I love my job because the four walls of my office aren’t these off-white pegboard walls, a former darkroom and a door frame with no door (I should install a saloon door, huh?) The real walls are the Nottoway River, State Route 288, Fort Pickett and the Surry County line.

Between those walls, almost everything is fair game for capture with my trusty Nikons for our newspaper, The Progress-Index.

It goes without saying that every day is different in journalism. Will I wind up triple-booked at 5 p.m.?

Am I under-dressed for a meeting with the governor? (Nah. That’s what the jacket in my car is for!) Will I go to bed pondering about the fate of a shooting victim?

Last week, I followed a farmer through fields of drought-stricken crops; donned a life vest and rode in a john boat to a national wildlife refuge to meet a group of high schoolers and science teachers on a week-long canoe trip; played paparazzi (a polite one, albeit) when a movie crew came to town; visited training units at the local army base, including soldiers loading a massive C-17 plane; spent an hour in 95-degree temps at a fatal accident scene; and let’s not forget the opening game of the big youth baseball tournament.

I enjoy the challenge of busy days and challenging myself on the slow ones. There are just so many stories these four walls hold.

Nikons in hand, Pat Kane covers the stories of the Tri-Cities of Virginia as multimedia editor of The (Petersburg) Progress-Index. Pat joined the Virginia Pro Chapter Board in 2008, stepping up to serve as chapter secretary the following year. After growing up all over the globe as a Navy brat, Pat graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007 after working four years at The Commonwealth Times. 140-character insights are available @kane804.

I love my job as a freelance journalist because…

I never know where or who I will be working with each day.
I get to wear many different hats.
Each day brings on a new adventure.
Hours are what I make it or as assigned.
I work from home, the office and out in the field.
I make my own schedule.
I am my own boss.

I make sure I’m always on top of current events and pop culture.
I also make sure I’m ready for any assignment by keeping my skills up to date.
Keeping on top of all of the above is what makes me valuable to the companies I work for.

I’ve covered red carpets.
I’ve covered concerts.
I’ve covered protests.
And yes, even a Renaissance fair.

Yet, I still know there is many more stories waiting to be told…I guess I better keep my schedule clear.

Claudia Amezcua is a freelance multi-plaform reporter and production assistant based inf Los Angeles, CA. She is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton with a Bachelors in Communications, and is currently pursuing an Associates Degree in On-Air Radio Broadcasting from Mt. San Antonio College. Ms. Amezcua’s work experience includes anchor, reporter, and DJ at 90.1 KSAK in Walnut, CA, and as a freelance production and library assistant for CNN. You can follow Claudia on twitter by @ClaudiaAmezcua, or visit claudiaamezcua.com.

When it comes down to it, I love journalism because no two days are ever the same. As a journalist, you wake up every day not knowing what the day will bring, but you know it will be interesting. I am not the type of person who can sit in a cubicle all day, every day and partake in a monotonous life.

I get bored easily. Very easily.

After I decided that marine biology was not for me (it is not as glamorous at TV and movies make it out to be, trust me), I thought about what would interest me. After some careful thought (and a few beers), I decided on journalism and haven’t regretted the choice.

Journalism allows us to interact with everyday people in a different way than others can. We get to learn things and get access to things other people working normal jobs can never dream of. As a journalist, you get to talk to the movers and shakers that normal people only get to see on television or read about in your articles. Journalism is the dream job of the curious.

As I learned in my journalism classes in college, there are stories everywhere you look, you just have to know how to spot them. You have to be curious and inquisitive and as someone who looks for the meaning behind things, journalism is the perfect outlet for me.

Being in SPJ is great because professionals are always more than willing to share their experiences with students. Talking to various professionals, I often hear that one good thing about being a journalist is that when they go to social functions, they are often the most interesting person there.

And when people label you as an “interesting” person, then you know you have something going for you.

As a student who is about to graduate and is currently looking for a job, I know how difficult it can be to keep your enthusiasm while trying to find a good job, but you just have to keep trying. Do things like write a blog or try to find a freelancing gig to keep your skills sharp. Because once you find that right job for you, then you can turn that passion and curiosity into a paycheck.

And a paycheck always helps, because where else can you get paid for being curious?

Ryan Broussard is currently on his M.S. in Mass Communication with a concentration in Journalism at UL Lafayette. He graduated from UL Lafayette in Spring of 2009 with his B.A. in Mass Communication. He currently works as a freelancer covering high school sports for The Opelousas Daily World.

We have all heard celebrities during their Oscar acceptance speech say how lucky they are do to what they love. Those speeches always made me want to lose my lunch until I realized on a smaller scale, I feel the same way. It is not the glitz and glamor (both are non-existent in local tv news as a one-woman-band) that keeps me coming back for more.

This past week, I have been sitting in the media room at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center watching a murder trial via video feed a pool camera person is piping down four floors. The media room is a bunch of sad chairs, tables that have seen better days and a wall full of electrical outlets. But, it is the in between banter at the table among journalists and reporters from differing generations that reminded me why I love my job.

In this group, there is energy and passion. You can see it in the glare of an eye or the way one smiles over getting to be at events and seeing things unfold others won’t ever be privy to. We have encountered numerous instances in this case where the defense attorney has referenced his client’s underwear and the judge subsequently putting it on record that he could not believe underwear was being discussed in open court. Sounds cooky, no? It is something everyone of us here will remember and retell at a later gathering–oh and lets not forget most of us wrote about it in an online sidebar!

Reporters are like a secret fraternity and we all speak the same secret language. When one of our comrades reminisces about a judge that insisted he wore a cowboy hat during all trials in his courtroom or discovering a celibate man of the cloth was secretly married (both things I have heard this week), we feed off it, understand and impulse kicks in. Sometimes I think reporters are born and there is something in our DNA that is different than the rest of the world. Why else would we essentially be starving artists, shop the sale racks for our next on-air look, work odd hours, have tattered shoes, live states away from family and submit to a Ramon noodle budget?
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by Gabriel Kipling Tyner, Guest Gen J Blogger

Anthropology is the study of human beings, and in my opinion, TV and Film are the ultimate vehicles to translate humanity to the rest of the world. For example, documentaries are supposed to be the study of what humans are doing by documenting their real lives, real problems, and real solutions. In addition, the study of film is what we think humans are doing. Film is the study of how people react to each other, their environment, and themselves.

In films, we are trying to reproduce the human experience. As a teacher of TV and Film, I have the extraordinary privilege of sharing my passion for storytelling with the next generation.

My degree in Anthropology enables me to give my students one of the best storytelling experiences of their lives. A good storyteller will have a solid intro, sprinkled with some nice controversy, and resolving into a climax that makes you want to jump up and engage in whatever activity the storyteller wants. Getting that emotional response and teaching students about the process from beginning to end has become one of my greatest passions.

With the coming of the 21st century, there are several real life skills that students have to learn if they are going to surpass not only college, but life itself. In order to survive my class, students must learn 21st century skills that include teamwork, leadership, and communication. Teaching TV and Film is not only fun, but a a very important part of my humanity. To quote Eric Jensen, author of Brain Based Learning, “People who teach and train others make a vital contribution to the preservation of humanity”.

Gabriel Kipling Tyner is a TV and Film Teacher at Pine Crest College Preparatory School and a member of the SPJ South Florida Board.

Grab a pen and pad. Write 1-10 in the left hand column. Now, describe yourself. What do you put first? Man? Woman? Daughter? Son? I put journalist, and I’m going to tell you why that makes me so happy I can hardly contain my smile as I write this.

If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I tend to have strong feelings about…just about everything, except politics (hold your comments). I am a passionate journalist who loves getting up every, single day and going to work.

Why? And, you may be saying, do you love getting up when it’s cold and rainy? I am not a robot, I’m a journalist, so of course there are days I’d rather stay cuddled up in bed, cozy and warm, but I DO love what I do. Do you?

Being a journalist means you get to sit on the “sidelines of history,” and write the “first draft.” Being a digital media journalist and, more recently, a producer for a nationally syndicated television show, means I not only get to experience the first draft of history first hand, but I’m also part of the generation that will change the way journalism is done. And if THAT isn’t a good enough of an excuse to get out of bed every morning, I don’t know what is.
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I love my job as a newscast producer because…

Each day is different.
It is unpredictable.
An average day can turn into chaos in seconds.
I feel an adrenaline rush when there is breaking news.
I get to witness history.

I work with smart, clever people.
I know a little bit about everything.
I know things before most people.
I help people feel confident about what’s going on in their world.
It’s funny when people say “did you see it on the news?”, because I always say “yes.”

Every morning is a competition with other stations.
There’s a lot of satisfaction beating them on a story.
The next day I get to find out if people like my show better than the others.
I get to learn what people do and don’t like about news.
What I write gets people to stay through commercials.

I’ve met Drew Carey.
I’ve met Scott Pelley and Russ Mitchell.
I’ve talked to Charlie Rose., Erica Hill, and Gayle King.
I’ve been on top of the Space Needle.
I know there are many more stories to come, because I’ve done this for only 3 years.

Mike Brannen is a morning newscast producer for KSTP, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St.Paul. Before that, he was a producer at KIRO7 in Seattle, where he led the 4:30 a.m. show to a #1 share in the U.S. He received an MA in Broadcast Management from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2010 and received his Bachelor of Journalism degree the year before. He shares more about his life at mikebrannen.com and on Twitter: @MikeBrannen.

Most of my friends don’t get it. “Why are you following (insert elected officials name here) around?”

My family still sometimes doesn’t understand why when they watch a story I produced they don’t see my face on camera. “That was great Lynn, but we didn’t see you. Was that the correct link?”

And on first dates, let’s just say, they seem to think it means I work with James Bond. “So, you go undercover all the time? Hide out in vans? Cool!”

And the reality is my job is cool (or at least I think so.)

I get to write, research, shoot video, play with new interactive web tools, ask questions that make people uncomfortable but provide answers for the community and most importantly make a difference in people’s lives.

Everyday isn’t perfect and some days are more frustrating than you know: all I want is the answer to what you think would be a simple question, but after being re-directed to eight different offices, leaving voicemails and waiting for return phone calls, a day can pass by and you still may not have the answer.
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Over the years, conversations with friends and colleagues and listening to my parents friends and sometimes relatives gripe about their jobs, I have learned that a lot of people don’t like what they do. They’re working to make money to survive or they’re settling for something they fell into easily.

For those people that may be fine, but I know I would never be able to work somewhere and not love what I was doing.

As articles about how tough the news business is, pop up almost daily. As columns about how journalism is dying continue to be tweeted. And as year after year, survey after survey ranks “journalist” as one of the worst jobs a person could have, the Generation J committee has something to say: WE LOVE OUR JOBS!

Yes, I think our enthusiasm shines brightly in our blogs and our tweets daily and I like to think it’s just as contagious, this time we wanted to scream it and make sure every journalist and even those non-news people out there are hearing us loud and clear.

So, tomorrow will mark the beginning of a series of posts from Gen J committee members and young journalists working in news that will tell you why we love what we do.

These blogs will run right up to the start of the SPJ and RTDNA Excellence in Journalism Convention which begins September 19. The fun and love of journalism will continue at the convention where you can meet and mingle with the committee members and other young journalists who love their jobs.
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