Jon Addy . Communication: Broadcast and Digital Journalism

My name is Jon Addy. I am twenty years old, and I am from Philadelphia, Mississippi. I am currently a senior at Mississippi State University. For the past three years I have been studying communication with a concentration in broadcast and digital journalism. I am set to graduate this upcoming May with my Bachelor’s Degree.  

When I enrolled at Mississippi State I knew exactly what major and concentration I wanted to pursue. In high school, I had a newly found interest in videography and video editing through creating content for my high school’s sports teams. I knew this major would allow me to grow this interest into a career and life long skills along with it. I chose broadcasting at Mississippi State because of the program's known success factor, and its ability to give students great opportunities after college in their career.

I love my concentration within the Communication department because it entails all the things I was already interested in before college. I greatly enjoy videography and video editing, and that is a huge part of this major. I also love Broadcasting here because of the opportunities and experience it has given me that is necessary for any next step I will take. I am confident I will be well prepared for my first job because of my major and concentration at Mississippi State University.

While writing was not one of the things I was looking forward to entering my freshman year, I love the knowledge I have gained as a student about writing. I have also learned so much about the entire writing process, and writing for different mediums. All of this is so important to know, and to have in my skill set.

I have been given the opportunity to work on many projects during my time as a student that I have greatly enjoyed. The projects I enjoy the most are related to video content. My favorite project I have completed so far would be a commercial I produced along with a classmate. This commercial was for the BSU on campus. We were given full creative freedom, and were able to plan the entire commercial, and shoot and edit it as well. I enjoyed this project because I believe it will resemble what I will hopefully be doing after college: creating video content for clients.

My favorite part of communication is video, as I may have made obvious by the former text. I have loved video since a young age, and knew that is what I wanted to do in college and after. I greatly enjoy the aspect of creative video, and gathering creative and new angles that others don’t consider. I believe I am good at video, because of how much I naturally enjoy it, and don’t see it as work or schoolwork.

My second favorite is photography. While I do not claim to specialize in photography, I love photography, and love getting better at it everyday. I enjoy being able to capture a moment, and being able to tell a story through a single image. I hope to be able to also use photography after college as well.

While writing is my least favorite of the three categories, I believe that I am still competent in this category and able to enhance video or photo with the use of writing. Writing is something that has slowly grown on me as I do it more and more every day. I know writing is very important in everyday use, and will allow me to be better qualified for many jobs down the road, not just my first job out of college. I hope to continue to get better at writing in my last semester as a student.

I am most interested in learning about how I can enhance articles with multimedia. I have never fully considered how articles are different, with some including multimedia, and others only including text. I believe that video can be a great addition to articles, and allow people who take information in different ways to better understand certain articles they are interested in. I am also interested in learning more about longform writing, as I have only ever been familiar with short form.

My career plans include beginning my career in creative video for college athletics. I have interned with Mississippi State Athletics for the past three years within the creative video department. I believe I have enough experience, paired with my degree, to attain a full-time job in this field after graduation. This would entail creating all video content for a college sports team. This would include video content for social media such as hype videos and player features. It would also include content for in-venue video boards, such as starting lineups and other video content. This is the area of work I undoubtedly love the most, and I can’t wait to get started after graduation.

Email me at jda477@msstate.edu with any questions