Q: Your name?
A: Jennifer Newton

Q: At what school do you work?
A: California State University, Long Beach

Q: What is your role?
A: Business, advertising and public relations adviser for BeachMedia, publishing the Daily Forty-Niner

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: Five years (OMG I had to do the math and can’t believe it’s been that long!!)

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: Our business team has so many great ideas for spring 2023 and beyond … most of which they came up with at, or were inspired by, the CMBAM Conference in October. A few to mention: We are developing a student discount coupon book presented by Beach Media. We’ll be hosting a bingo night sponsored by the Daily Forty-Niner at our campus bar (which just reopened after two years). We’ve been working with Beach Building Services to get our publications added to all the campus information kiosks. We got a new distribution golf cart (our last one was a death trap, lol)! We created a brand identity for the business team that encompasses all our publications but helps us stand out at the same time — Beach Media. And we’re already starting to plan a big Beach Fest event for the fall (shout out to CSUF for the idea). I’m also so excited to have our CSULB team and CSUF’s team supporting each other. We invited the CSUF Daily Titan team up to visit us in the fall, and we’ll be going down to visit them in the spring. It’s great for the students to be able to talk to their counterpart at another school to help with ideas, problem solving and just making new friends! (I guess I’m excited for a lot, lol.)

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: I never intended to be a teacher; I’ve always been a professional PR person. I kind of fell into this role … and I love it so much. It’s the best job I’ve ever had! Oh, and I also have a side hustle of restoring vintage wedding dresses and accessories (1907Bridal.com).

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: This isn’t super student media specific, but time management. Now that we’ve grown our business team to truly support many different business areas, we all get a bit overwhelmed. So, I’d love to learn about how other schools manage their projects/time, what task management systems they use, how they organize their workflow, etc.

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: I really want to go to Wyoming/Montana/Colorado area. I want to see nature and experience tons of space. (I’ve lived in crowded cities my whole life.) My favorite place to visit is at the end of each semester I take a solo trip to Desert Hot Springs / Palm Springs for two days to decompress. And it is magical!

Have a question for Jennifer? Reach out at jennifer.newton@csulb.edu

Q: Your name?
A: Betsy Meyer

Q: At what school do you work?
A: Ball State University

Q: What is your role?
A: Professional Advisor, The McKinley Avenue Agency

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: Eight and a half years as a professional — four as a student a long, long time ago

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: We have two creative service campaigns this year that really engage all divisions of our agency. One, an advertising campaign and website for the Office of Governmental Relations and the State of Indiana, to help combat “brain drain” in Indiana. The students did a proposal to win the client, a strategic communication plan and are now beginning to create the work for each strategy and tactic in the plan. Our leadership team has really come together and is doing fantastic work. I cannot wait to see the finished products.

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: When I was the front page designer at The Cincinnati Enquirer, I designed the front page when Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 500th career home run and they put the front page on T-shirts. It’s always cool as a designer to see your work published places — on billboards, etc. — but that felt a little bit like I was part of that moment in history.

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: Video – production, filming and editing. I am in charge of and advise students in all aspects of the agency: sales, creative (design and multimedia), social media and public relations. I like to be able to actually do all the work the students do and this in one area where I have zero experience or skill.

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: My favorite place (so far) is in the Munising, Michigan area of the UP on Lake Superior along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It’s beautiful. And if you’ve never see the night sky far from the lights of cities … you need to. We spend a lot of weekends camping, and I have so many places I want to go in the states, but outside of that and high on the list is New Zealand to do the Hobbiton movie set tours.

Have a question for Betsy? Reach out at ecmeyer@bsu.edu

Q: Your name?
A: Kevin Dilley

Q: At what school do you work?
A: Kent State University

Q: What is your role?
A: Director of Student Media

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: 11 years (plus five years as a student)

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: FlashLab Innovation Grants. This is a program we launched this year to give money to our media partners who come up with innovative ideas for audience engagement, content creation or revenue generation.

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: I live in a bi-cultural/bilingual household.

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: I’d like to learn more about effective philanthropy management and strategies.

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: My favorite place I’ve visited is Tomsk, Siberia. If I could go anywhere, I’d build a round-the-world trip to the 10 most interesting soccer/football venues around the world. This could range from the palaces of the sport to dusty, but important, pitches in small towns.

Have a question for Kevin? Reach out at kdilley@kent.edu.

Q: Your name?
A: Brennan Lafferty

Q: At what school do you work?
A: University of Michigan

Q: What is your role?
A: Sales and marketing adviser

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: Almost three weeks as I type this (after a career in business media)

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: Monetizing social media … and learning the latest college slang (e.g. I’m “low key” excited about this.)

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: I once covered an Ohio high school field hockey state championship match without knowing any of the rules of high school field hockey.

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: I want/need more insight into our customer. What content do they value? What about our reach interests our advertisers? Perhaps a reader and advertiser study is in our future.

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: London is amazing. Germany surprised me each time I’ve been there with how lovely it is. But Italy, Ireland and Spain are on the bucket list for my wife and me.

Have a question for Brennan? Reach out at blaff@umich.edu.

Q: Your name?
A: Tyler Sprague

Q: At what school do you work?
A: University of South Carolina

Q: What is your role?
A: Writer, photographer and event coordinator for Garnet Media Group’s Marketing Team

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: I have been in student media for two years.

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: I am most excited to plan events at Garnet Media Group. I am excited to try new ideas and themes for our housing fairs and publication launch events.

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: Even though I attend the University of South Carolina, I was born and raised in a small mountain town called Weaverville in Northern California.

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: I hope I can learn more about long-term marketing campaigns for student media publications.

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: My favorite place I have ever visited was Morocco. I was able to take a May-mester abroad there, and it was absolutely beautiful. If I could visit anywhere, it would be Italy.

Have a question for Tyler? Reach out at tylersprague03@gmail.com.

Q: Your name?
A: Sam Oldenburg

Q: At what school do you work?
A: Western Kentucky University

Q: What is your role?
A: Talisman and Cherry Creative Adviser

Q: How long have you been in student media?
A: Five years as an adviser and four years as a student

Q: What are you most excited to work on this year at your student media organization?
A: Embracing change with student leaders who weren’t even on staff when the pandemic started and working with them to figure out what our media looks like going forward.

Q: What’s a fun fact about you?
A: While I was in high school I worked as a balloon artist performing under the name Zippy the Clown.

Q: What’s something in student media you wish you could learn more about?
A: Any non-traditional events (outside of housing fairs or best of events) student media groups are holding to generate revenue

Q: What’s your favorite place you’ve ever visited, and if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?
A: Whatever national park I last camped in is my favorite place, so right now that’s the Great Smoky Mountains. I would love to travel to France and viside Claude Monet’s gardens.

Have a question for Sam? Reach out at samual.oldenburg@wku.edu.