Cassie Jenkins

I would say hard work and being adaptable. Our industry changes so often, especially as we're seeing now, and I think my ability to be able to pick up and teach myself how to take photos, learn videography at a lower level, content creation, and how to write in different styles - from featuring flowery news versus breaking news where you're not a voice in it at all - has been crucial. Being able to learn and adapt to those things has definitely contributed to a lot of my success in staying relevant and having new roles, and not becoming obsolete. I think you have to be able to learn new things in order to stay in this career. While it's sad to some degree if you're a huge writer and you find yourself having less words to write, being able to find new ways and new fun in those new mediums really helps you be successful. It also makes it more fun when you actually find enjoyment in learning those new skills. So I think adaptability and hard work and just finding the joy in new things and new challenges has probably led to a lot of that success.

I would say learn everything that you can. Journalism is really adapting to the point where you not only need to know how to write these days, but being able to take photos, being able to learn video, being able to do even a small percentage of content creation will bring you so much farther in our industry than just focusing on one niche. Journalism is one of those things that kind of adapts with the changes of the world, and so I think the more that you know, and the more skills you've kind of mastered, the farther you'll be able to go in your career, and you'll have a lot more opportunities across varying different parts of journalism.

Definitely in general is honesty. I think that's one of the big things that cross over in my personal life, but also into my work - a big part of being a journalist is seeing the truth. But I think that was something I had long before that, so honesty is probably one of the biggest values to me. Integrity is also crucial - doing things with the right process in mind, with the right feeling in mind. I think everything that you do should have a good reasoning, and if it doesn't, you can often tell by how you feel after completing that task or doing whatever it is that you did. And just being a good person - there's a lot of bad, a lot of hate out there, and I think that if you can just be a good person and give somebody a compliment or help somebody out with a task, that can go a long way in helping the world be better. Your mental health is also better when you actually help other people.