The Lead is a podcast hosted and produced by Charlotte Norsworthy in the Cox Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management & Leadership at the University of Georgia. We talk about how to get ahead in the media industry by interviewing the people who did.

Remember how in my last post I said that I hoped to produce another compilation episode? It turns out that I was given that opportunity sooner than I expected! In this episode, I was able to highlight some key interviews I completed while at the Online News Association conference in Austin, Texas.

I was able to attend the conference after being accepted into the Student Newsroom. There, I was able to write stories about the conference, including this one about continuing journalism education past j-school.

This experience introduced me to some incredible attendees at the conference, three of which are featured in this episode of The Lead: Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter John Carreyrou, content strategist Sarah Tuley from the USA Today Network and data visualization reporter Brittany Mayes from the Washington Post.

This was the first episode I recorded outside of the Innovation Lab, which is on the first floor of the journalism building. I was able to take a couple of microphones from our kit and connect them to a Zoom portable recorder. The organizers at ONA18 were kind enough to let me crash their boardroom for my interviews, and I would edit the interviews together on my laptop at the end of each day in my hotel room.

The experience was thrilling and exhausting — two things I wouldn’t typically connect with a pre-planned podcast structure. However, I was so excited to have been given the opportunity to work in the newsroom and take advantage of the incredible journalists right in front of me for the podcast.

Check it out.