 Every time, weekend over nights, moved here. I didn't have, you know, on a part-time salary, I somehow found some studio apartment and worked literally well. All of my friends who just graduated were still getting together and hanging out and like having fun. I was going to work at two in the morning. I was leaving parties, going to work, working all night, going home, going to bed, sleeping on people's couch, it was so crazy, but I'm so happy that I had that experience to know how hard you really have to work if you really enjoy doing something that it doesn't just come to you. I feel like that was a really valuable lesson to me. So I stayed there, eventually I got full-time and it was still overnight. Then I got full-time and it was not overnight anymore and it was during the day and then I got promoted again and it was a step up. I was the producer of the morning show but now I'm back to overnight but I'm the one who's in charge of it. So it was a lot of like back and forth of different shifts. I got to do a lot of the different shows. Again, this was all news at the time. This is before we had the road show. So it was a lot of really hard work in kind of figuring out if that's what I wanted to do and then after I'd been there for a few years I started to wonder again if this is kind of what I wanted to keep doing and then we started the road show. So the road show, if you guys haven't seen it, is a morning lifestyle entertainment show. It's all local, it's here. And it's kind of, I call it like the anti-news. We have all good news, local things, community events, entertainment. We don't do any of the fires and car crashes and political things that the regular news does. We're kind of everything else that's going on in Rhode Island and we try to keep that as local as possible. Really spotlighting some of the great stuff that's going on around the state. To kind of just be like a nice way to start your day, make you appreciate where you are and that kind of thing. So I started doing that show and when we started I was the producer of that show and after doing that for a couple of years they named me the executive producer of the road show. So basically what I do now is before I did a lot of the actual writing of the show, blocking the show, the physical stacking of the show and now what I do is a lot of booking the guests, keeping everyone's schedules on track with all of our shoots and everything like that. And in a way I really do public relations because I'm constantly talking to people in the community either trying to get them on the show or they're trying to be on the show. So it's a lot of working with the community and generally I've gotten to know pretty much everyone in the state of Rhode Island as far as I can tell. There's probably a couple I haven't met yet but it's really granted me this amazing opportunity to kind of do an interesting hybrid of both journalism obviously and broadcast journalism but also public relations, especially now with social media and everything like that it's become so huge and I just feel really lucky to be able to do like an interesting hybrid of everything that I kind of studied here and it wasn't even something that was created at the time so it really was helpful to me anyway to take all these different classes while I was here and really get like that nice like well-rounded view of everything, you know obviously the law classes here that you know the libel and the slander and whatever like I still think back on that all the time when we're like writing stuff on Facebook and like how we word it and you know like could we get sued for that? Like should we really write that you know with anything I still actually think back to my classes here and try to like remember the big picture of everything that happened and really have been able to fortunately kind of make my own niche and what I do is not really a path anyone you know has taken before that's like okay do this and then you will do this, this and this and you'll end up here which is where you want to be. I just kind of started doing what I like doing and it led me to a place that I really am happy to yeah so I guess I'll just take questions. You guys have questions? I can answer anything from you know the best breakfast place is in Bristol to Career Path. So open floor. Go ahead. Those are the most interesting guests you've had on the room this year. Oh my gosh that is such a tough question. We've had so, so, so many. One that really really really sticks out in my mind and I know that I'll never be able to forget who was a local politician, he's still around. His name is Chris Young. You guys probably would not know who he is because he's never really made it to any sort of office that you guys would probably know about but he's constantly running for things and he ran for governor actually a couple years ago. But back, God this is probably like six years ago and I don't remember which office he was running for. We were trying to have it on all the candidates because obviously you know you don't want to have any candidate who, you know, having one candidate and then another candidate says well you didn't give me our time so we're trying to have it on all the candidates. And just very informal interviews we called the segment caught with candidates. We just tried to like get to know them a little better and more personal level as opposed to like their political views. So this guy, Chris Young, he had some very strong views and he didn't like the way that we kind of set up the interview so he was like can I bring my guitar on and we're like well no we didn't really like offer other people that much time he wanted to play a song. We were like, you know first of all we're not really equipped for that right now like we didn't plan on having you sing so we don't have the audio equipment and he was really not happy with the answer and so we were like you can't do it like you just have to do the interview and this is live TV obviously so you know we kind of just need to make it happen. So he finally agreed to just do the interview but during the interview he started asking questions and he said to my host something along the lines like you know I'd really like to take this interview in a different direction. He pulls out his iPhone and he, we didn't even know what it was he was like pulling it out and he's putting it up near his microphone and he had recorded his background music to his song on his iPhone and he started like playing it and like singing like this like all along like performance and none of us had any idea what to do because we were like it was live TV and so at this point I was in the control room and this is Zach when I was a producer and when you sit in the control room you can talk to your incursor, your host who their IFB in their ear and I remember word for word what I said to her was I have no idea what to tell you what to do right now because I really didn't like nobody has ever just started like singing and we only have you know each segment is only like three to four minutes on the shore they're quick and this guy's singing and singing I'm like I guess just try to interrupt him and like rap him we never answered any questions at all because he sang his song and you know she ended the interview very graciously as she you know is the one that's on TV so she was like well thanks so much for you know singing for us but now we're out of time and blah blah and I remember he ended the interview and it just it was like so funny to me what he said he goes I hope you learned something and like I'll never forget like you can probably Google this and find it like it was so like ridiculous that this guy just started singing instead of like you taking his opportunity to like you know get voters he gets to know him and like yeah you know like I'm a regular guy and like whatever no he like did his full blow he's been on he's gone on to go on to CNN he's crazy I mean crazy in a good way like his character but he has he's been on national news too for some of the very outlandish PR stunts he's done as a politician we ended up having him back on later too after he didn't win the election to sing with his full choir and rose to the show because it became such a like I want to say viral it wasn't viral it actually made the soup I think talks to you guys remember I don't think that show's on anymore like a couple of our segments have been on that show too it became such like a weird like locally viral video that we had him come back on after the fact to just like have his moment but so I guess he was definitely interesting to answer your question there have been a lot of interesting ones so you've been at the road show for a while now do you see yourself maybe continuing to like figure out other like morning shows or do you want to stay at the road show and support that kind of thing? it's such a hard question I feel like I have always been super career oriented like I said you know starting out in the business a lot of people don't end up staying in it because it's really hard to start a cooling hour or something like that and so I've always been very career oriented and I absolutely love the road show I'd be totally happy if I stayed there but I just can't imagine that that would be the only place that I ever am for the rest of my life so I'm sure at some point I'll do something else and move forward I feel like really fortunate that I've always kind of just been guided in the right path and have been able to do new opportunities at the time I needed them so like there was no road show and then there was and it came at the perfect time because I didn't want to do news anymore news is really grueling and it's kind of depressing and I was like ready to do something different so you know as the time ever comes when there's another great opportunity that's like really exciting and you know obviously I would only want to do something bigger and better so it's definitely possible but I don't have like some people have like a one goal in mind like I must work for the today's show like that's I don't I feel like there's so much new media now which I'm sure you guys are learning a lot about you know there's vlogs and there's podcasts and there you know but for these like great organizations that are huge and you know I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility either to kind of like do something that's more new or different or not like your traditional media because you know traditional media is great and it has its place but I feel like you know you always want to be evolving and doing something exciting something that's you know really like makes you like happy and excited to wake up in the morning I have a question I feel like a lot of people are thinking but it's kind of one of those questions that's kind of hard to ask it's juicy I know how comfortable are you with your career path in the concept of paying off your debt oh no that's what that's you're like what are you go ahead ask it what's your wallet that's what I'm paying my student loans I was gorgeous and I had to pay for like all of my college myself my parents helped out but I'm still paying off student loans and broadcast specifically does not pay well at all I mean nobody's gonna lie even tell you that it does not and public relations probably pays a little bit better but you're gonna be in debt and you're probably gonna have it for a while and you just need to manage it and like know that that's a part of your monthly budget you know you set up your automatic payments you almost forget it even happens I literally don't even remember them still paying it but I am so are you gonna have a lot of money no you're not like none of you are unless you get like I don't know I can't even imagine I still don't know you know now I have friends who've gone on I have a friend who my best friend we both were PR majors here now she works at CVS here in Nwinsake and she doesn't do PR anymore either she does like marketing and they get paid pretty well over there they you know but they work really really hard the hours are different you know you have to take your work home with you so it kind of depends on where you end up you might have less debt earlier you're not going to be I don't think anybody who ends up in kind of the communications field right off the bat is gonna be making a lot of money but I have a lot of friends who went maybe the more traditional public relations are out and they're definitely comfortable at like my age which is you know 32 they're comfortable they have you know normal nice cars they're not you know driving the same car from college or anything anymore so you know if you have to be patient life doesn't get there I know money things tough it really is for me it was more important to kind of do something I love doing than to just go find a job that pays the highest and I still do that for me personally that's way more important to me but everyone has to make their own decision on that you know if you really do something you like I feel like you care less about I'm not sure maybe get an internship I think that the I really do think that the internship for me was really important because it got my foot in the door and it was really easy for them probably to hire me because they already knew me my personality they knew that I was competent I always showed up on time even when I was an intern I was going to work at four in the morning and I was so reliable and I was always there and they knew that about me so like even if I was rough around the edges with writing once I they knew that I was like so reliable and I would work really hard that it was just a matter of teaching me the tools and stuff I remember when I this is a side note fun story for you all when I first started there at first I was like obviously very excited I was like I'm a job this is great and then I started working and it was like so hard and I was like all the writing and everything I was I thought I don't know I just thought it would be easy or something I don't really know why and I remember one of the anchors at the time we used a system we used a system called I news where we write all the scripts and there is like a messenger system within that system where you can write all the top lines to each other whatever so I was getting trained still and the girl that was training me got a top line from the anchor that was like this girl needs to learn to write better like so mean right and I saw it and I was like oh my god I'm never going to make it and I called my parents crying I was like I don't know what I was thinking I'm going to move I should move home like they're like going to calm down like it's not that serious like it just started two weeks ago like everything will get better and it did and it's just you know like I don't remember what the original question was but I thought that was a fun story yeah so yeah just the internship for me the internship for me was key because they already knew me and it was about the writing because obviously I can right now I've been there a very long time and I've been there for ten years but when I first started I didn't necessarily come equipped with all of the tools that I needed at the time but you can learn that like you know for a broadcast specifically an internship is super helpful because they get so many applications that to make yourself stand out it's good if they just already know you but also just really like being persistent and working hard and talking about what you want to cry and quit and move home with your parents kind of like push through it because the other side is a lot better and much happier and I'll love you home with my parents yep that do you feel it's necessary I don't know did you go to grad school you don't feel like it was necessary not for me I don't I'll be honest again this is a personal decision for everyone anyone can do what they want and there definitely are people who work in TV that went to grad school and you know a lot of people aren't going to probably Emerson because Emerson is a great broadcast school and get their graduate degree I personally do not feel necessary I think that it can't hurt you and if you're very passionate about it and some people really like school too that's another thing and did not I did not like school at all I loved being here I had so much fun I like going to classes and hanging out with my friends I didn't like I never have I just I don't like writing papers and like that kind of thing so I didn't want to go to any more school unless it was necessary obviously if you wanted to become a lawyer you need to continue in your education or you know architecture I think it's a lot of my friends here and one of my roommates with architecture and it's a totally different thing for communications I do not feel that it is necessary I'm sure it won't hurt you though so if that's something you want to do and you really like school like it's another thing to put on your resume I'm sure it looks good I think if you're willing to just really work hard and go for it you don't need it I really don't think it is really the best teacher so for me personally I don't feel like I wish I had gone to grad school I feel like I would have a better job or something for me it didn't I don't think I need to know for internships how many do you feel like we should have and how to go about getting that honestly I felt like if I had just started channel 12 I never would have had to do another one I did the other one first because I started panicking because it was senior year and you have to do one right is that what it is I started panicking so I took the ones people because it sounded super fun which it was I wanted to meet people from other schools and see what they were all doing and so I took that internship kind of knowing that it probably wasn't going to be the internship for me but I also think I don't know if there are opportunities when I was looking for internships I wasn't finding a lot that really spoke to me where I was like that sounds great like I really feel like I could see myself doing that I had kind of a hard time in the beginning finding an internship that really seemed like something I wanted to do as a career so I think if I had seen more internships I probably would have done more I also didn't really start looking until end of junior year so like maybe if I started I just one semester abroad so I wasn't focused on internships then like I was focused on going to Italy so I didn't really start worrying about my career life until senior year pretty much thinking about it but actually doing things off campus I was involved in a lot I think I was probably one of the first people that was in PRSSI here I don't know when it started but I feel like I was in it and it wasn't really a thing yet but I was here and I was like I want to do that I want to be in the thing so on campus I was taking as many opportunities as I could but off campus I probably could have done more honestly I don't think that an internship could ever really be a bad experience even if you don't like it because I think it would help you learn what you don't want to do which a lot of times is as if not more valuable you know because then you're like I don't want to sit somewhere and do data entry all day like that's boring you know that's not for me whatever so I think you know if you have the opportunity to do multiple internships and it fits in your schedule and you can handle it all go for it what would you say is the most difficult aspect of your career I'm a manager I think it's hard sometimes to like say the right thing and not always just what I want to say you know I haven't been a manager for super long it's something I think I'm still learning and growing at and whatever so sometimes I think I could word things a little better instead of being like reactive like I'm kind of a reactive person so I really try to like before telling people something for example if somebody has an idea I don't agree with finding the right way to communicate it is something that is a personal struggle for me I know what I like and what I don't like pretty easily so sometimes I just want to be like no you can't really do that you can but you probably won't get very far because then people are like oh she never wants to do anything you know you have to really learn to like work with people and compromise and I've actually learned a lot from so my job is a lot of what I do is working with our sales department too for the content in our show meaning that some of the people that come on pay to be on the show some of those segments can be a little bit drier than like our really fun segments and so one of the things I have to do is try to work with the sales department to make them a little more exciting interactive fun engaging etc so I've learned a lot from our sales department about how to talk to people because people who work at that I don't know if any of you are interested in sales or not but people who work in sales are the best mediators and they just always know what to say to like make people feel more at ease because that's all they're constantly doing is trying to get people to sign on to do something or to feel comfortable with something so I have really learned a lot about how to communicate with people through them because they're always being really nice like all the time and we say all the time at work our sales department and our news department they're very separate so again my job is very cool and unique in that I really get to work in both departments but there's such a separation from our news department to our sales department because they say the downstairs is like short and like you know we all have like everyone's very like no patience and like just say exactly what they think at that time because the time crunch is so different you're on such a deadline when you're working in news and the sales department is like the complete opposite so they're always like working on more of like a long term plan and like a big picture thing so they communicate in a completely different way and I have learned a lot from them so for me the communication which is ironic because you're a communications major but I bet you'll find this too communication is like the hardest thing because everyone has their own opinion but you all have to work together no matter what the job is that sort of work is like almost like a catalyst to you figuring out what you want to do um to help you figure out exactly what I was going to do there are a couple that are definitely like super memorable to me there's one in particular that really like stands out to me I guess in a way it did help me figure out how to do it was a it was a journal as a class and it was like I don't know what they called it but it was literally just like writing for papers it wasn't like the one that was the core class or whatever and my professor who I think is still here but I don't think he's here all the time his name was Ted Delaney or it is Ted Delaney he's still here okay so every time I come to campus I'm dying to run into him I've seen him out at like a Starbucks one time and I was like oh my god we need a job he was so influential to me because he's like a journalism guy it's like Alder like loves the paper he loves writing and everything like that and he's like very fun and has so many great stories so when he first takes his class as a freshman he's like easy he's so outgoing whatever he's not he's really hard so I took an elective with him thinking this will be easy I'll write some stuff it'll be like good grade whatever he literally the first class said something like I don't know why you're taking this class you're a PR major like you're not going to do the work you don't care about that whatever idea you had of me and so of course I was like like I will not so I worked so hard in that class and I got a like an A or something like I did really great and I ended up like writing for the paper here after that just to kind of like show him and in the end of course like I'm the one that I ended up like learning so much and like writing so much more and I think you know I did learn I don't want to be a newspaper writer I knew that writing for a newspaper was not for me it wasn't I don't know why but it's just I knew newspaper writing wasn't for me but I learned so much and so much about writing and I was like I actually really really like writing and like storytelling in general so I think in a way that helped guide me towards news as opposed to PR so I was like oh maybe I didn't really give like broadcast or like you know journalism a chance what I do is journalism it's just kind of a different form of it so I think that probably helped me kind of figure out what I liked and what I didn't a little bit more and you know in the end I got a good grade so it was all good everything was fine we both at the end decided we liked each other he liked me I worked hard it was you know it was good it was a movie it was great Can you describe the road show as like anti-naming? Can you talk a little bit about the the line between entertainment and like the news outlet? Absolutely so when we first started the show it was actually a great question because when we started the show we actually were using news talent just our normal morning news anchors to host the road show but because it is you know it's light it's a light show we had sponsored content what we ended up doing was holding a contest every year that we called search for a star and finding a third host who would get like a one-year contract on TV I called the top model of TV because we literally like had like five people like audition against each other and make them do stuff so it was like a boot camp for TV and they would get a year contract to be the third host of the show and they would do more of like the sponsored content so it wasn't a conflict and like they were really you know maybe like really silly stuff so in the beginning that kind of worked okay but as the show continued to grow because when we first started the show we were one of the first ones you'll see these a lot more now like across the country in local markets and even on The Today Show and GMA like I started to notice more like I can tell some of the stuff that sponsored content they do a really good job of like you can't always tell but they'll do like an outdoor segment and then they have a little commercial right after the sponsor but anyway so as the road show continued to grow and you're like oh this is like a thing like we're actually this isn't going to be off the air in a few months so this isn't you know like we're going to continue to grow this show it's doing well there's a place for it it did start to become a little bit of a conflict because you don't really want your news talent doing sponsored content doing lighter segments isn't as big of a deal but at the same time you don't want to discredit them as journalists so what we ended up doing a few years ago is just hiring talent to vote into the road show so they don't do any news whatsoever so now we are really very separate just to avoid and I you know managers who are in place right now at Channel 12 are very conservative in that way that they want there to be a clear separation every manager is not like that I watch other markets and other TV stations across the country and see what they do with lifestyle shows too and some of them have their news talent doing their lifestyle shows and you know to them it's not a conflict so I think it depends on where you are who's in charge but I think that if you keep it kind of separate it's fine even with a stage show and things like that you know big national shows Matt Lauer is interviewing the presidential candidates and he's also interviewing actors and making a table table for Easter so I guess it's just kind of up to whoever is in charge there I think that there are definitely lines that can be crossed for us it's pretty easy because our talent just does the road show so we really don't have to worry about it but it's definitely something to like for me it's something I always keep in mind even for our talent even though we only do like things there are still things that I don't want them to put out on social media or whatever like you have to think about you know your brand and the brand's the road show and their vehicles of the road show so you know you really do need to think about what you're doing all the time including in your personal life and on social media because it's not all separate anymore everything's all the same just because you mentioned social media it's my favorite subject how do you feel about people who have separate accounts for like their personal and like professional lives so for people who are are on air talent they do have separate accounts just because they want them to get verified and they want them to be tweeting so like it's part of their job so whereas even a couple of years ago I would say it wasn't part of their job so if they had their own personal thing and they wanted to tweet about work then whatever but now they are making all of our on-air talent have separate accounts so that they are specifically tweeting about what they're doing for their job what story they're working on, segments etc. I think for me I'm not an on-air talent I occasionally do things on air but I'm behind the scenes I have I don't have separate accounts for anything I just have me brand me but I wouldn't say anything on social media that shouldn't be said I think that's just common sense don't write stupid stuff on social media you can be funny, you can have a personality so you can even have an opinion I'm specifically speaking to you all now but just don't write dumb stuff or don't write inappropriate stuff because as you go on in your careers more and whatever like you're going to wish you had it because we can all I'll tell you right now when I get interns who are applying I always look up their social media to see what they're doing now and I assume you probably don't have two accounts at this point, yes I did look you up Michelle ahead of time, Michelle's one of my interns I looked them up and I've seen some of them are private and that's smart, I'll be honest that's smart but I always look up to see what people are saying, if they're just using because you're a college I don't expect you to be tweeting about I don't know a world peace but I also wouldn't want somebody to be inappropriate or vulgar if they all had pictures of them it's only pictures of them drinking obviously I know college can drink as college is but if all you have are party pictures and like stupid stuff I'm going to be like I don't know are they going to be a hard worker or are they going to be super early like Michelle comes in at 7am for her internship for me that's not early I'm literally now texting my friends at 7am that's where my life is at but in college that's abnormal so I'm looking for somebody who's going to be responsible already not get there in a few years or tweet or instagram or snapchat and I'm on them all so I will find it as Michelle will tell me Any final questions for Ashley?