BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Ah, the benefits of a liberal arts education

Keyser Soze

On 12/27/16 8:44 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 27 Dec 2016 19:07:28 -0500, Keyser Soze
wrote:

I wouldn't have been hired by a major U.S. newspaper unless I was well
along in my B.A. degree, and I wouldn't have been recruited by The
Associated Press unless I had been working for a paper and had a degree.
I was hired by the paper at a journalism honorary society dinner because
I was being inducted into the society, even though I wasn't a journalism
school major, but merely a regular contributor to the college newspaper
and a stringer for another newspaper. I learned how to write in high
school, but I learned how to write for a newspaper at the Kansas City
Star. I learned reportorial techniques in the few j-school courses I
took after completing the requirements for my English major.

===

That was a long time ago. What did you accomplish in the intervening
years, and why did you leave journalism?

I "left" journalism because I was earning about $20,000 a year and a NY
headhunter who I knew for other reasons put the head of a Detroit ad &
PR agency in touch with me. After two interviews in Detroit, I was hired
for twice the salary I received at The Associated Press. I stayed there
3-4 years, worked some big financial PR accounts. One of those was a
substantial national FHA-VA mortgage broker for which I took over
marketing and in two years brought it to the personal attention of
Walter Wriston, who directed his staff to buy the company, and ended up
doing so for $29 a share when it was trading OTC for $5 a share. You
recognize that name, I am sure. Oh, Walter was a liberal arts grad.