Diverse Careers: Serious Critic and Creative Writer

By: Taelor Payne 

​Every spring semester, the Journalism Department at California State University, Long Beach holds an event called Journalism Day for students pursuing studying and planing to pursue careers in Journalism and Public Relations. The event consisted of three different panels. The third panel was Diverse Careers: Serious Critic and Creative Writer. The speaker was Mary McNamara who held a diverse background in the Journalism field such as working at the LA Times, working as a TV Critic, and becoming a successful Author. She provided a little background about herself and her career path of how she worked many various jobs in different career fields, and she was able to gain a lot of experience from writing. She offered helpful advice to students for them to apply to their professional and personal lives. 

Her advice included having a voice in your writing, having a plan but don't be afraid to change it, and never being afraid to take a job that doesn't make money. Her emergence of voice in writing was really great advice because it's important to include your personality in writing, especially in journalism and public relations careers. Mary also shared how work assigned to you may turn out very boring, but it's up to you to make it fun. She also said that as a writer, you want to be able to draw people in and entertain them. Mary McNamara's panel discussion left really great takeaways for students to learn from and to pass on to others. 

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