What is your current position and describe what you do each day.
I’m the Associate Editor of Cruise Critic, an online cruise publication owned byTripAdvisor. My roles include writing features, blog posts and news stories; overseeing social media under our public relations team; managing our theme cruising section; photo editing; and contributing to various visual projects. Unlike print, online publications produce and update content daily.
What positions have you served in the past?
Prior to this position, I was an editorial advertising coordinator for Unique Homes Magazine, a luxury real estate magazine now run by Dupont.
List the most important skills you’ve learned and how you use them in a professional setting.
Aside from everything I learned in TCNJ’s journalism program, I’m thankful for taking up a marketing minor and dabbling in communications. Being Adobe Photoshop-savvy, familiar with search engine optimization and having a thorough understanding of how other functions (such as sales) in a company work helps me do my job better.
Your favorite memories of the College of New Jersey Journalism Program.
Definitely the networking events I attended as a member of ED@TCNJ and NYWICI, as well as the professors, who remain friends and mentors until this day.
Any advice for current students, especially those who are interested in the journalism field?
Don’t get discouraged if your editor rips apart that “perfect piece” you wrote. Being a good writer doesn’t mean you can pump out a perfect draft the first time around; it means you know how to control your writing and convey the story in a way that locks in the reader, doesn’t lose their attention and leaves them begging for more. Creativity comes naturally, but clear and organized writing requires hard work and practice.
Also, make sure your resume is meticulously accurate. If you took one course that focused on HTML, list “basic HTML” rather than “HTML.” It’s easy to be brief when trying to keep your resume to one page, but the last thing you want to do is mislead a prospective employer.