Early Career Panel: Where do we go from here? SRCCON 2024
Rahul Mukherjee and I hosted an early career panel at SRCCON 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had four amazing panelists, Lena Han, Emily Hood, Joe Rull, and Aditi Mukund, who shared with us their experiences entering and starting career paths in journalism product, technology, and design roles.
We talked about our first mistakes on the job, critiques of bringing aspects of tech/biz culture into journalism, and ways we've changed and developed our skills in and outside of our news organizations.
This session was inspired by several conversations I had with other early-career folks on the sidelines at conferences last year. I'm grateful to OpenNews for allowing us to make space on this year's SRCCON schedule for these discussions.
Early career panel: Where do we go from here?
Session facilitator(s): Madison Karas, Rahul Mukherjee
These days, early career ladders at the intersection of journalism and technology are often a constant mix of creating your job descriptions and being the first one at your organization with your job title or implementing your technology, and usually not knowing what work you’ll be in 6-12 months from now. At this session, we’re giving the mic to a panel of early-career journalists and technologists to reflect on pivotal moments of building their careers so far and where they see the industry and their roles in it going. (Think: kind of like an exit interview but for those who just started, mixed with Nieman Lab-style predictions coming from younger voices.)
Our panel will focus on three questions: What’s worked so far? What hasn’t worked? Where do you see things going? And will be a blend of pre-defined and open-forum questions. We invite other early-career attendees, and especially those in mid- to late-career, to come listen and ask questions. We hope this panel surfaces tension points those beginning their careers are experiencing and how those later in their careers or managers can support them, as well as prompts more places for early-career input on discussing innovation in the industry.
