The truth is I wanted to be Barbara Streisand. Or an opera singer. But, when I went to college there were hundreds of signers more talented than me and I kept getting steered to music education. Really, what would a Diva do teaching kids?
Bonus: UW-Madison had hundreds of undergraduate majors, so I sampled as many as I could as long as my dad was paying. I majored in English literature (useful–not!), British History (equally useful), French (this ultimately could have been useful), Library Science (what was I thinking?), Political Science (hey, it had “science” in it), and eventually Journalism.
Once I found out I could get paid for writing and quite possibly be on TV, that sealed it. From my first sniff of a waxer to seeing my last byline, I knew this was what I wanted to do. After a stint as the first woman editor of the Badger Herald student newspaper, I landed an internship at WISC-TV where I was eventually hired. I covered the police beat, city and county government, the state capitol, labor relations, agri-business, tourism, features and parades/fests/picnics. And I was in one of the most politically exciting towns in the Midwest.
Eventually I met my future Spousal Unit and decided I would NOT move to Wausau, Wisconsin with him and we settled on Green Bay. There, I was the 10 p.m. news producer where I actually had to make the decisions about how much time to give the fatal fire, city council or children’s parade.
All good things end and I left the world of the working journalist to start careers in advertising, PR, marketing and communications.
So why does this all matter to you?
Because if you want to use PR or media as part of your communications strategy, it’s probably a good idea to talk to someone who was actually holding the microphone and asking the questions. It’s also a good idea to talk to someone who was making the decisions about what would get covered on the 10 p.m. news and which news releases got posted on the bulletin board because they were full of spelling errors. Or just plain bad.
It’s not that I’m smug or self-important, but in almost 40 years, I’ve seen more businesses make silly PR decisions because they never asked someone with experience in the field.
I don’t think you want your press releases in the newsroom “hall of shame,” so give me a call.
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