I’m Christine McClellan from Prairie Public, a PBS and NPR member station based in Fargo, North Dakota. I started at Prairie Public in 2016 in a Community Engagement role, which has evolved into my current position as Digital Communications Specialist.
In college, I majored in journalism, which had me studying writing, design, media, and web development. I spent a lot of my free time in college at the campus radio station, where I hosted a music show and later worked as the marketing director, organizing station events and managing social media and other promotions.
My job at the radio station led me to apply for a radio internship at Prairie Public the summer before my senior year. The connections I made during my internship, along with having a newfound passion for public media, helped me land a full-time job at the station about a year after graduation. I was hired at Prairie Public as the Community Engagement Coordinator, where my job focused on organizing community events, communicating with viewers and listeners, sending press releases, and assisting in our social media management.
I was enjoying the social media aspect of my job, so I became increasingly interested in helping develop our station’s digital presence, and my supervisor encouraged me to pursue it. I revived and redesigned our two weekly e-newsletters that had been on a hiatus, started creating videos and other social-first content, worked with our radio director to develop some of our weekly segments into podcasts, and worked with a team to move our website to a new platform. (Shoutout to Bento!)
Over time, my role slowly became more focused on digital. In 2019, I participated in PBS’s Digital Immersion program, a professional development experience that connected me with some amazing people at PBS member stations around the country, and offered extensive courses on social media, content creation, goal-setting, and more. The program gave me the tools and guidance to better communicate our station’s digital needs with my coworkers and management, demonstrate the relevance of data and analytics, and exercise best practices for digital content creation.
Shortly after my completion of Digital Immersion, my title was changed to Digital Communications Specialist to better reflect what my job had become. I am still doing all my community engagement duties, along with maintaining our website, creating social media posts and content, tracking and reporting analytics for all our platforms, and working cross-departmentally on various digital efforts.
In my role, I enjoy the process of collaborating with coworkers on a project, then seeing it come to fruition. A recent station-wide project that comes to mind was hosting Antiques Roadshow in 2019. Beyond the actual day of the Roadshow taping, where my (fun) job was to interview guests for social media, our station prepared for months working with the venue, recruiting volunteers, organizing a pre-party for guests and appraisers, filming a behind-the-scenes documentary, interviewing guests for a radio special, and eventually hosting a premiere party when the first episode aired. It was a team effort involving every department, and was a lot of work, but it was rewarding to see it all come together.
One of the challenges that I encounter in my role is that I tend to take on too many projects at one time. I think I speak for a lot of people in public media when I say there is hardly ever enough time or resources to do everything you want to do! It’s a challenge when amazing ideas are pitched during a meeting, but you know you have to scale it down a bit to make it work — and this rings especially true at smaller stations like Prairie Public.
With this being my first job out of college, I was nervous when I started, and worried that I’d be fired if I made even one mistake. I’d encourage my younger self to be inquisitive and ask questions when I’m confused, because there is always somebody who is happy to help. I’d tell myself to read through the posts in the PBS Facebook Groups (PBS Digital Station Solutions and PBS Social Hub) — the groups are a great resource, and it’s comforting to see that staff at other PBS stations have very similar experiences and struggles. AndI’d reassure myself it’s totally fine if you make a mistake or don’t get the results you want when trying something new — nobody will fire you, and you’ll grow from it.
For all of you, my biggest piece of advice is:
Never pass up an opportunity to learn, and continually work on improving your skills. Attend conferences, if you can! If your station, like mine, doesn’t always have the funds to send you to a conference, apply for the scholarships that are offered. And try to take away action items and ideas for when you get back to your station. Beyond going to conferences, take advantage of the webinars and online professional development material that PBS provides (including their new Virtual Learning Tracks).
I have also found that following other stations’ social media is a great way to gain ideas and inspiration. This isn’t just limited to social media strategy, but you can see the type of content they’re creating, community events they’re hosting, and more. I’ve learned that your peers at other stations are happy to connect and chat, so if you’re extra inspired about something you’ve seen, don’t hesitate to find their contact information and reach out.
I’m excited to continue developing my expertise in digital content, social media, and analytics and am happy to be doing this while working in public media. I’m still growing into my newfound role as “the digital person” at Prairie Public, and am taking my own advice to learn, push myself to step out of my comfort zone, try new ideas, and improve my skills every day. My dream is that, someday, I’ll have a team of fellow digital people to work with at Prairie Public to continue to expand our digital growth.
Looking to connect with Christine and learn more about her experience or to obtain additional career advice? Email her today at: cmcclellan@prairiepublic.org.
