Media Professional Interview: Melanie Morris

For Melanie Morris, this is exactly what happened after a summer internship on Capitol Hill turned into much more than just an experience to put on a resume. Instead, it paved the way for her future job as press secretary for U.S. Representative Allen Boyd of Florida’s 2nd District just one year after graduating from Boston University.

Lucky for her, Florida is also her home state and where her love of the media and politics began in high school.

Below are selected excerpts from an interview with her. 


Q: Did you always know that you wanted to be a press secretary or how did you first become interested in the profession?
Morris: I first became interested is when I was in high school. I worked as a production assistant for one of the local TV stations in Panama City. I would just go in the afternoons and work on the production logistics of the 5, 6, and 10 o'clock news. That’s how I first got interested in the press side of it.

Q: Where did you attend college and what did you major in?
Morris: I went to college in Boston at Boston University and I was in their College of Communication and majored in mass communication. In college, at that time, I was focusing on Internet communication and new technologies.

Q: How did this lead you to working in Washington D.C.?
Morris: I graduated with a degree in mass communication and had always been interested in politics and wanted to move closer to home…closer to Florida and find a job where I could incorporate politics and also my communications background. I got a summer internship (as a press intern) with the former Sen. Bob Graham from Florida…the summer after I graduated from college.
When my internship was over, they had a staff position open in the office…Then about two months later, their press assistant left so I applied for that job and got that job in the press office and on the Senate side they have usually about four people doing press. They’ll have a communications director, a press secretary, a deputy press secretary and a press assistant. So I was the lowest person in that office. I did that for a year.

Q: What was the most interesting part about that position?
Morris: What was great about that position was first I got to learn from 3 amazing communications professionals in Senator Graham’s office. The communications director had been the editor for CQ, a reporter for the Miami Herald and done all these things and the deputy press secretary had been a news anchor and had received an Emmy for a piece he did on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. I got to learn from them.

Q: What happens to a Senator’s press staff when he or she is no longer in office?
Morris: Well, during this time Graham announced that he was not running for president and he was not going to run for the Senate again. A lot of people left the office and moved on to other things… that opened up a lot of things for me to be able to do that I wouldn’t have normally been able to do with a full staff. When I left (his office) it was just me and the communications director in the press office.

Q: This was right out of graduating college, correct?
Morris: Yes, I graduated in 2003 and this was in 2004.

Q: What types of things were you now able to do since so many people had left?
Morris: I helped with satellite tours…which is where Graham would go to the Senate recording studio and do five minute interviews with TV stations all across Florida…I wrote press releases and speeches as well.

Q: So what led you to work for U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd?
Morris: That July I heard about an opening in Boyd’s office for a press secretary and that was just too good to pass up… he’s my congressman, I’m from the area and they were looking for someone… so in August of 2004 I started with the congressman and that’s where I’ve been ever since…

Q: So you’ve been working for him for over three years now?
Morris: Yes, it was three in August.

Q: Living and working in Washington D.C., do you feel that there is a lot of room for young people to be working on the Hill?
Morris: There are a lot of young people in D.C….it’s kind of exciting because I came from Boston which had a lot of colleges and universities and college students and then I came here and I felt like there were a lot of people here in their 20s...young professionals who were just starting out like me… behind the scenes work on the Hill is really full of young people and I think for the obvious reasons for that is that there is a salary cap… that does kind of limit staffers you can have…experts in the field who are older may be doing something in the private sector by then.. and a lot of the people, well, it’s hard to keep them.
Also I think that a lot of young people are getting more excited about politics. It’s a place where they come and there really are opportunities for entry-level positions and there is a lot of movement in offices too and you can move up quickly. What you saw with me, a press assistant job was just amazing to me and when I got the press secretary job... one person job... I thought, “oh my goodness I'm going to have to do this all by myself...can I do this?”… it’s really exciting…

Q: Do you find that it’s important your political ideologies are the same with those whom you are representing?
Morris: I think that if someone was doing my job and felt the same way as their boss...it would make it a lot easier to write things for them or talk on the record for them however, I don’t think it’s a requirement at all. It just makes it easier. Although sometimes it’s actually easier to write from one side of the spectrum or the other. While I am more aligned with Cong. Boyd’s views … usually, that is, kind of a middle of the road opinions and I think that sometimes it’s harder to message on that because the moderate opinions are not glamorous ideas or really hard stances so that may not evoke big emotions from people but its usually what people find more reasonable…

Q: What do you think today are the most challenging things in working the media?
Morris: I think that the way blogs and websites have made it so that anyone can have a loud speaker when talking about their viewpoints. They don’t always have to be correct or accurate. They can say whatever they want and a lot of people will believe it. It also seems that there are not a lot of very partisan bloggers. The blogs are either really hard to the left or really hard to the right. So someone like my boss gets bashed from both sides.
The second challenging thing about my job is just really the diversity of the district...but especially with redistricting with occurred in 2002. This district (Florida’s 2nd), you go over to Panama City and its people like my family, very conservative Republicans, and then you go over to Tallahassee and it’s more left-leaning folks. The majority (of people) is usually socially conservative and then you have to cover your rural areas.., people’s beliefs cover the whole spectrum so you really have cater your messaging. This is why, most of the time, we send press releases to individual counties or areas, not the entire district. We try to send information that they care about and is more appropriate to what they’re hearing about in their community.

Q: What is your most memorable experience in your career so far?
Morris: The first one for me was this summer. I got the opportunity to go on the U.S. House floor when they were debating one of the bills at that point in time. It was about a specific issue in one of our counties. I was the most knowledgeable about this particular issue because it had been playing out in the local press so I got to go to the floor and talk to two chairmen of House committees and their staffers. I felt like I was contributing to the legislative process in some very small way.
The second most memorable experience was after the 2006 election, staffing him (Boyd) for Hardball and I got to meet Chris Matthews.

Q: What is the most important you learned in school?
Morris: I think that no matter what career field you want to be in, but especially in a communications field, you must be a good writer. You must be a clear and succinct writer and you have to know grammar. I see people who can’t write every day and I think that no matter what you’re doing you have to be able to write well.

Q: Do you have any advice for college students today that may be interested your field?
Morris: Internships are really helpful and also… taking them seriously. When I was an intern for Sen. Graham, I had just graduated from college…I took my internship seriously…I was there on time, stayed late, and asked for more responsibility.
It couldn’t have been a better experience for me. Especially with jobs on the Hill, if you can get any sort of foot in the door... then you can go anywhere from there if you’re prepared to work hard.