#MediaMonday – Nicole Moon
If you’ve ever been up searching for good TV on a weekend morning, chances are you’ve seen some of Nicole Moon’s work.
As the hard-working producer of KTVK’s Good Morning Arizona Weekends (GMAZ), she is up with the sun searching out the day’s best news stories.
So this #MediaMonday, while Nicole enjoys her “Saturday” (as her days off are Monday and Tuesday), let’s learn a little more about what makes her tick – and her work as a “broker.”
(If new to #MediaMonday – it’s a weekly profile of some of our favorite media peeps. A full list of past profiles is available here.)
Nicole: What do you want to tell the blogosphere about yourself today?
I was listening on the radio this week to all the political posturing about changing the way college student loans are handled in the United States. While on the one hand, the stories made me incredibly glad I somehow managed to graduate without any student debt, it also reminded me of the hours of conversations I’ve had with family members, who will remain anonymous, about the relative uselessness of a journalism degree (“You paid how much to go to school to get a job that pays HOW much?”) And it gets worse, pile on the extra five years spent working on a masters in business that, to date, I have yet to use in a professional setting (“You should be a world-class stock broker by now!”).
But, in a way, I am already a broker. My currency is stories. You’ve got the “sure bets” aka spot news and weather stories. You’ve got the lower risk stories (economy, community stories) and the higher risk stories (in-depth investigations) and as hokey as it seems, sometimes we really do sit around the table and say to each other, “Hey, I’ll trade you this deadly accident for your job fair.” Okay, so maybe not in those exact words.
I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was kid. I was the only 10-year-old I knew who begged my parents for permission to stay up late to watch Barbara Walters on 20/20. In high school, I was voted as the runner-up for the “Most Likely to Write a Novel” designation. I don’t know where the girl is who actually won the title, but I’m pretty sure she never wrote a novel either. Maybe someday.
A classic overachiever, I made the rounds working in all three television newsrooms in Reno, Nevada before I’d even graduated with my undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada, Reno. After that, I pulled a short stint at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas before returning to Reno to get married and start a family (and finish the aforementioned graduate degree). At that point, I was offered the incredible opportunity to work as PIO for the Nevada Attorney General’s Office. I stayed there for nearly four years, until my husband’s work brought us to Arizona several years ago.
For the last two years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with the Good Morning Arizona team at 3TV, most recently as the GMAZ Weekend Producer. When I’m not at work, I’m usually running our two boys from basketball practice to Cub Scouts to T-ball. I love to read, run, hike and scrapbook – and around the newsroom, I’m known best for bringing in homemade cupcakes, whether there’s an occasion for it or not.
