Monday, February 16, 2009

Matt Paolelli: A New Breed of Journalist

Matt Paolelli is a journalist who works for a university – not a news outlet. After getting his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Paolelli became a technologies specialist, and then a web content producer for the university. By creating eye-catching content for its website, he helps spread the word of student activities, research developments and famous speakers who find their way to the school. "I was told the campus was my beat," he says, "so I pretty much cover whatever is going on."
Initially, he would go from class to class solving the many technical problems that can arise when novice college students get their hands on new technology. Last year, he decided to take what he was teaching and produce content of his own. "Working with students in Medill was great,” he says, “but I got kind of jealous of helping them with their projects and not having any of my own."
For those who think that they might be jumping on to a sinking ship by studying journalism, Paolelli says that limiting an employment search is the worst thing students can do. "Keep your options open. What I'm doing now is not strictly journalism…but the way I look at it is I'm doing features, I'm doing video features on interesting people and things at Northwestern."

Watch the video below for more on Matt Paolelli's breed of journalism

Matt Paolelli: A New Breed of Journalist from Will Storey on Vimeo.

Monday, February 2, 2009

David Ellis: Professional Panhandler


David Ellis, who graduated from Northwestern University last year, was fortunate enough to leave college with a job waiting for him at the Inter-Faith Youth Core. The bad news: he needs to raise millions of dollars for his employer during a severe recession. I spoke with him about the challenges he faces. Excerpts:

What is the Inter-Faith Youth Core?
There are a lot of organizations that focus on the race divide, the class divide, but nobody is working on the religion divide. In a world where there is a youth bulge in the most volatile places on the planet, we’re going through a period of global religious revival, and young people from different faith backgrounds are interacting with greater frequency and greater intensity, the big question is...can we learn to live together in equal dignity and mutual loyalty? We seek to create a global movement of religious pluralism among young people.

What do you do?
I work with both high and low level donors to fund our programs…last week I wrote a million dollar grant proposal.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Introduction

Name: Will Storey

Year: Junior

Major: Journalism/Poli Sci

After Graduation: Grunt work on Capitol Hill

Ten Years From Now: Press Secretary for a prominent politician