Dalton Main | Sept. 18, 2011
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| Photo by Dalton Main |
| Media critic Eric Deggans talked to alumni about creating a brand, something he says is essential for journalists. |
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Deggans, who writes for the St. Petersburg Times, is a regular commentator for NPR and blogs for the National Sports Journalism Institute, focused on new media, including social media, as tools for establishing yourself as a commodity.
In setting up yourself as a unique, ubiquitous news asset, Deggans says you will be important to your employers and therefore indispensable.
“Everybody is looking for an edge,” he said, “a way to tell your boss, don’t cut me or don’t cut my salary.”
By building your credentials, you can assert yourself in the media to the point that your work becomes its own brand. When you have that brand, you can keep yourself in the mix. The problem you face, as Deggans puts it, is keeping yourself true to the ideals and values of journalism while maintaining a unique image for yourself and your work.
“We live in a world of brands. Everybody has a personal brand now,” he told his audience.
Facebook and other social networking sites have made it easy and universal to establish and portray yourself in a way that you want people to see you. This is something senior Meredith Reffner wants to learn more about.
“I’ll be graduating and looking for a job,” she said, “and I want to know how to represent myself so that what I convey in an interview is what people will see when they Google me.”
Reffner and others questioned Deggans about his brand. He began his career as a newspaper writer, but he later crossed over into several areas. In addition to his print work and NPR, he contributes to CNN, FOX, MSNBC and others.
He commentary focuses primarily on TV, talking about any subject ranging from fiction shows to news coverage. He spent his early career as a music writer before looking for a more stable schedule, at which point he started working as a TV critic.
To develop your own brand, he advised, decide what you brand is, decide what kind of work you want to and go for it. Don’t focus on an audience, but trust that your audience will follow you if you are doing work you want to do.
And you have to be interactive.
“The era of the detached journalist is over, and Facebook killed it,” he said.
This is a concept that students like Reffner will have to come to grips with, as she says “right now I don’t know how to use social media.” But she says she hopes to branch out and build her career on her experiences with her internship at Make-A-Wish Foundation, her experiences in school and valuable input from connections like Deggans.
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