WHAT ARE MEDIA STUDIES ALUMNI DOING?
Samantha Mehrotra ’09
I'm currently an anchor/reporter. I got my first job as primary anchor of an NBC affiliate in Williston, ND by putting together a reporter reel, which I worked on during my internships in college. A friend from St. Olaf passed along my demo tape to the station manager and that's how I got hired. In this job, I am responsible for everything—photography, sound, producing, reporting, being on-camera… I have a lot of responsibilities, but it’s an incredible experience. I am doing everything I can possibly do as a broadcast journalist. This experience has recently allowed me to move to a larger broadcasting market in Duluth, MN.
I've always been fascinated with TV. Before the advent of the internet, it was one of the only mediums where you could reach so many people...and all at once. That's always been the appeal. It's continually changing, too. We're in a 24/7 news cycle and now we're seeing social media converge with TV (twitter, facebook, youtube). There is still so much more to come!
To gain the experience necessary for this field, I took an off-campus semester to study journalism at American University and landed a series of internships: with the NBC News Political Unit in Washington D.C., NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in New York, with NBC News at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, and a CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, MN.