#MediaMonday – Jessica Evans
Another #MediaMonday from a fellow Terp friend! Fun fact: Jess and I held all the same positions in the same order in our respective sororities. I’m a year younger so I pretty much just followed in her footsteps.
This #MediaMonday is also a little bit different than most that we post. Jess works for the Daily Mail in New York City, but not as a reporter or editor. She works on the social media side of the newsroom which has continued to grow larger and larger since social media was invented.
So Jess, what do you want tell the blogosphere today?
When I was about five years old, my mom took me to a yard sale and I begged her to buy me copies of Teen Magazine and American Girl from the 1960s. Why I wanted these lifestyle and beauty magazines at such a young age is still a mystery to me, but I would sit at home and flip through the glossy pages mesmerized. So from a young age, I knew I wanted to become a journalist. Besides eliminating every career field that involved math and science because they were my weakest subjects, I love how journalism allows you to experience life and tell others’ stories. I wrote for my middle school paper and in high school I became the editorial editor for the online version of our newspaper.
I began at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland College Park optimistic that I would graduate with a job at the Washington Post. Isn’t it so funny how young and naive we can be?
Journalism and the way we acquire news began a major shift when I started the program. At Philip Merrill you choose to either follow the broadcast or print track but since print was dying, we had to call it multi-platform journalism. To me, multi-platform journalism was a fancy word for print is going extinct and we don’t know what is going to happen. My classes were a blend of traditional journalism about features and headline writing mixed with new media focused classes on how to live tweet presidential debates.
While in college, I had a blog for the campus’ online newspaper, interned at The Baltimore Sun in the features department and dipped my toes in the communications pond and served as the vice president of public relations for the Panhellenic Association (the governing body of the campus sororities). I realized that print was on its way out after my internship ended at the Sun and I began the post-grad job search. I finally began to accept that print was dying.
Let’s all face it, journalism will never be what it was. The internet changed it all, and sometimes I feel like I let myself down because I’m not a reporter covering stories around the world. In November I found myself in between jobs. But with this time off, I discovered I am still a journalist, just not in the traditional sense; I am a social journalist. It means I still share stories like a journalist but through social media. No one has the attention span to read a lengthy feature piece or write one. Heck, writing this blog is taking me forever because I’m so distracted with the media. I now work for Daily Mail as an assistant social media editor, and I love the newsroom atmosphere but enjoy working on how to share the news socially.
If anything, I want to leave you with how my perception and what it means to be a journalist has changed. With this changed mindset, I feel more empowered with my career. You can’t get ahead in media if you’re committed to a single method of how to share news. Journalism and media is a roller coaster of a career and I’m excited to be a part of the ride. I’m curious if any of you also have similar thoughts.
If you want to learn more about the Daily Mail or talk with me about how the journalism landscape is continuing to evolve, shoot me an email at jessica.evans@mailonline.com or tweet me at @jess_d_evans.
