Student Work Matters
According to the Washington Post, there are 5,300 colleges across America, and they all have one thing in common — students looking for a job. This challenge is not unique to the current generation of students, but they do have to find increasingly unique ways to pad their resumes and stand out among other candidates.
CSU’s current CTV news producer and former news anchor Sydney Paul explains how she set herself apart and why supporting student media is so important.
Paul is a third-year student here at Colorado State University and is currently involved as an intern with Student Media, Ram Athletics and the Denver Broncos; where she does anything from writing articles, entering official CSU athletes’ stats or interviewing an NFL coach Jon Gruden after a tough loss. You can feel Paul’s passion for journalism in the room and that she’s proud of her accomplishments this early in her career; but like all of us, you have to start somewhere.
For Paul, one of those starting points was a Public Relations class offered through the CSU Journalism Department. In this class, she was able to learn the basics of television lingo and describes the class as “Unique because the whole second half of the class you break into teams and you become your own newsroom and you get to be an anchor, a reporter, a producer.” Basically, allowing students to “get some actual real-world experience in class.”
Another class on campus that follows a similar structure is Online Storytelling and Audience Engagement. Here, students have the opportunity to write and share content with the online publication Beyond the Oval. The assignments are tailored specifically for the publication and to give students some of that real-world experience they need to set themselves apart in the job market. Paul goes on to explain that experiences like this are “Crucial for success, especially in a field like journalism. Getting an A in a class isn’t going to get you a job, that experience is what really matters.”
Whether it’s Beyond the Oval or your local college’s publication, read and support student media. It might change the life of an aspiring journalist.