Meredith O’Hara

It’s been a year and a half since I graduated; I’m the producer for a morning show on the #1 radio station in Calgary and I love it. It’s not the job I thought I would have at this point but it’s a great job in a great city. But my road to this job had a few more curves than I had expected.

When I graduated in the spring of 2008 I had been turned down by all of the Irving papers I applied to and missed out on getting one of the two CBC summer internships. My lease lasted until September and there was enough school money left to pay the bills.

I had done some fill-in work for the CBC and I knew I wanted to work in radio but had more experience working in print.

Jacques Poitras photo

I got a part-time job reading the news and reporting on weekends for the Astral Media radio stations in Fredericton. At the same time I was still filling-in at the CBC, which was fine with the other radio station as long as I stayed off air so I worked as the Associate Producer for Information Morning when needed.

That’s where I found out I loved working behind the scenes as a producer, booking guests and focusing on the big picture of a daily show. A lesson I would have missed if I had gotten one of those summer internships. I was also freelancing for [here] magazine and working as a teacher’s assistant for the third year radio class at STU.

It was hectic and tiring. My shift at the private radio station was normally 5 a.m. to noon and with so many people asking for my time I often worked seven days a week. But I made money, I gained more experience in radio and I was working as a journalist.

I did get a couple of job offers along the way but they just didn’t seem right so I trusted my gut and turned them down.

And I was happy (most of the time) working part-time and on a casual basis. It was nice not to work 9-5 and be tied to only one company. I was feeling out my options, public vs. private, print vs. radio, on-air vs. production. And, as time went on things started to come together. A space opened up at CBC and it became mine. I quit the private stations and started reporting for CBC Radio. It wasn’t a permanent job and month to month I didn’t know how much I would work but it was enough.

I continued applying to full-time jobs but the recession had begun and no one was hiring.

I loved CBC. I was learning and reporting on real stories for Canada’s national broadcaster in one of the best newsrooms I’ve been a part of.

Then the recession caught up with the CBC and they were laying people off. As a casual employee with barely a year’s experience I knew any permanent employee who lost their job would be first in line for fill-in work. So I started thinking about what I wanted to do next.

I had planned to leave the Maritimes for work once I graduated; I was just waiting for a job opportunity to come along. But the job offers hadn’t come and I decided it was time to move and try my luck once I got somewhere new.

The greatest lesson I learned at St. Thomas was a confidence in my skills. I knew how to find and tell stories and as long as I could do that I would be fine. I moved to Calgary where both my boyfriend and I had family to sponge off  while we got set up. I also knew that I might end up doing exactly the same thing in Calgary that I was doing in Fredericton, filling in and freelancing for anyone who would pay me, but that was the risk.

I got settled, worked a couple days at CBC and took an unpaid internship at Metro (the free daily). I figured it was a chance to get to know the city and get published in Calgary.

Steve MacGillvray photo

This whole time I was networking like crazy, talking to and meeting with anyone in the business who would give me a chance. It was how I got my work in Fredericton and it worked again.

Two months after I moved, a producer’s job opened up at a private News/Talk radio station and I had met with their news director the week before. They called me to submit my resume for the job and I was hired the next week.

I’m not doing everything I was trained to do. I’d like to get out in the field more, mix tape and produce documentaries, but it’s a great first job, chasing and booking guests for a show in one of Canada’s largest markets. It’s called “The Morning News with Bruce Kenyon” and it’s on AM 770 CHQR.

If you want to be in journalism you can be. It may take some time to get that full-time work you want, doing exactly what you love but that doesn’t mean this isn’t the field for you. A very smart professor once told me you have to give journalism two years and if by then you aren’t on the road you want to be then maybe something else would be a better fit. As the months click by and my two year mark gets closer, I’m happy with the road ahead.

Meredith O’Hara class of 2008

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Posted by The Beacon on Feb 19, 2010. Filed under From the field. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.