Interview with Jaime Bedrin, Radio, Television, and Print Journalist
Jaime Bedrin is a journalist who has experience in print, radio, and television journalism. Her work has been featured in Marketplace Productions, WNYC Radio, WFAE Radio, and the Charlotte Observer. She has also been an adjunct professor in journalism at the Columbia Journalism School and Montclair State University. Some responses have been edited for clarity.
How did you get into journalism?
I first got interested in journalism when I wrote a little bit in high school, a little bit in college, and then I started writing more my senior year of college, but I didn’t go to a school that had an undergraduate program in journalism. So when I graduated, I met with the editor-in-chief of my local newspaper and she said to me, “Well why didn’t you come see me before you went to college?” And I said, “Well I wasn’t sure with what I wanted to do.” But the day I was there, they had an opening for the news clerk position. So I took this test and I ended up working the news desk. I would answer the phones and send messages to people, organize faxes. I’d have to go through calendar listings of some things, write standard obituaries and bring the paper to the editors.
After that, I worked for Fox news online just when internet news was taking off and then a colleague at the Bergen Record suggested journalism school because I had a lot to learn. I applied to journalism school and was waitlisted, so I had to wait another year.
And that’s when I really discovered my love of radio. After graduating from journalism school, I went and got a job in radio in North Carolina. I worked for an NPR affiliate WFAE 90.7 FM.
Are there any major differences between journalism in radio, print, and television?
One of the big differences is that in print, people have a longer time to digest information because someone can read an article and can go over a paragraph.
But in radio and television, people are often listening or watching while they’re doing something else. They could be driving or folding laundry or making breakfast or dinner.
Television of course has pictures, so you can use fewer words to tell a story. We can see that a fire is blazing and we can see that it’s snowing, but in radio, you have to be more descriptive, yet you have to be concise and you have to work really hard to make sure your writings are as clear as possible because the last thing you want to do is confuse or trip up your listener. When you do that, they’re lost and they spend time trying to figure out why they’re lost and then they miss the rest of the story. I love radio because it’s a mix of print and audio. It gives you the chance to be creative and thoughtful in your writing and approach to storytelling. Again, in print, you have the time to go through it and reread something. However, a lot of people these days aren’t reading full print stories and they’re missing out on the amazing reporting that can go into a story, the context, the perspective, and the depth. So it’s not that the reporting isn’t happening today, it’s just that people aren’t taking advantage of what’s available.
What is your favorite article that you have written? Or is there a certain type of articles that you enjoy writing more? Why?
One of my favorite stories was reporting on a woman in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was a part of our of the SWAT team there. She was a single mom who grew up with a community police officers and then decided that she was going to join the SWAT team. It was a fun story with a lot of really cool sound. The story was actually about female police officers and recruiting female officers and how to increase the number of women on the force.
There was also a story in North Carolina about a woman who had been a factory worker and then lost her job when the factory closed, so she decided to go back to school to become an emergency medical worker.
I can’t remember exactly whether she was an EMT or what her title was, but she was great. It was just an interesting story on how she did it and what it took for her to transition.
The schooling and everything associated with it was also a really interesting story.
