From School to a Career for Alumni Andrea Adams

PRESS RELEASE

Point Loma Nazarene University

Contact: Julie McKibben

Point TV: Channel 23 Marketing & Promotions Mgr.

Advisor: Alan Hueth (619) 849-2358

Date: October 16, 2011

Written by: Julie McKibben

From School to a Career

            Students’ at PLNU work hard to pass their classes and learn all they can so they can graduate and find exceptional jobs. For alumni Andrea Adams, finding that job after college happened sooner than expected.

            Andrea Adams was a Broadcast Journalism major here at PLNU and graduate class of ’11. Since her departure, Adams has successfully landed two jobs.

            Adams works at public relations firm, Scribe Communications, where she is the multimedia coordinator. Adams also writes the news for NBC in San Diego. “For Scribe, I just happened to meet my boss at the spring SPJ journalism conference. She sat next to me at breakfast, we started talking about social media and she let me know they were hiring a social media coordinator,” said Adams.  Shortly after that, Adams was hired to do social media and videos for clients.

            When it comes to NBC, Adams interned there for a semester and was added to the pool of writers on her last day.

            Having two jobs is a lot of work but Adams seems to be able to handle them very well. “Typically, I'll spend 5 hours a day, Monday-Friday, at Scribe doing PR work. There, I'll update clients' Facebooks, Twitters, Wordpress blogs, etc. and research and experiment with emerging media,” said Adams. She also writes, shoots, and edits videos on whichever topics the clients choose. Adams said it has a backpack-journalist-style.

            When Adams isn’t with Scribe Communications she is working her shifts at NBC. “ . . . I go to NBC for 5 or 9 hours. I'll write VOs and VO/SOTs for producers, finding new or archive video and writing to that,” said Adams.  

            Every job has its struggles and for Adams, she said that with Scribe the hardest part is trying to keep up on all the new social media trends. “I have to constantly read the latest blogs and such on the topic and figure out which ones will benefit clients.”

            With NBC, Adams said she struggles writing creatively up against a deadline. “When you have a lot of time, you can take your time coming up with fun leads. However, when you have just a few hours and a lot of stories, you have to crank them out pretty fast,” said Adams.

            However, with the hardships of a new job, there are also many benefits. For Adams, working at Scribe has helped her gain more knowledge about public relations. Adams said, “I'm [now] very familiar with how things run and the purpose of PR.” At NBC, Adams has improved on her writing and learned the “ins and outs of building a news cast.”

             Adams said she wants to continue to work for these companies for a year, however, after that she wants to apply to be an on-camera reporter in a small market.

            In the end, Adams discusses the importance of networking. She said, “take every opportunity you can to network. Go to events, go to conferences and take every chance you have...even if it may not be what you expected or wanted necessarily.”