The Journalism Department launched its fall speaker series on Oct. 5 featuring guests who work in the broadcast industry.
The zoom webinar was hosted by Journalism Professor Rubina Gulati and included four guest speakers, three of whom are CRC alumni. Forty people attended the event, and heard professionals talk about networking, internships and their experience getting in the field.
“It helps for our current students to hear from them and to see what’s possible and to see that they can take their skills that they learn at CRC and find employment and find a career path,” Gulati said.
Jon Wilson is the global marketing producer for NBA 2K, but prior to his current position, he worked nine years in sports broadcasting as a producer for NBC Sports Bay Area.
“The more that you are kind to people, the more that you collaborate with people, the more that you build your network, the more it’s going to help you in the future because somebody sitting next to you in a classroom could end up being your boss one day,” Wilson said.
Martez Albert currently works for the Sacramento Kings as a utility and camera person. He shared his story of how networking at one job helped him get into a position to build his career.
“I’ve worked so many different places with so many different people and it’s just all because of just making friends with people in the industry,” Albert said.
Logan Chase works as a TV news writer at ABC7 News Bay Area and is on their way to become a producer. They shared their perspective on paid and unpaid internships.
“Wherever you can get your foot in first is great,” Chase said. “I was happy to pick up an internship that was paid so that I could focus like more wholeheartedly on the internship itself, but yeah, get in where you fit in.”
Jonathan Ayestas, a web editor at KCRA3 Sacramento, shared a message to college writers.
“Sometimes you have to just press them and just ask why,” Ayestas said. “That is something that I wish I would have done more of in college.”
Students who attended the event heard about many of the different roles that are involved in broadcast journalism.
“It was really cool being able to hear that there are multiple different parts in a broadcast in the sense of how many jobs it takes to do one single one and stuff like that,” said Cathryn Ours, 18, an English major.
The next webinar is on equity journalism on Oct. 19 and will focus “on issues of equality and addressing poverty and education,” Gulati said. This webinar can be viewed on the Connection CRC Youtube Channel.