“If you are a creative person who
wants to make a difference in your community, you will definitely get a chance
to do that”
For the Professional
Journalist Interview and Paper, I interviewed Green Bay Press Gazette reporter
Patti Zarling. Patti has been with the paper for 9 years now and has also
worked for the Brown County Publishing Company and Gannett. She is a UW Oshkosh
grad who double majored in Journalism and Political Science and is also active
in organizations such as NEWSPA. I decided to interview Patti because she is
the education specialist for the Press Gazette and thought it would be both
interesting and beneficial to hear the thoughts and opinions of a reporter who
works closely with the Wisconsin education system. I chose to publish my
interview with Patti in a Q & A format as I thought Patti did a wonderful
job of explaining her thoughts and giving thorough and insightful answers.
Enjoy!
INTERVIEW:
If you want to tell
me a little bit about yourself and what kind of lead you to be a journalist?
Well, I was probably
one of those people who was fortunate enough to know from a young age what I
wanted to do. I’ve always liked writing – I think when I was younger, like 12,
I thought more about writing fiction, or you know, writing short stories
because that was what I was more familiar with. But my parents always read the
newspaper and watched the news and were very on top of current events, so when
I went to high school – I went to a pretty small high school – but they offered
two journalism classes, so I did take both of those. And then I went to UW
Oshkosh with a double major in Journalism and Political Science and was three
credits short of an English major but I took those classes just because they
were fun but it didn’t really pay to squeeze in one class that I could
never fit in, you know how that goes?
What is your role at
the Green Bay Press Gazette? I see that you are the Education Watchdog?
Yes, watchdog is just
kind of the title of watchdog reporter, I mean you have probably learned that
in your reporter classes; you know overseeing and making sure that everything
is in that – basically I am the education reporter, you know, I cover everything
K-12 to the three local colleges.
Do you do other
things besides the education articles? I thought I saw some of yours that was
different topics as well.
Yes, I do now. Our
staff has gotten a lot smaller over the years so we’re also required to be general
assignment reporters too – so we’re doing a lot more of that coverage than we
did a couple years ago.
Do you like that you
get to have a little more [leeway] or do you prefer focusing on the education
assignment?
Probably a little bit
of both. When you are working for a smaller newspaper, typically everybody
might have a specialty but they’re sort of general assignment reporters anyway.
But education was you know, a little more specialized but it’s nice during the
summer because their stuff with education slows down.
If you want to
describe what a typical day looks for you – I know every day probably is not
the same, but just a general overview of what you do on a day-to-day basis.
Well, for very
generally, I mean as you said, every day is different, but usually we do kind
of have a schedule pushed out and know what stories we are working on and know
kind of where we are at with those different stories—so we’re always trying to
work about two weeks ahead. So, I will usually come in, and of course with
social media, you will go through all of your emails, and then your Twitter
account and Facebook and that sort of thing. We also pay a lot of attention to
– we can now track which stories are being read on our webpage and we can track
it live and see how long people are staying in our stories. So usually I will
check on my stories first thing, to you know, kind of see how well they did and
then try to copy a link to the webpage, to the Press Gazette webpage, from my
Facebook account or my Twitter account, to kind of give it that extra boost.
Then I’ll usually have a couple of interviews scheduled throughout the day to
go to or I’ll just be working on stories from stuff that I already have done.
Then it’s always, you never know, because today I work the night shift from
2:00pm – 10:00pm (just on Monday’s) and I had been planning to write a column
about a girl who had won a penmanship award but now they are hosting this vigil
for the Orlando victims so I am just setting the column aside and I will work on
that later in the week and then I’ll go and cover this vigil so we can have the
story for our website right away and the for the print paper tomorrow.
What are the
challenges you face as a journalist?
I think part of it is
just since newspapers have gotten so much smaller and there is not as much
support staff as there used to be – I mean I guess it’s a good thing and a bad
thing. We are a lot more working by ourselves and just a lot more
responsibility in terms of having to communicate with everyone; you know you’re
having to come up with your own website headlines and your own photos. We are
involved with a lot more components of putting everything together outside of
the newspaper than we used to be. You know, you don’t just come and write your
story anymore – you are responsible for sort of all these other things because
we don’t have the staff that used to do that before. Even in terms of editing,
you have to be a lot more careful of how you write because you don’t have three
other people necessarily looking over your story.
And I think the other
thing is just, you know, the smaller staff trying to do the same amount of
coverage. You really have to pick and choose what you’re going to write about.
You can’t write about everything anymore – you just don’t have the manpower – but
that’s probably the biggest challenge.
What are the
opportunities that you have seen or been given being a journalist?
Well I mean I
definitely think I have seen my career grow over the years, you know,
definitely coming to one of the larger newspapers in the state; and then
becoming a specialist and education. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to work
with the community too – I do judge the NEWSPA which is what UW Oshkosh hosts
and I am one of the judges every year there; I help judge the Kohl’s scholarship
for all of the local people so I get to read through all of those applications.
We have an academic team that we put together which honors top area seniors and
that’s super rewarding to put all of that together so I would say that those
are some of the opportunities that come to mind.
Yeah, in my high
school I was part of the yearbook club and we would go to NEWSPA every year so
that’s definitely something I am familiar with.
Oh very cool! Yeah, I
never actually attended the event, they just send us the submissions and we
judge that. But it’s really cool to see all of the high school kids so involved.
My next question is
how do you decide if something is newsworthy – whether you are going to write a
story about something or whether you are just going to drop it . . if that
makes sense?
Well I think that is
something that comes with experience and you know, speaking in terms of
education, looking for what is going to have the widest appeal to the widest
number of people and I think experience just kind of teaches you that; in other
words, you might find it in the uniqueness. For instance, this girl winning the
national penmanship award, we think that is unique enough that it will have a
wide appeal whereas if she had just won a penmanship award from her school, we
probably we wouldn’t do a story because that would be much more focused.
And we also, just now
we can track numbers too, as well, with the internet to see what stories get
the most viewers or readers. For instance I know in DePere, Howard, Suamico or
in some of the suburbs, we tend to get stories with higher readership so we
might look for stories in those areas to do; and private schools, people like
to read about them so we will look for stories involving them.
I think that anything
that has to do with change – anything that impacts parents or families tends to
get viewers and readership in terms of education. It’s just really a sense of,
I guess, knowing what is going to appeal to our readers, just from having written
about it for years.
What are some of your
best memories working in the journalism field or a favorite memory?
I’d have to say I did
a story on housing discrimination – this was a long time ago—and somebody
called me up who was a major figure in the city and said that he thought the
story was so good that he read the entire story standing in the aisle of the
store to pay for his newspaper and I remember thinking that was pretty cool.
I felt good about,
maybe ten years ago now, there was a big tornado in the mountain area, and I
had gone up there for a number of days and did coverage on that. It looked like
almost a hurricane had gone through but the people were in such distress, and I
really got time to just hang out and talk to all of the townspeople and write
some really good personal stories. And then we had some fundraisers that we
were able to raise awareness. I just felt like they were good stories to do.
And I did a story a
couple of years ago about a mother whose son had committed suicide the first
day of his sophomore year of high school and she was telling me all of these
different thing and she had mentioned his favorite author who we then mentioned
in the story, and that author had Google alerts coming – so anytime his name
showed up in the media – and he sent me this long email of how he read the
story, and his thoughts went out to the family. We kind of talked a little bit
about how he had a friend who also had taken his own life and how he could kind
of relate to their pain. And so then I of course, sent that to the mother, and
she of course obviously very emotional about having received that letter.
Wow that’s amazing –
that’s definitely a feel good story.
Yeah that was really
cool.
How difficult do you
think it is to find a job in journalism today? I know you mentioned that
newspapers are kind of downsizing and there is not as many staff but do you
think that people coming out of college are at a disadvantage now?
It is difficult, but
I think that it has always been difficult. I have always felt very fortunate
that I found job because even when I came out of college it was difficult. If
you think about it, a town only has one newspapers whereas if you were a
banking major, there will be how many banks. I definitely think that people
that get hired are going to have amazing social media and digital skills. I
think they will be looking for people where that is like second nature whereas
someone like me, sort of has to be taught and I might offer more institutional
knowledge. But I think that for people coming right out of college it’s kind of
what they are going to be looking for.
I know we kind of
talked about this a little bit before but what do you think are kind of the
pros and cons of being a journalist?
Yeah I think we kind
of mentioned it – I think the pros are that if you are a creative person who
wants to make a difference in your community, you will definitely get a chance
to do that. It’s very much a self-motivated—it’s not really the word I’m
looking for—but it’s one of those jobs where yes they are going to hand down
things, and say, you know, ‘we need you to do this, this and this’, but the
majority of the time, they say you know, ‘you know your beat better than anyone
else, so you go out and find the stories’ and then you can kind of keep coming
up with your own story ideas and project ideas, you sort of get to do what you
want to do.
And I would say the
cons are the sort of the shrinking of the industry – it really puts us on pins
and needles, of you know, if we’re going to have a job and then I think that
for a certain level of experience, the pay is not good. You know, it’s not
terrible – I’m not complaining but you aren’t going to become a billionaire as
a journalist. So, yeah I would say that those are probably the two biggest cons.
Do you think social
media is benefiting journalism, or more or less, taking it away?
I think it’s good for
journalism, in that it gives people a lot more access to our stories. You know,
I think that a lot of people come to our stories, you know, through Facebook.
The problem is that newspapers haven’t really developed a way to make profits
off of that it. I mean, Facebook is making profits, but we’re not. And I think
that people now, expect their information online to be free and don’t expect
there to be a cost, so that obviously makes it a challenge. And I also think
that social media, you know, that people don’t necessarily realize that you
know, they say “opinions are cheap and facts are expensive” – it’s like, well,
everybody can have an opinion and maybe it makes it harder for people to figure
out what is the truth, if that makes sense.
Where do you think
journalism is going to be in the future . . . in like ten or fifty years? Do
you think there is still going to be newspapers continue doing what you are
doing now, or do you think it’s all going to be online and kind of ‘self-serve’?
Well I think that’s
the million dollar question. People far above my pay level are trying to figure
that out. I don’t know. I think – I guess if I had to give my personal opinion,
I think that there would still be a form of a newspaper, just because there are
people that like that – especially on the weekends. So I could see that – I
think that there always will be that hunger for local news. I think that the
scope is just going to be smaller and I think that it is going to migrate more
and more online.
