Katie McWilliams’ first memory is about the news industry

My ear­li­est mem­o­ry is about news: I’m four-years-old and sit­ting on my Dad’s lap in the liv­ing room of our apart­ment in Sao Pao­lo, Brazil watch­ing Princess­es Diana’s funer­al pro­ces­sion on CNN.

Today I favor print media over tele­vi­sion or Buzzfeed‑y sites.  I haven’t watched broad­cast news in years specif­i­cal­ly since the explo­sion of the Colum­bia space shut­tle in 2003. Instead I read The New York Times mobile site almost every day, The Boston Globe and The Courant and I tune into NPR every morn­ing. I also get a sig­nif­i­cant amount of news from Twit­ter and Face­book, as well as Mash­able, Huff­in­g­ton Post and fivethirtyeight.com.

I chose to go into jour­nal­ism because I am attract­ed to research and infor­ma­tion, as well as sto­ry­telling. When my fam­i­ly lived over­seas (in Venezuela and Brazil) it was clear to me that news is how we kept con­nect­ed to the U.K and Unit­ed States—where my fam­i­ly hails from.

As the Arab Spring unfold­ed in 2011 I real­ized that break­ing news and news with a glob­al, human per­spec­tive was what I want­ed to invest in. Arriv­ing at UConn, pur­su­ing a major in Jour­nal­ism and Eng­lish seemed like a nat­ur­al choice and one that would end­less­ly engage me.

While I love the style and pres­tige asso­ci­at­ed with print for­mats and its clas­sic sto­ry­telling method, I do see my future in social media and online plat­forms. As a future break­ing news reporter (hope­ful­ly) I want to learn how to for­mat a sto­ry for suc­cess on the internet.