what you can do to tell them a story about how you got to where you are because at the end of the day, a lot of journalism is storytelling. And I would say I think what helped with this particular application is that I think I was honest about like some of the, like challenges that I was facing with my project and like what I thought I could get out of the fellowship and how they would help me solve those challenges.
I will also say, along with telling your story, you just like really making it clear the value you bring to the community. I think that's what probably has helped me do a lot of things just that like, you know, it's one thing to tell your story. It's one thing to show like how you're making the environment better once you once you become a part of that ecosystem.
I think I think something that I've heard throughout this panel that I think helped a lot of us is that we already had some of that work done like some we had already been working on our projects for a couple of months. I had already done surveying in the community so I know what their needs are. Now it's just about how to implement it and make it sustainable.
Let me know when you find it, and I'll hand it back to you. Um, something I said in my application. Well, first of all, I think like, I feel very like earnest and enthusiastic about my newsletter in a way that like, you know, I'm not necessarily sitting down with friends at the bar and being like, let me tell you about the need to lower the barrier to entry and podcast. So it was fun to just like let my nerdy earnest sign out like 100% Because like that's what the application is for. And then the other part was saying that like, what if you if you give me this fellowship, the stuff that I learned is not going to end with me like the whole point of the newsletter is sharing as much information with as many people as possible with the mindset that like we can all be successful in this. And so, you know, like, I'm going to have a resource guide in my newsletter that's like, here's things I learned Oh, and a and I'm going to come back to my team when I go back to work next week and present to them what I learned and basically saying, like, if you give this to me, you're not just giving it to me. I'm gonna also give it to a bunch of other people and like can really magnify, I hope, like the reach of the fellowship.
I think it's really important to be really introspective about why you want to be a journalist and what is what are the values and the concepts behind wanting to do what you want to do because it's can't just be a job. I feel like if you just want to do a job there are a lot easier told us out there. So I think I really sat down and I wrote and I read it back I was like God this is cheesy, but it was it was in truth why I decided to be a journalist and I think that's was like the cherry on top that might have pushed me over.
All right, I want to thank you all. This was a great conversation. I wish you luck in your fellowship and we'll stay in touch and see what's going on.
Just a quick thing, I have to make a plug. I'd be remiss if I didn't. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Vinay Wilson, and I am director of the Poynter Koch media and journalism Fellowship Program, which is a fellowship for early career journalists. Our applications opened in January. If you've got any questions, I'm going to be here the whole time. I'm easy to find on social media. So thank you all.
Just such a big question. Because I say great, thank you. I'm around the conference. And I would love to say hi, if you guys have any time, I can give you my phone number when when you're out of nowhere like sending my phone number to you if that's not what I'm doing. Like I thought from party or whatever, it's 20227066513
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got it. I'm sure are doing it now.
Would you like to do the tic tac with your fellow fellows? So it's like the passing the photon. And so before you say the thing about the other person, I was thinking that you guys are like, say something about your project to yourself, and then has to be like Oh, yeah. There
