Microsoft Word and Windows Paint was a, imaginative child’s dream. The small back room with lavender walls and shag carpet was the birthplace of The Mount Vista News. For 25 cents a month, Mount Vista residents could get their latest news and feature stories weekly. Sitting at the Gateway computer, chewing on a pencil and discovering all that spell check had to offer, I became a journalist.
Fourteen years later, I graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in journalism. After an internship with Playboy magazine and former editor-in-chief of the Tennessee Journalist, I was expecting the perfect beat reporting job to fall into my lap. But my confidence decreased as each newspaper folded and major media companies enforced hiring freezes.
I started the dek to record my job search as a recent graduate. Even with experience, a job in the media industry is still hard to come by. As journalism continues to evolve and the economy continues to worsen, it’s a constant uphill battle for new graduates. How do you make yourself marketable in a market that’s lost its luster? You stick to your bread and butter: writing. I started this blog not only to keep a record of my continuing job search but to also quench the thirst for reporting and news. The dek is the source for journalism news for journalism graduates.
