Episode 1: Jessie McDonough - News Anchor

Jessie McDonough discusses her career path, from studying journalism at Arizona State University in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, to her position as a multimedia journalist in South Bend, Indiana to a reporter position in Jacksonville, Florida, to her current position as a morning co-anchor and the solo anchor and producer of the noon show at the CBS affiliate in El Paso, Texas.

Jessie offers valuable insight from her experiences and covers aspects such as choosing the right school, what to do while in school, negotiating contracts and what she looks for in the ideal job.

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (link below in notes), the median annual wage for reporters and correspondents was $36,360 and the median annual wage for broadcast news analysts was $65,530. These figures are from May 2015.

SHOW NOTES:

0:00 Intro
1:12 What Jessie does daily as anchor and producer
8:18 What sparked Jessie’s interest in being an anchor?
9:30 How did she look for and choose a good journalism program?
11:15 Choosing the Living and Learning Community for Journalism
12:20 Importance of Internships and variety
15:16 Cronkite Newswatch at ASU
16:48 Importance of choosing school that specializes in your field and has great resources for networking…Networking is Key to finding jobs
17:45 First job and advice- Multimedia journalist (MMJ) Nightside reporter
20:23 Demo Reels, second job – morning reporter, hard parts of reporting
27:29 Transitioning from reporter to Anchor position
34:09 Favorite job
35:40 Requirements for job
37:14 Best part of her career, rewarding aspects
39:22 Challenging parts of career
40:34 What is it like being a public figure/on tv?
42:52 Advice for those interested in journalism
43:49 Future opportunities in this field
46:00 Dealing with the stress of job
47:14 What Jessie knows now that she wishes she knew earlier