Journalist Took The Weekly Road
Interview with Matt McWilliams
By Erin Dendinger

Matt McWilliams, a writer, copy editor and photographer for The Southside Messenger, first got his start in journalism when he was in college. McWilliams, a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, Va., credits his experiences as editor in chief of his college newspaper, The Hampden-Sydney Tiger, for helping him get his start in media.
The Southside Messenger is a weekly “hometown” newspaper that is based in Charlotte County, Va.  McWilliams also does broadcast work for WVTF in Roanoke, Va.
Planet Blacksburg sat down with McWilliams recently to discuss his media career.  Here is a selection of questions and answers from that interview.

Q: What was your major at Hampden-Sydney College? Do you feel it prepared you for your current line of work?
McWilliams: My Hampden-Sydney major was English, but only because there were no specializations within the English umbrella. Hampden-Sydney College didn’t offer any sort of journalism major or anything more specific, like British literature.

Sure, it prepared me for my current line of work. That’s the thing about college; you get a 400 percent return on whatever you put in. Students really make their college education whatever they want. I wanted to learn about journalism, so I learned about it, and got a 400 percent return.

Q: What sort of classes did you take in college? Did you take any journalism classes?
McWilliams: I took all sorts of classes – English literature, creative writing, author-specific courses, book-specific classes, economics, mathematics, computer science, history, psychology…everything. Of course, I took more English classes than anything, but most of it was studying literature. I did take a literary criticism course, which I think affected me more than any other class. If you haven’t yet, read Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author”… Not the best piece, but interesting enough to whet any appetite.

Q: You worked on your college’s newspaper, “The Hampden-Sydney Tiger”. What sort of work did you do?
McWilliams: I started as a lowly staff writer, reporting on symposiums and trying to take over the college. I then moved up to a copy editor … news editor and finally editor in chief in April of my junior year.

Q: How do you feel this experience affects your work today?
McWilliams: Well, that experience is really what got me started. I learned the kinds of questions to ask people in an interview, how to deal with deadlines, how to write an article that is clear, how to make a newspaper interesting to a bunch of … college kids, among other things. I believe that if you can make a bunch of … college kids want to read your paper, that is, if you can make the paper that interesting, then you can make any paper interesting enough for people to read.

Q: Would you suggest similar work experience for students attempting to enter a media related field?
McWilliams: Hell yes. If you want to work for a newspaper, work for a school paper. Like college in general, it is a consequence-free environment in which you can make mistakes and not be fired for them. At least you don’t get fired from “The Hampden-Sydney Tiger”. I don’t know how it is at Virginia Tech.

Q: What is the most important thing this experience (working for “The Hampden-Sydney Tiger”) taught you?
McWilliams: To shut my mouth. The only way to get people to talk to you about anything is to let them speak. Most people will fill silence with things that I want to hear. This came from the first interview I had with the sleaze-ball at Hampden-Sydney who is in charge of all the money the college has. I wanted to nail him with some information some guy had told me, but I talked myself into a hole and he ended up telling me exactly what he wanted me to hear and nothing more. Sometimes the best question is asked silently.

Q: Do you have any other work experiences that you feel helped you in your current line of work?
McWilliams: I worked for a monthly magazine in Krakow, Poland.

Q: You were abroad for a period of time. What did you do while you were away? Where did you travel?
McWilliams: I worked for a now defunct monthly magazine that highlighted the night life in Krakow, Poland called KrakOUT and I worked as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in the private sector. I also went abroad when I was in college. I studied at The University College Dublin, which is where James Joyce went to school. Tell me you’ve heard of Joyce?

Q: Do you recommend study abroad for students?
McWilliams: I would make the strongest recommendation I could for students studying abroad. The experience is one that is indescribable. If the money is there, go.

Q: Did you always want to work in media?
McWilliams: No, I thought that I wanted to be a teacher for a while. But teaching English in Krakow changed all that. I also thought that I wanted to be a mathematician for a while, but then linear algebra changed all that. Then I thought, as all English majors do, that I would go ahead and write “The Great American Novel” … although Philip Roth already did it. But then I reread some of the short stories I wrote for my creative writing class and realized that Hemingway, I am not. So I tried journalism and found out I was halfway good at it.

Q: When did you realize that you wanted to work in journalism? Broadcasting?
McWilliams: I realized when the editor of the Hampden-Sydney newspaper … a guy by the name of Lee Rice, told me that he wanted me to stay one night when the editors were finishing up the newspaper. He told me years later … he was also my roommate in Krakow … that he knew from the beginning that he wanted me to be the editor when I was a senior. So I guess I knew I wanted to take journalism seriously when I got that first little bit of encouragement from Lee.  Broadcasting, on the other hand, just fell into my lap.

Q: How did you find work once you graduated? Was it a smooth transition for you?
McWilliams: After I graduated, I went to Krakow, where I was trained as a teacher … then I got a job there. When I was looking to come back, this job just kind of fell into place – a start-up newspaper whose editor had just moved away … As for a smooth transition, everything is as smooth as you make it. Being nervous makes things rocky.

Q: What does your job at “The Southside Messenger” entail?
McWilliams: I write articles, edit copy, photograph events, design pages, assign story assignments to other writers and get the paper ready for publication. So, I pretty much do everything except … the finances.

Q: Your job sounds pretty intense. How do you deal with the heavy workload at “The Southside Messenger”? Do you have a lot of people working with you? And how do you handle the stress of the job?
McWilliams: I try to stay focused as much as possible … finish one thing before starting another. There are three other people who work here, but they don't have the same role as I do, so a lot of the final project is all me.

How do I handle the stress? Ask any newspaperman, I drink. Just kidding; I put the newspaper completely out of my mind when I go home. We never talk about it unless something really awful or great happened. But usually I just think about something else. Plus, I read.

Q: You also work with NPR. What does this job entail?
McWilliams: First, I don’t work for NPR. I work for WVTF in Roanoke. WVTF is a public radio station that subscribes to and uses the NPR feed – so it’s not really the same. My stories don’t make national news. The NPR feed is like the Associated Press; you subscribe to it and then broadcast it from your tower, but the station is still WVTF. I’ll get an assignment from Beverly Amsler, the Roanoke Morning Edition host, or Rick Mattioni, the newsroom editor, and go record sound from the event. Or I’ll pitch my own ideas to them and get sound for that. I take the sound home, cut what I want, record my own voice, piece it all together and send it to the WVTF server for broadcast. I’m the Southside Virginia correspondent, which should tell you everything.

Q: How did you get this job?
McWilliams: How did I get it? I e-mailed Rick Mattioni, the newsroom editor, about the possibility of reporting down here and he offered me the job. They didn’t advertise or anything, so I was really the only candidate. It was good timing that got me this one.

Q: Do you feel newspaper writing and broadcasting relate and differ from your personal experience? And how?
McWilliams: Of course. Sentences like “John Doe, a wildlife rehabilitator and recent stroke victim, runs a rehabilitation center out of his backyard, taking in animals of all shapes and sizes that need some sort of human assistance before they are released into the wild” work fine in print. Readers can reread sentences and follow clauses better. On the radio, sentences have to be short and the voice has to drive the story. So a radio announcer can’t use a bunch of clauses and commas. So, the syntax is different and the general makeup is different.

Q: Which media do you prefer working with?
McWilliams: Newspaper. I’m more comfortable with it at this point.

Q: What traits do you have that have helped you in your current line of work?
McWilliams: I’m great looking - that’s a joke. I don’t know what traits I have. Maybe I want to learn a lot. There’s a lot that I can learn about this business. Plus, I’m great looking.

Q: Where do you see yourself working in the next few years?
McWilliams: Hopefully at a daily newspaper where I can really get into the swing of things and, if I don’t get fired from WVTF, I’ll be doing that too.

Q: What advice do you have for people entering the world of media?
McWilliams: Be quiet, learn … don’t let personal feelings or politics get in the way of anything … Be fair, always be fair; tell every side of a story. Don’t blindly trust what people tell you; keep in the back of your mind that the subjects of interviews have their own agendas … Don’t let other people’s agendas take yours over.

Listen to people who know more than you do. Be as friendly as possible to everyone – make friends with two people who hate each other and keep those friendships strong. Talk to everyone … Smile, but smile with your mouth closed. Learn that you can nod at someone but not necessarily agree with them. Remember that even if you don’t think you are competing with everyone else in the newsroom, they are competing with you.

Don’t drown yourself in work. Know your goals and keep them in mind; don’t sacrifice personal things for a story. You can’t dig yourself into a hole by telling the truth. When someone asks you a question, think about why they are asking it before you answer. … Pack a lunch; Burger King gets really old after a while.

There’s nothing better than a glass of scotch while sitting in an Eames chair. So buy an Eames chair and a bottle of scotch and invite your boss over for cards when that promotion comes up