Towson senior Jay Greene has wanted to be a broadcast journalist since high school when he first experienced the reward of telling peoples’ stories. But as the mass communication major gets closer to graduating, he’s begun to experience something else associated with his chosen career – fear.
Towson senior Jay Greene meets The Weather Channel’s Sam Champion. Photo courtesy of John Turner.
Greene describes entering the field as intimidating, characterized by competition and the challenges of an evolving media environment. But when it comes to tackling these fears, he recently learned he is not alone.
Greene attended the National Broadcasting Society’s annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, March 24-29, representing Towson as its chapter president. The conference offered students an opportunity to network with media professionals and gain practical advice from those in the field.
For Greene, one of the most valuable experiences was meeting Nathalie Pozo, a reporter at Atlanta’s FOX 5 station. He recalls describing his fears to her, along with other students from schools across the nation.
“She was one of those people that we young newscasters needed to hear from because she…had been in our position not that long ago,” Greene says. “A great part of this conference was that it broke the barrier between the students and the professionals, so we all could meet on the same level. [Pozo] works in a big market, and we are still student, but we didn’t feel intimidated because we knew that she was there to help us.”
Greene also met media professionals such as Betsy Anderson, CNN’s senior producer of special projects, and Will Nunley, WAGA-TV ‘s senior digital editor in Atlanta; toured the local NBC station; and attended conference panels.
His biggest takeaway from the event was the importance of social media.
“There will always be reporters and anchors like you see on television now, but the way by which we consume that media won’t always be through a television,” Greene says.
Greene says he is preparing to enter the field by using social media daily – both for his internship at WGAL-TV in Susquehanna Valley, Pennsylvania, and for getting important information out to the public. In the future, he hopes to gain experience as an on-air reporter before becoming an anchor.
“Journalism is a crazy field, and no matter what section you’re in — television, print, radio, digital — you have to work hard, but, in the end, it pays off,” Greene says. “We go out there to cover stories to let people know what’s going on around them. That’s our job as journalists. We pave the way for history.”
