From sports to community reporting, Palm Beach County reporter sees the struggle of journalism first hand
By Dylan Malamala
After majoring in communications at Florida State University then earning her masters in history at the University of Florida, Jodie Wagner finally got her first big job in journalism with the Palm Beach Post, where she has been working since her initial offer 22 years ago.
“The post hired me in the fall of ’96 to be a copy editor in their sports department. So I actually started off editing copy, you know, reading stories, writing headlines, and writing captions.” Wagner said. “I had an opportunity to write sporadically, they would send me out to cover some high school football games and things like that and eventually it turned into full time.”
Since Wagner has been at the Palm Beach Post, she covered mostly sports, but has been moved to community reporting. She has seen a lot of the change that has happened in the world of print journalism in her 22 years at the paper.
“I mean there’s great aspects of journalism but there’s drawbacks as well. It’s a struggling business right now,” Wagner said. “It’s sad to see that a lot of good reporters, photographers and editors have lost their jobs, but we’ve been fortunate at the [Palm Beach] Post that most of our jobs have come through just contraction, people have just left.”
Wagner said that local news is vital for people and their communities and how even with the hardships of print journalism these days, her career has still been rewarding.
“I think local news especially, it’s vitally important. You can get national news everywhere. Local news not so much,” Wagner said. “I hate to see these layoffs happening, but it’s a business unfortunately and the bottom line is making money. It’s not as much of a money maker as it used to be, but it’s been a very fulfilling career for me and I love it.”
With the changes in the industry, Wagner believes that determination, relatability and connections with sources are some of the most important skills to have.
“It’s just being determined, be kind of a go-getter.” Wagner said. “A lot of it is fostering contacts and sources, keeping in touch with sources and just going after the news.”
Wagner also believes that being social media savvy is a vital skill to have.
“You need to have social media sense with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Medium because more and more journalism is done online,” Wagner said. “That was not the case 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But it is now, especially in tracking down sources.
Although Wagner is now a community reporter, her heart will always be with sports. One of her pieces about recruiting at the high school level, remains a favorite of hers.
“I wrote on a former Boynton Beach football coach who was accused of recruiting players. That was a big research piece, probably the biggest I’ve done,” Wagner said.
Even after all this time, Wagner still loves her career and says the writing and storytelling is what keeps her going.
“It’s just the writing, it’s a tough business in many ways but I want to write, I want to tell stories.” Wagner said. “And even though a lot of what I do now is write about restaurants and things like that, I still get to write those kinds of stories and that’s what I enjoy and I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can.”
