As far back as I can recall, I have wanted to be a journalist. I have always had an affection for writing and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a nosey person. While there is more to being a journalist, those are two pretty important requirements.
Even before I was in high school and joining the school newspaper, I remember gathering together with my siblings, getting our family camcorder and making fake newscasts. Our little show had all the standards of your basic local newscast — an anchor, a field reporter, a meteorologist and a sportscaster. We recorded a number of them over the years and while they started pretty basic, I remember us coming up with some clever ways — clever for kids, anyways — to add in props.
For one of our weather segments, we hung a map of the United States on the glass-sliding door and closed the blinds over it. When it was time for our metrologist to give their weather update, we pulled the blinds back to reveal our Doppler radar map showing incoming storms for the weekend.
Another time, we pre-taped our field reporter talking outside about the devastation from a recent hurricane, leaving dead air between their sentences. We then took the tape and played it on the TV in our “studio,” letting our anchor interact with the reporter. We were pretty proud of ourselves.
When we finished we would sit our parents down and have them watch our news program and they would tell us how funny and creative we were. Our parents were always encouraging with whatever sparked our imaginations.
They were also pretty good with constructive criticism as well. I remember while on the school paper, one of my beats was movie reviewer. I had written a review for the movie “Sleepers,” a ‘90s crime drama starring Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Bacon.
When the new print edition came out, I brought copies home for everyone. After reading it, I remember my parents putting the paper down and saying “Well, now we don’t have to see the movie.” While they said it was well written, I had given the entire movie away in the review. I took their critique and tips as well as a teenage kid could and I applied it to my future reviews.
My reviews got so good that the school’s vice principal called me and my journalism teacher into his office to accuse me of plagiarizing. To the credit of my teacher, when the vice principal could not supply any evidence to his accusation other than “it’s too well written for a student,” she backed me up and told him he should have more faith in not only the abilities of his students but also in his teachers’ abilities to teach.
I learned so much from being on the high school newspaper and after doing a stint in the United States Air Force, decided I wanted to go to college to study journalism. Using the G.I. Bill (thanks, Uncle Sam), I signed up for classes at Valencia College and there I met a group of dedicated writers and an inspirational teacher, all of whom encouraged and supported each other (for the most part).
I took a lot away from that group that I have applied to my journalism career even today. While I love what I do here at Watermark and I think it is important work telling the stories of our community, I miss those days of being surrounded by dozens of journalists and bouncing story ideas off each other. We are a small but mighty staff here so most of our journalists fall into the freelancer category, leaving myself and Watermark’s managing editor, Ryan Williams-Jent, as the staff journalists.
Watermark’s management team — me, Ryan, our sales director Danny Garcia and our publisher/owner Rick Todd — recently got the chance to attend this year’s AAN Publisher’s conference in Charleston, South Carolina. A gathering of alternative weekly’s and niche market newspapers, it was a time to embed ourselves with other journalists and discuss best practices in the industry:
It was an interesting and stressful trip — mostly due to the events of getting up there (a story for another column) — but the best thing to come out of the conference was being able to sit and listen to other journalists talk and brainstorm (and occasionally complain) about the industry. I also got to see one of my old Valencia friends. Shay, who was my first editor-in-chief at the Valencia Voice (the name of our school paper), is out in Colorado living her best life as the editor of Boulder Weekly. She is an amazing writer and I encourage everyone to check her out.
Watermark is celebrating its 30th anniversary and we have a lot of fun surprises in store, so be sure to follow us on our socials to keep updated on what’s going on, and if you have a story to tell, I encourage you to reach out and share it with us.
