If you can write well then you can do anything in your career, a former reporter and editor for The Daily Record told journalism students.
Danny Jacobs, 34, started his career as a writer. Right after graduating from the University of Maryland in 2006 Jacobs began working for The Gazette. Now, Jacobs no longer finds himself reporting, instead, he works for Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures as the senior communications specialist.
Speaking to a class of journalism students at UMD, Jacobs advised students to focus on their writing skills. He also advised students to continue learning and developing new skills throughout their careers.
Jacobs received a master’s certificate in multimedia journalism from UMD where he learned to use WordPress and learned photo, video and audio editing. He said how multimedia skills were something he “thought [he] needed… in order to advance [his] career.”
Jacobs explained how this program had many older journalists enrolled in it as well. “It was really impressive to see that even when you’re older you still need to learn and evolve,” he said.
Danny Jacobs/The Daily Record
After spending over 12 years working in journalism jobs, in October 2018 Jacobs changed his career path by branching out from journalism to public relations.
Jacobs said he wanted a change of pace in his life and wanted to have more steady hours so he could spend more time at home with his family. Explaining how when working at The Daily Record he would usually get home around 7:30 p.m., now he gets home around 5 p.m.
Currently, Jacobs is also a contributing writer for Fatherly where he writes about his experiences as a young father.
Jacobs said, “If you can write well, you can do whatever you want to do in your career.”
Jacobs uses his journalism foundation in his new job at Johns Hopkins where he promotes technology to companies. Jacobs uses his copy editing skills to make things more clear and concise, he uses the inverted pyramid format while writing about events and he also uses WordPress to post on the website for Johns Hopkins.
Junior journalism student Cody Wilcox said, “I found everything that Danny said fascinating. As someone who may still be on the fences about what I would like to do, and where I want to take my experience, I thought his story was filled with great knowledge.”
Jacobs said his change from journalism to public relations was the right decision for him, adding that if you know how to write, “it’ll open doors anywhere you want to go.”