NEW YORK CITY IBS MEDIA Experience

Jackson Volz

INTRO

This past weekend Sports Outta Pocket had the opportunity to attend the Intercollegiate Broadcasting Student Media Conference in New York City at the Sheraton Hotel in Times Square. During our travels there we attended four different panels led by professionals in the media industry. The panelists included Josh Martinez of Z100, Amy Lawrence of CBS Sports Radio, Skip Dillard of 947theblock, and Danny Lemos, a content producer at California State University. They gave us very impactful insight on what steps to take to reach or achieve our goals in the media world. But, with those steps they provided valuable information about the obstacles they had to overcome to get where they are today. This blog will show my personal experience and perspective on being at those panels in New York City.

ADVICE FROM A PROFESSIONAL

The first panel I attended was An Audience with Josh Martinez. Josh is a DJ, Producer, and Host at Z100 in New York. Josh started his radio journey with an internship at a night show. Networking and asking as many questions as possible were an advantage that he used to build up his image and learn complex material in the radio business. “There is no such thing as a bad question.” Josh also explained to us that, “Nobody is too big to reach out to.” Another piece of advice he gave us was that “To make it on radio, you HAVE to have an intriguing personality. It’s entertainment above all other aspects.” With not just building your on-air personality he gave us the other side of it when it comes to building your BRAND. When it comes to building your brand Mr. Martinez said, “Repetition is important for building your brand as well because audiences love a consistent platform that they can rely on in terms of recognition and automatic entertainment.” Creativity is key to building everything radio. With all the great feedback we received, we decided to take his advice and ask for an interview. He was a really down to earth guy and he said to be open to anything and that is how he got to today. Besides, meeting these fantastic panelists who took the time out of their day to speak with us: we got to connect and network with other High School and college students there as well. Which was eye opening because they all had different skills, assets, and pieces to their show than we do. They told us what went wrong with their show and what went right and what they did to fix it. We exchanged valuable criticism and feedback.

NEW YORK EXPERIENCE

Everything outside the conference was amazing. The Big Apple was outstanding, we got to experience New York cheesecake and pizza for the first time. We got to see an iconic Broadway show “The Lion King” which was way more detailed than any Atlanta theater show I have been to. As being from Georgia, we got to attend the Barclay’s Center, the Home of the Brooklyn Nets when they got to play Atlanta Hawks which was cool as well. Overall, besides it being cold, just the overall experience was energetic and eye opening at the same time. The atmosphere is nothing like you have ever seen before.