It's Already Half-way Over!

Gerri Willis, Fox Business finance reporter, gives advice for what it takes to be a successful female in the journalism world.

The fourth day started off with us visiting Departures Magazine. Departures is publication with a very exclusive audience: American Express black card members. It covers a variety of topics: travel, fashion, food, beauty, etc. We met with Travel Editor, Jessica Flint. Jessica has been working at Departures for two and half years. Every other month a new issue of the magazine is sent to its private members, except everything October there is an issue dedicated specifically to one destination. Employees of the magazine love the idea of having an elite group of readers; She said, “It gives you better access than you could even imagine, you have a very clear idea of who your audience is, you know what they want to read.” With competitors like Travel and Leisure, T Magazine, and Wall Street Journal, Jessica feels that they are at the top of the game.

After getting insight into the magazine world, we switched gears back to the broadcasting world with Fox News Channel. We went on set with Bill Hemmer, Miami graduate turned news anchor. We were lucky enough to get the chance to watch him present the morning news with Martha Macallum. Hemmer was able to squeeze in time to meet with us and tell us about his life as a news anchor. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to ask all the questions that we had hoped for. Next we went to Fox Business, where we met up with Gerri Willis. Gerri is a business and finance reporter for Fox Business and Fox News. The hardest part of her job? Trying to navigate the changing of media; it is a fast paced industry. We learned about what it takes to be a good reporter: you have to look for what’s “sexy”, to try to get a sense of what would be the unexpected thing, and it not just about breaking the new, it’s about advancing the story. On day four, we found out the challenges journalists are constantly faced with.