Okay, show of hands….How many of you have been to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, or Creston, Iowa or Butte, Montana?…<\/p>\n
Well, get familiar because that’s where the jobs are!…And you know what?…That’s a good thing…Smaller markets are where you really learn your craft, where you make mistakes that won’t get you fired and where you get that story that eventually you’ll pass along to other young journalists when they ask, “How’d you get your start?”…Everyone has one and now it’s your turn…<\/p>\n
You can do this!…You really can…<\/p>\n
When Greg Lang<\/a>, Assistant Sports Editor of the Boston Globe and Anchor\/Reporter\u00a0Katarina Luketich<\/a> of WXXV in Biloxi, Mississippi and a Boston University graduate visited our sports journalism seminar series recently, their words echoed, at least in my mind, what you’ve been told now over and over, YOU ARE READY!…”At a small paper, you will be asked to write, take pictures, take video, probably be asked to edit video, be involved in the website in some fashion, be involved in social media, be involved in technology ‘X’ that hasn’t been invented yet but in two years we’ll all be talking about, said Lang…Now correct me if I’m wrong but that pretty much sounds like exactly what you’re doing now for the Free Press, or WTBU or BUTV10…And look at it this way, you’ll get paid for it…Sure, it’s the unknown but life is full of unknowns…<\/p>\n You have skills that small market employers need…And the jobs are there…I understand… You’ve fallen in love with Boston but it’s time to be realistic, you’re not gonna start here…<\/p>\n In fact, you may not not even do what you originally set out to…Take Katarina, for instance…She was a sideline reporter, anchored a sports show on BUTV and desperately wanted to do sports when she left…And for a year she did just that, covering the New Orleans Saints, the University of Mississippi and even Double “A” baseball for a year in South Mississippi…But one day she got bitten by the news bug and hasn’t looked back…”I fell in love with news , I fell in love with politics, I fell in love with education…They offered me a one person sports department or I could do a morning anchor spot and I didn’t want to give up news. \u00a0For me personally it was the best decision because had I taken a job somewhere else I would have missed something I was really good at”…Lang agrees…”Don’t limit yourself by what you’re thinking right now, what you want to do. \u00a0Go with the flow a little bit. \u00a0I would encourage you to be someone who’s willing to change direction. \u00a0It’s more important (now) than ever”…<\/p>\n And remember, it won’t be forever…It’s the process that every journalist goes through, any journalist who works more than a week and a half in the industry…Embrace that…Don’t spend your entire time there thinking about how small town it is, how you can’t wait to get out…That attitude will begin to show and in the end it just might hold you back…”(Some of my colleagues) hate it!, mentioned Luketich, they hate it because it’s Mississippi, not where they want to be and because they’re so focused on hating it, it shows in their work. \u00a0They’re not getting to know the area, they’re not getting the most of it that they could”…<\/p>\n You’re ready for this…embrace it…It’s what was meant to be…Yakima, Washington, here we come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, show of hands….How many of you have been to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, or Creston, Iowa or Butte, Montana?… Well, get familiar because that’s where the jobs are!…And you know what?…That’s a good thing…Smaller markets are where you really learn your craft, where you make mistakes that won’t get you fired and where you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}