Adam Pintar | March 26, 2009
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| Photo by Rachel Troy |
| H-T theater columnist Joel Pierson encouraged students to work hard at their craft as a strategy for success. |
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“It’s a good time to be a journalist,” he told adjunct lecturer Irene Bushaw’s J200 Reporting, Writing and Editing I class March 12. “There’s always going to be a need for journalists and journalistic integrity.”
Pierson has written a weekly theater column for the newspaper for six years, previewing and reviewing performances. He also writes features for other H-T products, including Business Network and Homes and Lifestyles magazines.
He offered reassurance to journalism students that there is a place for the profession and he offered tips to help them get started.
“When you know what you have to get, just get your work down,” he said. “Reread and rewrite. Have you ever met a baby who’s ready to take on the world? Unless it’s a sea turtle, no.”
The benefits are worth the work, he said. Pierson claims that being a journalist gives him the opportunity to make peoples’ lives better.
“I love to be able to write to people,” he said. “When someone comes up to me and says ‘thank you, I needed that,’ that can keep me going all week.”
A resident of Bloomington for more than a decade, Pierson balances being a journalist, arts supporter and business owner. He is artistic director for Mind’s Ear Audio Productions and is editorial services coordinator at Author Solutions, the largest print-on-demand publishing company in the world. A playwright himself, Pierson’s play, “Mourning Lori,” was produced two years ago at the John Waldron Arts Center.
“Time management is a juggling act like anything else,” Pierson said. “It’s exhausting being me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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