Hello Friends,
Our newest Mover & Shaker, well, she’s fantastic. You’ll meet her once, and you’ll feel like you have known her your whole life. She has a heart of gold. A resume that many academics will aspire their whole lives to attain. She’s a journalist. She’s a writer. She’s a law student. And she’s our friend, Ms. Mari Fagel.
TWT: Growing up, did you always want to have a career in journalism and law?
MF: I always knew I wanted to work in journalism. In fact, in my sixth grade yearbook I said I wanted to be a News Anchor! I worked on my high school newspaper, my college TV station and interned with various TV news stations because I was working towards a goal of being on-air after graduation. Yet, I had no idea I wanted to work in law. It wasn’t until I did a mock trial in a graduate school class advocating for pay-for-content newspapers that I realized I loved the process of researching, developing and arguing a certain position. After I realized I was interested in law too, I wanted to find a way to combine my passions and that’s when I created Your Legal Lady, a website devoted to covering headline legal news.
TWT: In today’s day in age, media plays a huge role in how the general public attains their news information. What are the drawbacks of having such information at ones fingertips? The pros?
MF: Lets start with the pros; social media has revolutionized the way readers and viewers get their content. Oftentimes, I’ll find a really fascinating article because a friend has shared it on Facebook or Twitter. Or, I’ll think about a story in a new light after reading someone else’s opinion in the comments section on various social media outlets. However, the problem with social media and information is that it gets shared so quickly, and sometimes the wrong information is shared in an attempt to be the first to break a story. For instance, in the hours after the tragic Newtown shooting, many outlets falsely reported the name of the shooter, saying at first it was Ryan Lanza, when in fact it was his brother Adam. Or immediately after the complex Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, some outlets falsely reported the individual mandate had been struck down.
TWT: What are the top three pieces of advice you’ve received in regards to your career and education?
MF:Develop a brand. When I first started in journalism, I worked as a general assignment reporter, covering everything from breaking news to feature stories. It was important to get that experience in the beginning, so that I could develop my skills. Yet, as I continued in my career, several mentors advised me to develop a brand, a specialty, an expertise that would help me stand out from other reporters. This is especially important in a time where people can get their news from anywhere in an instant because viewers are more likely to watch a story reported by someone with knowledge in that particular beat.
Learn every skill in the production chain. I am so appreciative of the professors I had in journalism school, because they emphasized the importance of learning how to produce a story on your own, from beginning to end. Traditionally, while the reporter would write the story, a photographer would shoot it, and an editor would edit the video together. Now, newsrooms are looking to hire one-man-band reporters; people who can shoot, write, and edit all on their own. Luckily, my school prepared me for this changing job market, and upon graduation I knew how to shoot, write and edit a story on deadline on my own, and that was the key to getting my first job at NY1 News, where I worked as a one-man-band reporter.
Learn how to tell a story through different medium. Another important thing my journalism professors taught me was that the story should drive the medium, not the other way around. Sometimes a story is best told through a photo slideshow, a graphic, or an audio slideshow as opposed to a written article or a short video. They taught us how to produce different types of stories, and it helped with how I now communicate with my readers and viewers.
TWT: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring bloggers?
MF: Develop a niche. If you give your two cents on everything from Kim Kardashian’s baby to the Fiscal Cliff to what you had for lunch, you’ll get lost in a sea of bloggers. Find your voice and what makes you unique. With my blog Your Legal Lady, I was able to gain a following early because readers knew exactly what to expect when they were on my site and knew where to go when they wanted to read about headline legal news. You should also be present on several different platforms. Besides writing a blog, you should share photos on Instagram, give quick updates on Twitter and Facebook, and share video content on YouTube or Spreecast.
TWT: What advice would you give to high school students and college students who have their sights set on law school?
MF: Be different and don’t do what you think you should be doing just to get into law school. I know students who have majored in Political Science not because they are genuinely interested in it, but because they think that’s what will impress admissions offices. Or, students who have interned with a big law firm right after graduation because they think that’s what looks good on an application. My biggest advice is to stand out and follow your passion. If your passion is art, then major in art history, work at galleries, and then find a way to weave that into your application. An admissions office will be much more interested by that story and what led that applicant to law school than the typical route.
TWT: Here at The Write Teacher(s), many of us work with “at-risk” youth. These students are recovering drug addicts; struggling drug addicts, teenage parents, and almost all of them come from broken homes. The struggles, demons, and anger that our students face is often a hindrance to their progress in school and life in general. Do you have any words of wisdom to offer these students?
MF: Find an outlet. Find your passion. As a teenager, for me it was the high school newspaper. For my best friend, it was the visual arts program. It’s important to try to find an activity that you actually want to invest time and energy in, that you are passionate about, and that you can see a future in. When I was stressed with schoolwork and dealing with the pressures that come with high school, the best moments were always when the latest edition of the newspaper was published, and students and faculty would read the stories I’d worked so hard on writing and editing.
TWT: In today’s economy, arts programs in schools are being cut. What reasons would you give a politician for preserving the arts?
MF: From my own experience, while I wasn’t involved in theater or visual arts in school, I was very involved in the school newspaper. As editor-in-chief, I would work on the paper nearly every day after school and on weekends once a month. Looking back, I realized that while I loved my classes and my teachers, what shaped me most in high school was my experience on the newspaper. That’s where I learned how to be a leader and how to work with others. It’s where I developed my passion for journalism, and that passion continued through and after college. Classes can only teach you so much, but it is often those experiences after-school and the extra-curriculars that stay with you years after graduation. I would want every student to experience what I did in terms of the memories I have and the lessons I learned from being on the school newspaper, whether it’s the paper, the school musical, or the band – those are experiences every student should have.
TWT: Here at The Write Teacher(s), we believe that art drives life, and theatre transforms lives. Would you agree or disagree with those statements? Why?
MF: I would say it’s the other way around, life drives art, and life inspires theater. Journalism is the art of storytelling and you cannot tell a good story without a subject that viewers can relate to, such as the parents fighting to keep their school funding from being cut, or the residents struggling to rebuild their neighborhood after a powerful storm. Those were the types of stories I reported on at NY1 and it is these stories, inspired by real life, that stick with viewers the most.
TWT: Just for fun, what’s your favorite movie and play?
MF: Favorite movie: A League of Their Own Favorite musical: Book of Mormon
TWT: Who is/was your greatest teacher?
MF: My high school journalism teacher Kathy Neumeyer.
Thank you, Mari!
Live, Love, Learn,
The Write Teacher(s)