Q & A
in high school, I was like,‘ I think I’ ll do that.’ And so I decided to [ study ] broadcast journalism.
Where did you go to school? I went to Syracuse University. An amazing place and an amazing education. I majored in speech communications and rhetoric and minored in broadcast journalism. photography by Lisa Bruno
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Did you ever get in front of the camera in broadcast news? I did. I started my very first local TV news job at an outlet called World Monitor, which was located in Boston and owned and operated by The Christian Science Monitor. And they were trying to become CNN at the time. They were building this big international broadcast news empire, and that was built and kind of ended over the course of three years. I didn’ t end up trying to find that first TV news job at the beginning of my career because my dad had passed away unexpectedly, and I didn’ t want to leave home and not be with my mom, so that had all worked out. Two years down the line, we were both ready for us all to fly a little bit more independently, and I landed my first real local TV news job in Portland, Maine, at WMTW. I was a freelance reporter, but I was living in Maine, and I did that for about six months. And at that point the news director came to me. They were starting a 5 p. m. newscast, and he asked if I wanted to get a full-time job and become a show producer. He made a deal with me. He said,‘ You can produce four days a week and you can report two days a week.’ So I did that for about a year, and then I was burned out and learned really fast that I loved producing. And I did that at Channel 8 in Portland, Maine, for a couple of years.
Tell us about your role at‘ Frontline.’ I ended up getting a brand-new job that had never existed before. No one knew what audience development was then. The idea was to think opportunistically about these important and often difficult stories that are broadcast on PBS and figure out ways to deliver them to new kinds of audiences on new platforms so‘ Frontline’ can become more than just a broadcast. I started at‘ Frontline’ in 2012.
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