Staff writer for The Los Angeles Times in California.
What do you do in your current job?
I joined The Los Angeles Times in May of 2014 to help launch our “Real-Time News Desk,” a coordinated effort to boost our digital report by doing original reporting on breaking stories around the country, be they news, sports, entertainment, business, etc. I seem to wind up focusing largely on police policy/crime stories, but it could be anything at any moment. The point is to keep us in the mix of as many stories as possible while minimizing the amount of aggregation we do. I’m working on a couple of enterprises pieces for the metro desk as well.
Past Position:
Spent five years covering crime and police news for The Star-Ledger in New Jersey.
Most important skills used today?
Everything? Now, because I’m covering a lot of stories remotely, I tend to do a fair bit of crowd sourcing and public record scouring, so it’s good to know off the top of my head where and how to access court records, criminal history checks, campaign contributions, financial disclosures etc. Twitter has been a gold mine when something huge is breaking. Obviously I’m trying to build sources where I can, and my NJ sources have been invaluable when big news breaks in the tri-state area.
Favorite memories of TCNJ JPW program?
Oh man, working at The Signal, bar none. That place gave me an opportunity to do a lot of different things and try out a wide array of voices/approaches. I was, in the span of three years, the Entertainment Editor, Nation Page Editor and Sports editor, while I wrote a number of campus safety stories and covered local crime as well (if it effected students). My second semester junior year was particularly nuts, as we had a shooting on campus and a serial car thief ripping cars by way of skeleton key from Lot 6. The night of the shooting, I left a mixer to race to the scene, Joseph Hannan (who was eventually EiC and now runs the copy desk at The Star-Ledger) raced over from his dorm to shoot photos and Megan DeMarco had us up and running online (she was also EiC of The Signal at some point and previously worked at The Star-Ledger.) It just showed that even as students, we could compete with the established media in the area. I believe we slapped around The Trenton Times and the Trentonian on that story. The Trentonian actually stole Joe’s photo off the website and ended up having to pay him for it.
Advice for current students?
Intern everywhere and anywhere you can, work for The Signal, freelance. Take what you can get. It is not easy right now, as I’m sure you know, and the less green you look the better. The reason I got hired at the Ledger was mainly because while interning there after graduation, I volunteered to work the 5pm-1am cops shift, which no one else wanted to do. It was a foot in the door, and gave me access to a job that helped me grow exponentially while I was there. My senior year I was editing/reporting for The Signal, interned at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and took freelance assignments from the New York – Daily News and Trenton Times when I could. College is supposed to fun and it can be but you got to make yourself valuable and build yourself up while you’re there and not paying rent.