Joshua Elkins. Communication: Print and Digital Journalism or Broadcast and Digital Journalism

  I chose Broadcast and Digital Journalism mainly for the broadcasting classes since just broadcasting wasn't its own major. I wasn’t interested in the Journalism side of things at first but I’ve grown to enjoy it more and more. After taking Dr. Poe’s Intro to News Writing class, I improved my writing and I actually started to enjoy it.

I fell in love with a few things since I joined this concentration. The first thing was the teachers in this field. I’ve really enjoyed having Chris Misun as an instructor because he helped me with my editing skills and camera skills. He also helped me out with my classes when my advisor messed up some things but he is overall an amazing person. I wish I had Josh Forman as an instructor because he was my 11th grade English teacher back in high school. He was the first English teacher that actually taught writing skills while I was in high school.

The second thing I enjoyed while in this concentration was the classmates. I’ve enjoyed learning about different people’s backgrounds and history. While doing this I've made some good friends in Chance and Kellen. We started hanging out last year during our Music Video class and we’ve been clicking ever since. I hope by working in groups a lot this semester and being in my capstone class I meet more people to hangout with.

A project I’ve done in this concentration that I’ve enjoyed was the music video for the Creative Services class. We were tasked to have individual parts in the pre, post, and production of the music video. I was tasked to get the locations locked down and send out times and directions of the shoot days. This was the start of getting close with people in my concentration so I really enjoyed being a part of this class.

For my favorite out of the three given I would choose video. I’m not very good at photography and I haven’t been known for writing so video is the clear choice for me. I started writing more since joining the Communication Department and I didn’t start taking actual pictures since taking Photo Comm. I started doing video related media going back to my 8th grade year.

While my older brother was playing soccer in high school, my dad recorded their soccer games so they could use them for recruiting to colleges and for practice purposes but they didn’t like that he made comments during the games. I asked my brother if I could record the games instead of my dad and he asked the coach and he said I could. After that, I traveled with the team for the next year and recorded their games all the way to the state championship game where they won for the third year in a row.

I’m interested in learning better writing skills in the class and also building a better looking portfolio (visual vise). This class will hopefully make me a better writer and could also guide me to potentially more job offers in the sports field. Later down the road, I would like to stay in the sports field as a writer, journalist, or anything really that involves sports.

My career goals are very simple; I want to be involved in some sort of sports media. I have been involved with sports my entire life and it has taught me so many things that I’ve just fallen in love with them, mainly soccer. Like I mentioned before, I started off doing video work for my high school's soccer team which then snowballed into my career that I’m currently doing.

The head coach at my high school saw my brother watching film and liked the video quality and asked if the person that did this could film our practices and games. After that I did football for two years which then led to me doing it for the live streams at Pearl River Community College. While there, I got in contact with a production company in south Mississippi where I did camera work for them all around the coast and then in Michigan for a Keith Urban Concert.

Once leaving the community college I came here and started doing camera work for the Sports Broadcasting department. I started falling out of love with camera work while doing a few basketball games here but I found a new love in replay. I showed interest in it and now I’ve worked my way up to the head Replay Assist Operator for our bigger broadcast such as televised Basketball, Football, And Baseball/Softball games. With this experience I hope to get a job in a big city to do professional sporting events or other high level college events.

Email me at jse178@msstate.edu with any questions