The business of journalism has changed dramatically over the years. From being trusted purveyors of information, to competing with opinion programming, social media, and unknown questionable sources, and being hounded by the doubts about fake news. In this episode of “Can You Hear Me?”, co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson discuss where things are headed into an uncertain future with special guest Beni Enas, accomplished TV producer and journalism instructor.
Beni Enas is a part-time writer and producer at ABC7. She is also currently a journalism instructor at Geneva High School and was also a former journalism professor at Northern Illinois University and Columbia College.
Mentioned Reports:
Rob Johnson [00:00:11] The business of journalism has changed dramatically over the years from being trusted purveyors of information to competing with opinion programming, social media, and unknown questionable sources and being hounded by the doubts about fake news. In this episode of Can, You Hear Me? Co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson discuss where things are headed into an uncertain future, with special guest Beni Enas, accomplished TV producer, writer, and journalism instructor.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:41] Hello, everyone, I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group. Welcome to our podcast. Can you hear me?
Rob Johnson [00:00:49] And I'm Rob Johnson, President of the consulting firm Rob Johnson Communications and former and long-time television news anchor and reporter. And it's because of this background that I am intrigued and interested in diving into this topic.
Eileen Rochford [00:01:03] Yes, Rob, you have certainly had a front-row seat to the transformation of news reporting over the last decade and even longer, haven't you?
Rob Johnson [00:01:10] Yeah, no doubt about it.
Eileen Rochford [00:01:11] Well, there's no question that the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation, along with the nearly complete shift to digital news consumption, it's forever changed what news looks like and means to each and every one of us. So today we're going to ponder the question of what is the path forward for journalists and content creators. According to the World Economic Forum, independent creators and engaged communities represent the future of journalism. WEF suggests that the economic decline for media companies that was accelerated by COVID triggered journalists to become independent content creators, whereby reporters and writers create super invested communities around local and niche interests.
Rob Johnson [00:01:55] That's right, there's a lot to unpack here with that first notion, but fortunately, I believe we have the right guest to help us do it. Beni Enas is a part-time writer and producer at ABC seven. She's currently a journalism instructor at Geneva High School and was also a former journalism professor at Northern Illinois University and Columbia College. She definitely has her finger on the pulse of the young people, the next generation of journalists, and I'm proud to say that she and I were once television colleagues. Beni, it is so nice to have you.
Beni Enas [00:02:26] Thank you so much, both of you, for having me on the show, and I'm honored to be doing this tonight.
Eileen Rochford [00:02:32] We're so excited that you could make it fit with your schedule, and that you're here to share your perspective. And I mean, Rob has his experience working with you. I have my experience working with you. But I think our listeners would really benefit from getting some contacts. Just maybe if you could fill us in about your career kind of the things that you've done and where you've landed today because I think that's a great lead-in to all of the insights you'll be able to share.
Beni Enas [00:03:01] Absolutely, Eileen. Thank you. Let me just start by saying the highlight of my career was working with Rob.
Rob Johnson [00:03:10] That $20 really paid off for me didn't it.
Beni Enas [00:03:11] Yes. Keep it coming. So I have been in the broadcasting industry for about 30 years now. I started as a high school student, having an internship at CBS 2 in New York. That's what really opened my eyes and I wanted to go into broadcasting. So I got a degree in broadcasting from Buffalo State College in New York, and my first job out was at News 12 Long Island, which is a 24-hour cable news operation on Long Island. From there I became a producer at News 12 Connecticut and was reporting on Long Island, so I was actually working seven days a week, going from one state to another state. Yeah, it was tough, but then I loved it. And like a lot of the students that I'm teaching now, that's what they do. They absolutely love it and want this as a career, so I can relate to that. From News 12 Connecticut, I went on to work at CNN in Atlanta, which was really a great experience for me. I was there during the time when Princess Diana died. President Clinton was impeached during all of these really huge news events, so that was a wonderful experience to be at CNN. From there, I moved up to Chicago and worked at ABC WLS. That's where Rob and I met, worked there for a couple of years, and from Chicago, moved west to L.A. or to Channel 1 news, which is a station that went out to high schools and middle schools across the country. So people like Anderson Cooper, Maria Menounos, Lisa Ling, they are all our Channel 1 alumni, Lauren Gigot, so I can keep dropping names all day. But most of them are very much in the industry now. So I worked with young people there as well because, as I said, it was going out to high schools and middle schools across the country. And I think that's where my love of teaching kind of was born. I came back to Chicago and started teaching at Columbia and then freelanced at NBC and CBS then ultimately started producing Chicago tonight and did shows like the Golden Apple Awards. That's where Eileen and I met and then went on to teach at Northern Illinois University. And from there ended up where I am now, which is Geneva High School, so I teach there full time. And like you mentioned, I work part-time at ABC seven writing and producing on the weekends. So I've kind of been all over, lived in a lot of states, and got to meet a lot of wonderful people. But the bottom line still has journalism in my blood and I love everything about it.
Eileen Rochford [00:05:58] Wow, that is quite a career! That's awesome. I could just talk to you all day about Princess Diana's death and Bill Clinton's impeachment, but we're not going to do that right now. But really cool. I love it. We teed up this discussion with the notion that journalism is flourishing with reporters being content creators and focusing on local or niche reporting. And since you bring that very unusual perspective, Beni, you kind of bridge both the professional journalism today's environment and the emerging journalists of tomorrow's world. What are you seeing with the young minds you come across on a daily basis?
Beni Enas [00:06:48] So at the high school level, a lot of the students are taking journalism classes because they are curious about it. And what we pitch is media production classes. So whether they're doing it to be in the news business or if they're doing it to produce films one day, whatever that is, the bottom line is they're going to need to know how video and audio and interview skills, all of those things, writing skills, all of those fundamental skills are some way going to help them, regardless of what career they end up pursuing. So I do think that high school students especially have a real keen understanding of the fact that they need to understand video and they need to understand audio and they need to understand technology. So a lot of them are taking those classes now because of that as far as being journalists and actually going into news itself. I haven't come across too many students who want to pursue that as a field, and I think if I had to guess, it would be because most of them aren't perhaps, the way we were when we were younger, they're not watching traditional newscasts. They're not reading newspapers. They really aren't. They know what's happening around the world, but most of it is from Tik-Tok. And that is the reality. So even though they may be informed by perhaps listening to the news because they happen to be passing the living room on the way to their kitchen and their parents have the news on in the background, then they get to hear something. Most of what they know is through the social media avenues that they have on their phones, and that's really how they are getting their news. So I don't think many of them are thinking that they want to be anchors behind a desk one day because they don't even have as much exposure to that world as perhaps we did when we were growing up.
Rob Johnson [00:08:50] Well, the other thing, too, Beni, that's interesting to me is you're talking about media production and we think about that prism say, 20 years ago and it was some big, clunky camera and all this equipment you had to have and because of technology and because of Tik Tok and all the things that you're talking about here. And now you see the iPhone 13 commercials, it's like, Hey, you can produce a movie on this little thing. I would think that the way that you're going about it in the classroom with these students when it comes to these production techniques has changed dramatically from the time we were coming up and we were younger in this business.
Beni Enas [00:09:26] Absolutely 100 percent. As a matter of fact, all of my beginning film production students shoot packages on their phones. My thing is storytelling. Yes, will it look better if you're using a broadcast camera? Absolutely. But nowadays, that's even debatable. Another point to make is the fact that being on TV is no longer this mystical, amazing thing. Everyone right now can get on the air. So that too has changed a lot. But as far as producing stories, nowadays, everyone can be a citizen journalist. And yes, just by using their phone, they're able to do interviews on the spot. They're able to get video on the spot, they're able to do all the things that before we used to kind of reserve for that special group of trained professionals, that really has changed a lot. So yes, even with editing there are so many apps to edit. There are desktop editing options now. So people are able to put together movies and even news packages. Those stories that go on the air that once used to be a very specialized thing that you need to be trained to do and get a degree to be able to do. A lot of people can just put that together now very easily by just using an app on their phone.
Rob Johnson [00:10:58] Isn't that the truth?
Eileen Rochford [00:11:00] And I love it because of the accessibility that represents. But it also presents some perhaps concerning issues just because of the way that information can get represented or misrepresented. Do you cover that at all in your classes with these kids?
Beni Enas [00:11:20] Oh, absolutely. I mean, our thing is you still have to be factual. You still have to be accountable for the information that you're putting out there. And at the end of the day, if you're part of something and in our case, our daily announcements show, we still have a reputation, we still have to be credible. So it's not enough to not fact-check and just give an opinion. So that's where it goes back to the fundamentals. Like I said, being able to teach students how to still write and how to still fact check and how to present a story that's balanced. And you get both sides of the story and all of those skills, they still need to be taught how to do that. And I think that they need to understand the importance of that too. So we can hand them a camera that doesn't mean that they know how to get a close up of medium or wide shot to be able to edit in a certain way where there aren't job cuts of those fundamental skills still need to be taught to students who plan on doing this for a profession, not just a hobby. So yes, absolutely. I think every journalism teacher out there will always still feel the need to teach students the ethical ways of covering stories so that we can still be responsible and not continuously having to defend ourselves against fake news allegations. Because that's really what we're up against. The credibility is what we're trying really hard to sustain
Rob Johnson [00:13:09] Sometimes when I say, getting two sources, getting both sides of the story, this stuff matters, and everybody kind of shakes their head because of the prevalence of fake news. Or if I disagree with you, it's fake news. Do you find it young people are as beholden to the truth as maybe we once were, and I'm not saying, Oh gosh, we had it all right. But we didn't have all these competing interests when we were growing up in the journalism world. And now with all of the different social media and everything else in all the ways that you can get information, whether it's true or not. Do you find that young people say the truth does matter or they say nobody else cares, I don't, either?
Beni Enas [00:13:54] Unfortunately, I think sourcing the information, it's hard to tell nowadays what is true and what is not right, so what they have access to online by Googling something I would say most of my students, anyway aren't used to necessarily having research behind the information that they're putting out there. So to them, it's wherever they get the information first. So if they do a Google search, the first two articles that are out there on the reader quickly read the first paragraph, and then they're done. And that's it.
Rob Johnson [00:14:37] And it doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter where it came from, which is kind of frightening.
Beni Enas [00:14:41] Right. That part is kind of frightening. So encouraging them to read an entire article, to take the time and to really read it and read it with a skeptical point of view. And then take that and go so far as to say, ask another question that takes you to another question that really tends not to happen. So they take what they see as that piece of information and that becomes very factual.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:09] So are you saying that they accept what they see on Google as what gets served up to them as fact without really looking into it? Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Beni Enas [00:15:22] I would say that's been my experience. I don't want to say that's the experience all across the board and everyone does that. No, I absolutely wouldn't say that.
Rob Johnson [00:15:31] We only asked you to be our guest, though.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:35] That is factual. What you're seeing is factual.
Beni Enas [00:15:38] Right, so for what it's worth, I do find myself having to tell them to take the time to really go through and read more.
Rob Johnson [00:15:49] Because really what you're talking about is not only the first two articles that pop up on Google but also knowing like if I see a trusted source and through all of my years, I know what a trusted source is and I know the both of you do as well. And if you see something else, that's something I've never heard of before and you click on it and it looks unprofessional or sketchy. Then you have to be like, Gosh, is any of this true? Or, how is this information being disseminated by these people?
Beni Enas [00:16:17] Right. And I think that more times than not, it's a time issue, they don't really feel like taking the time and making the commitment to getting to the source of it more times than not. And, in a classroom setting where I'm forcing people to go deeper and read more and really understand both sides of it. And can you write the story in a balanced way, then Yes. But other than that, I think it's faster, shorter, and more fun. That's what it tends to kind of boil down to, if it's just given to you in a fun way, then you're more likely to hear it. Listen to it, digest it. If it's given to you in a long article, I would say that 90 percent of the people aren't reading through the entire article.
Rob Johnson [00:17:21] It's fascinating and terrifying.
Beni Enas [00:17:24] Yes, it is.
Rob Johnson [00:17:26] Well, let's pivot here a little bit and talk about The commercial corporate journalism places that we've worked at for years, Beni, continue to have viable business models, we're not saying that they do, but profit margins have shrunk, the revenue pie continues to shrink and tough decisions have to be made about how to do this job, primarily because there are so many different outlets people can go to now, including social media, and they can say his is where I get my news. And as we just talked about a second ago, it may not be the most reliable source, but people don't really seem to care that much about it. What I'm really interested in, though, is seeing that certainly here in Chicago, we're now seeing a not-for-profit component to journalism. I'm talking about Block Club Chicago, which does local neighborhood reporting we were just talking about, and the Chicago Sun-Times, which was just bought out by Chicago Public Media, making it one of the largest not-for-profit news organizations in the country. Now I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but it seems like when you're talking about the current journalism model and trying to fight for those audiences and trying to fight for those ad dollars or various, and know that everybody's digital. We're a digital organization, we're not a TV station, we're digital. That's what everybody says, even though not everybody understands us. And now we're talking about clicks as well, not just eyeballs, but clicks. Do you think this is the wave of the future, though? This idea of not for profit journalism, especially seeing a couple of places in Chicago, kind of head in that direction and to find out that this may be what the future looks like, this may be where the young people that you are teaching right now are going to spend their time as the content creators, as we were mentioning earlier, as the people who are in those communities and doing that important reporting or do you think this is just a blip on the radar?
Beni Enas [00:19:20] Personally, think that just gives more avenues of opportunities for these students. There are jobs to be had, right, and so if these students are trained to have them, they're going to be able to work in any of those stations and still create the kind of content that the stations are looking for. So I feel like, if anything, that just gives more opportunities at market levels like Chicago for students and younger people to get their feet wet into just delivering news. However, at the end of the day, I still think that we're going to still have the ABCs, The NBCs, and the CBSs of the world competing for what seems to be the big news. The traditional news. I don't think that's going to go away. I do, however, think that it's on-demand all that, all the streaming. That to me is the wave of the future is that you're not waiting till 5:00 or 6:00 o'clock around the dinner table anymore. You're watching your news when you want to watch it, where you want to watch it. And it just continues to stream everywhere.
Rob Johnson [00:20:37] On your phone or your iPad. I want to find out what is happening right now. And again, you don't have to wait for them to shout from the mountaintop at 5, 6, and 10. Here's what happened today, which is the way the relationship used to be. And now it's much different than with the viewers and the consumers
Beni Enas [00:20:53] And the talking heads right. The interviews are just easier to produce than the actual stories that we're so used to doing and it's a lot easier to book two people as guests behind a desk and have a conversation than it is to actually go out and speak to people and write a story and get visuals to go together with it and create these minute 30 packages. When you can fill the air with four-minute interviews and just have people debating issues, that's just a lot more cost-effective. So I think we're definitely never getting away from that model.
Rob Johnson [00:21:30] It's really interesting.
Beni Enas [00:21:33] As a matter of fact, that is another reason why I'm training my students to do more interviews and they are even to do pieces, we actually built an interview set at our school so that they can get more comfortable with that venue because ultimately, I think that they're going to do a lot more of those live interviews and they are in the field where you come back and then you're editing sound bites.
Rob Johnson [00:21:59] Yeah. And the other thing too, I think interviewing is a real skill. And to get elicit information out of other people to have a give and take where people are telling you things that you want to hear that you want to ask them about, but also I think it keeps your mind sharp. So I think it's great that you're teaching them better interview skills because I think that's a really important skill to have. But at the same time, the whole idea of storytelling and telling a good story and getting out in the community where all this is happening, maybe if there's less of an emphasis on that. That's a little bit problematic too, don't you think? Because I think we all agree at our core that telling a good story about something or somebody interesting is always very gratifying.
Beni Enas [00:22:48] It's also memorable. When you think about the last thing you watch on the news, you're going to remember the amazing man down the street who built bicycles for all the teenagers in the neighborhood before you can remember the last debate you ever had watching on the air. Those stories are the ones that really stay with you.
Eileen Rochford [00:23:10] No doubt. I'm so intrigued that you're teaching how to interview and that you've built this set. Can you tell us more about the skills that you're cultivating now when it comes to interviewing and kind of how you're doing that? It's intriguing to me.
Beni Enas [00:23:27] Yeah. So at Geneva, we have a daily announcement show, and it used to be that we would just tell the student body exactly what was happening around school every day, and we would say that on the air. But I've turned it into a six-minute daily kind of mini newscast where the students in my other classes now all are responsible for turning packages or these little mini-stories about exciting things that students are doing. And we have one tomorrow about an elite cheerleader as a little girl with special needs who is now competing on the national level, and we did a profile piece on her. And so we incorporate those pieces into the daily newscast. And so it ends up being a six-minute like I said, a miniature show. But with that, we also do those interviews that we end up putting into the show as well. So students get to learn a little bit about storytelling and how to pitch a story. What makes for a good story? What are the good visuals, so on and so forth? They also learn how to write. Right to the video they have, they learn how to interview, how to pick soundbites, all the things that reporters do out there in the real world. And then the interviews, we don't do any editing, too, so it's kind of live to tape as well. And then once all of that is put there with visuals and it's fast-moving and so on and so forth, so the school gets more or less a small little newscast, a mini newscast every single day that airs inside in their classrooms and the teachers have to play it for them. So it's a very captive audience.
Rob Johnson [00:25:11] Very clever. To turn it into your own little newscast, though.
Eileen Rochford [00:25:15] If we were to ask your students what makes a good story? What have you been told to look for in a good story? What would they say?
Beni Enas [00:25:30] OK, for them, it would probably be something that really tugs at your heartstrings. It's always attached to a person. So people are stories. And so I think that I've really instilled in them that you can talk about an issue, for example, what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. But we tied it to a high school student who was going to join the military after high school. So the story has timeliness to it. It's about the war that's happening right now. But then you can connect when you meet your fellow classmate, who now is joining the Navy, and what that looks like through his eyes. I always just tell them its stories are about people. And if you can find a person who is a good character, then you can build on any subject after that.
Rob Johnson [00:26:31] That's so true, and I mean, it's at the core of what you still do and what I used to do and actually what I still do in terms of working with clients and that sort of thing, which is tell a good story. It doesn't matter if it's journalism or anything else. If you tell a story about somebody who's interesting and that's going to have an impact, people are going to remember that as you mentioned earlier. Because the interviews, yes, and opinion and all that sort of thing and easy to produce. I understand all of that. But the thing that you're going to remember is you see the story about that person or this person and some of the things they were dealing with because those are always the most powerful, in my opinion.
Beni Enas [00:27:11] Absolutely. I actually tell my students, Yes, it's great to want to be a broadcaster. It's good to want to be a journalist, but first and foremost, be a storyteller. And that is exactly what I tell them all the time. Be a storyteller.
Eileen Rochford [00:27:26] Great advice. I mean, no matter what profession they go into, that's a really useful skill and in so many, many ways. I'm going to guess that because you mentioned earlier, one of the main sources of information for these people may even just be Tik-Tok on any given day. I'm going to guess that you've seen some pretty interesting techniques being used in the packages they're creating. Can you think of any examples where you're like, Oh, that's inspired by this said Tik-Tok story or something else that was a cool trend? I just would love to hear a little bit about what you're seeing pop up in the packages they're creating that might be inspired by their day-to-day exposure.
Beni Enas [00:28:19] I think I probably scare them not to put any of those things out.
Eileen Rochford [00:28:22] Fair enough.
Rob Johnson [00:28:25] She's still working there. Said that so far it's worked right.
Eileen Rochford [00:28:29] I would say inspired by.
Beni Enas [00:28:33] I think that is the hardest time that my students have, and I tell them this is it is pitching a story is figuring out what makes for a story because they've never done anything like this before. And so what they're exposed to and you think about it. What is Tik-Tok? It's a person that stands in front of the camera says something for a quick 15 seconds and then you're done and that's it. So they're initially when I get my students first, then they're going to tell them they're going to be producing pieces. That's what they think those pieces are. It's just put a camera up there, say something, and be done with it. And so to have them have a completely different mindset that, oh no, it takes eight hours to produce something that's a minute 20 on the air that you actually have to go out and ask more than one question, and you have to ask them a slew of questions, some that you may use, some you may use for information. I've seen students literally go out, tell someone to say something that they needed them to say, and then walk away. That's not an interview!
Rob Johnson [00:29:38] That's really easy to edit, though, isn't it?
Beni Enas [00:29:41] Right, exactly.
Eileen Rochford [00:29:42] I think that's called fake news.
Beni Enas [00:29:45] Right. And I have to explain to them like, no, no, no, you can't write the script for them. You have to let the story unfold. And sometimes you may even be surprised that you go in and you want to imagine you're going to tell a story one way and then you find out something else interesting. And that's the better story. I mean, we have that kind of conversation, but I think what TikTok has done is really make everything look fast and simple. And so that's really shocking to everyone when they go out there and realize that this takes time and effort and energy and so on. So, yes, that's been the shock factor. I don't know if that answers your question exactly. But if they have they folded in some of those techniques they've learned? Probably not, because like I said, I don't think they'd be getting a very good grade.
Rob Johnson [00:30:42] But they had one million views on TikTok.
Beni Enas [00:30:44] Exactly. Yeah. It still doesn't get you an A though.
Rob Johnson [00:30:48] No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:50] But you did answer my question in a surprising way, which I love because it's evidence that they have been influenced. Obviously growing up with that impression just certainly these very formative years in their lives to think that 15-second thing they saw was super duper easy and somebody got it in the first cut and they were done and now have in this course, they're realizing in so many ways that that's just not life. It may look like it, but it's not really. So there's this big difference between reality and social media, which that's a lesson in and of itself.
Beni Enas [00:31:30] And to be honest, the other component of it is social media really isn't that visual. So trying to explain the TV, especially is a visual medium and that you have to also put things on the air for the eyes. So graphics and video over what you're talking about and writing to the video. So it's not enough to just come out and say there was a house fire, but you actually want video of the house fire as the person is talking about it when TikTok really isn't that visual. And I don't know how many people thought about that. It's really just that person.
Eileen Rochford [00:32:10] It's one-dimensional.
Beni Enas [00:32:13] Yeah, and so that's again, something I have to explain to the students is that when we are making television, the more traditional way of making television, you do need to not just talk about something, but you need to show what you're talking about. So to see and say medium. And that's something that surprisingly I took for granted as being obvious. And it's not.
Rob Johnson [00:32:38] No, it's not.
Eileen Rochford [00:32:40] Yeah. And saying it just doesn't make it so and particularly in that world. Yeah, I was thinking about Rob. You're talking about this a little bit that you know that on the ground coverage in places like war zones right now, all of that coverage that we're seeing from Ukraine right now and how they say, the first global war played out on global social media. And you think that's a skill in and of itself to teach future journalists. It's not enough just to get stories of people who might be here who may be influenced because perhaps they have family back in Ukraine. That's a dimension of it. But if we didn't have coverage happening there on the ground, there's no way we would really know what's going on.
Rob Johnson [00:33:29] It's very important too because Eileen and I were talking the last episode about Ukraine and that sort of thing and this war and talking about the people that are there, that are on the ground, that are doing this, reporting that are putting their lives on the line. That is those are really trusted sources of information. But in this world of social media and, questionable news, there's no telling where some of this stuff is coming from. So my point was that the people that are there, that are that you see reporting there, those are the ones you should be trusting, regardless of what your political leanings may be.
Beni Enas [00:34:09] Absolutely. Go back to the days of when CNN first showed images of the Gulf War, It changed the war significantly. It became very real for many people. And now again, years later, we can see images pretty much everywhere, any time using all sorts of different mediums. But one thing we just know is that this doesn't allow people to stay in the dark. You have to really make an effort to be there at this point.
Eileen Rochford [00:34:45] Are you talking about that in your classroom? The actual war in Ukraine and the coverage coming out of it?
Beni Enas [00:34:54] Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, as I said in that class that we do earlier in the day, it's too quick to talk about anything else because we're busy producing the daily shows. But yes, in the other beginning classes we do have conversations regarding the coverage of any big news story right outside. We have a segment called News Outside the Halls, which is just news that's happening outside of the school that students should be aware of. And I think that it's important in schools and in classroom settings. And it's not just me, it's the world language teachers. They held a fundraiser and they raised money to send to Ukraine. I think the stories that really resonate with the students are when they realize that they have students their age who are now taking up arms and fighting in a war that really resonates with high schoolers to realize that this is what's happening here and now.
Rob Johnson [00:36:00] That's real courage.
Beni Enas [00:36:01] Yeah. And a friend of mine said they had a student here who was visiting from Ukraine as part of an exchange program and then ended up going back there and now still keeps in touch with the students that he met where he was here. And it really just drives home the point that they have counterparts in another part of the world that are experiencing the world very differently than they are.
Rob Johnson [00:36:33] Agreed.
Eileen Rochford [00:36:35] Is there anything you want to share with our listeners about your perspective on kind of the future of journalism or just communicators, those who are coming through your classroom right now? I'd love to hear those are closing thoughts for this episode.
Beni Enas [00:36:51] Absolutely. So I mean, I told Rob this. I went to a convention for a student television network in Long Beach in early March. I believe it was, and there were thousands of students there who are pursuing a career or going to college for journalism. There are high school students. It's a really great organization and it encourages students from around the country to bring their equipment. They put together like an eight-hour newscast. They compete, they get awards, but they're on fire for the idea of news and journalism and the future of it. And it was really, really encouraging for all the people who say that this is just, it's dying and we're not going to have it. I looked at it and I felt very, very encouraged about how excited all of these high school students were to maybe carry this on into the next generation. So yes, do I tell them even at the college level, that yes, you'll be working overnights and you'll be working weekends and holidays and get paid nothing when you first get out?
Rob Johnson [00:38:02] And that's all true. Check, check, check.
Beni Enas [00:38:08] Right. Exactly! It's still a very viable career path. And what I say to them is now more than ever, though even if you don't want to be in front of the camera, there are so many jobs out behind the scenes as well, whether you're doing lighting or graphics or audio or technical directing. But either way, it's still production and it's still media and it's still technology, and that's not going anywhere. So I just feel like it's not just looking through the eyes of both college and high school students. And like I said, with the policy and experience as well, it's really not dying. If anything, I feel like it's growing and I feel like students more than anything else are seeing this as a real opportunity, as a fun place to work in a really important career to have because I think if nothing else, the past couple of years have really shown us how important journalism is and how it really matters.
Rob Johnson [00:39:10] That's such a great point that you're making, too, because you're talking about this. When I was pitching you this story about the future of journalism, and sometimes the subtext is, Oh, it's dying and the answer that you're giving is, no, it's evolving. And you would just come back from that conference in Long Beach and you're like, I mean, you were all fired up. You are on fire, too, because you were seeing an experience that and the perspective that you're giving us today about it. And as we talk about the ways that it's changing from the way it used to be doesn't necessarily mean that this career path is coming to an end. It just means it's evolving and it's different than it used to be. And maybe the future of it is, yes, there'll still be a place for the. But the big media, but it seems like the real growth area is going to be in some of these hyper-local and community endeavors where you can really get in there and explain things and report, news that really matters to the people who are in those communities.
Beni Enas [00:40:07] 100 percent, I mean, and either way, though, regardless, it's still all about checks and balances. It's still about having a fourth estate and someone to ask the questions that really matter and to hold people accountable. And so I think that, like I said the past couple of years if nothing else has shown that a lot of people, whether you like it or not, every time you say, Well, I heard this and I heard that, I mean, you heard it somewhere in the media. And unless you yourself went down and filed a FOIA, request yourself. Unless you did that, then chances are you have heard it from someone in the media and that's really important to realize what would life be like if you didn't have that option?
Rob Johnson [00:40:56] You filed the FOIA request and you got your answer in eight months.
Beni Enas [00:40:59] exactly.
Rob Johnson [00:41:02] Beni, it is so great to hear your voice and to have you on, and to catch up with you and to hear what you had to say. I just can't thank you enough. I know, Eileen, you feel the same way about this. You were just terrific and really shining the light on some important issues related to journalism.
Beni Enas [00:41:20] Thank you so very, very much for this opportunity. You have no idea how very honored I was to even get the call from you. Any time I just love this. This is so much fun. My first podcast was great.
Eileen Rochford [00:41:34] And thank you for carrying the torch forward as a journalist.
Rob Johnson [00:41:39] Yes, indeed, you got you, I mean, high school college still in the game you own in a big newsroom in Chicago. I mean, you're checking all the boxes in terms of the relevant experience that you have had, the relevant experience you have right now, and passing on those important values to the future journalists in America. So thanks for everything, Beni.
Beni Enas [00:42:02] Thank you very much for doing my part to pay it forward. I truly appreciate it.
Rob Johnson [00:42:06] That's beautiful. And that's going to do it for another edition of Can You Hear Me? Special thanks to our guest again TV producer, writer, and journalism teacher Beni Enas. I'm Rob Johnson, President of Rob Johnson Communications.
Rob Johnson [00:42:19] And I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of The Harbinger Group. We thank you for listening today. And remember, you can listen to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts on Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more.