It’s common to associate age with wisdom. And that’s fair. Older people have lived longer and experienced more.
They — well, we — know things.
But one day, as your temples gray, like mine have, and your back, for no reason, feels like it’s been kicked by tap shoes, you realize that wisdom doesn’t always flow down from the elders. It bubbles up from the young.
I’ve found it’s best to hold your cup out in both directions, and hope that the wisdom of age and the wisdom of youth combine so that it overflows.
This morning, I was scheduled to speak via Zoom with journalism students at my alma mater, Bowling Green State University. (Ay Ziggy Zoomba. If ya know, ya know.) I was planning to dole out some of that trickle-down wisdom, but I knew full well that what would really connect was the wisdom of young people, folks not much older than those students.
And so I sent a Slack message (you can teach an old dog new tricks) to a handful of our younger journalists asking them to tell me what they know now compared to when they were students, what skillsets are most important to succeeding in this career and what advice they’d give to themselves just a few years ago.
And then came a fire hose of wisdom. My cup would have runneth over even if it was a supersized Stanley — which I am apparently too old to possess.
Zaria Johnson, Ideastream Public Media’s environment reporter, is 24. A Kent State University grad, she did internships in school and worked at the college newspaper and its news web operation.
“J school was like journalism with training wheels, and I feel like it gave me space to figure out what I was doing and the kind of reporter I wanted to be,” she wrote. “But it's important to always be preparing for when the training wheels eventually come off and you're doing this thing for real.”
Wisdom bomb alert!
"There are tons of things I know now that I didn't know when I graduated, mostly about trees and climate change and algal blooms. But I'll also say that I didn't really consider opportunities for continued learning after graduation," she wrote. "So I'd also advise students to consider looking for jobs that provide opportunities for continued training so they can continue to learn and grow."
Abbey Marshall, a 26-year-old Ohio University grad (OU, Oh yeah! IYKYK), covers local government for us. She used two of my favorite words when describing the skills a journalist must have: curiosity and empathy.
“Curiosity is what drives good stories, and being able to feed and satisfy that curiosity... keeps you motivated,” she wrote. “Empathy is essential… you will deal with some difficult topics and having good skills to connect with sources and real people impacted by government decisions (in my case, as a government reporter) will help you find the humanity in it all.”
Humanity. Really, it's what all storytelling is about.
Dmitri Ashakih, an Ohio Wesleyan grad (Oh what? Oh WU. IYKYK) hadn’t worked as a journalist before he came to Ideastream as a digital producer, writing our newsletter and working on our social media offerings across multiple platforms.
At 24, he has a mature perspective on work-life balance.
“Have a healthy relationship with work. When you are a student, it's easy to be consumed by studying, finishing assignments and finals. And it's even easier to sacrifice your physical and mental wellness as a result. This can quickly cause burnout and these behaviors easily transfer from college to your career as a journalist,” he wrote. “Practice having a balanced relationship with academics and your personal life now so you can be ready when you graduate and get a job. If you feel yourself getting burnout, ask yourself, ‘How much am I actually sleeping? When did I last eat a vegetable? When did I last drink water?’ The answers may surprise you.”
And one more piece of advice rings true not just for his generation, but for Gen Xers like me: "Put the phone down. ... Read books, listen to music or an audiobook, go for a walk, spend time with a friend."
Aya Cathey was at OU last year. At 22, she’s now the associate producer on the “Sound of Ideas” team.
“The most important skillset is willingness and readiness. You should be ready for anything that may come your way and not shy away from a task due to fear of failure,” she wrote. “Be ambitious, open-minded and eager to learn. All of the technical skills will come with time, but you can do anything with strong writing skills and a willingness to learn from those around you.”
My only regret about hiring these young people is that I can’t hire them again.
Anna Huntsman, who is 27, was the general manager of the campus TV station at KSU. We got her right out of college, after she interned at WKYC TV.
“Know how to be open to taking feedback and having an open mind," she wrote. "Journalism school is helpful, but you truly learn the most from just doing it every day and listening to your colleagues and mentors,” she wrote.
Abigail Bottar, 24, didn’t study journalism in school. She was a political science major at Kent State who interned for Ideastream, then got hired after graduation.
“I would tell students to trust themselves, they've worked hard to develop as a reporter — trust that and keep on building on it,” she wrote.
The most important skillset, she wrote, is curiosity.
"Always asking questions about the world around you."
Richard Cunningham, a Maryland native who graduated from the University of Missouri, is 27 and works as a producer on our engaged journalism team. Hi last job was in Los Angeles for "Marketplace."
"If I could give myself advice a few years ago, I’d tell myself to focus on people, not institutions," he wrote. "It’s important to understand how bigger changes in politics, business or culture affect people personally. If you can’t tell your neighbor how a certain piece of legislation or a new trend affects their daily life, you need to scale down your coverage."
Conor Morris has a bit more experience than the others, at 32. A former Report for America fellow wo worked at the Athens News for several years, he talked about the need to guard against burnout and to learn to use a variety of storytelling tools, from writing to data visualization to audio and video.
And he said something that needs to be said about the job we do and how it must be done.
“Not being afraid to be a pest is a good skill to learn,” he wrote, making this pest’s heart swell with pride. “Public officials are there to serve the public, and you’re there to keep them honest. Make noise when you aren’t hearing back in a timely manner, or they’re feeding you bull."
My deadline for writing this piece preceded my presentation to the BGSU students, so I can’t tell you how it went.
But I can assure you that advice from their near contemporaries will resonate much more than “back in my day” stories and complaints about my aching back, which is feeling much better after all this great advice from our young reporters.
"The Cut" is featured in Ideastream Public Media's weekly newsletter, The Frequency Week in Review. To get The Frequency Week in Review, The Daily Frequency or any of our newsletters, sign up on Ideastream's newsletter subscription page.
