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Listen as Kate chats to Molly Watson about her past life working as a BBC News Journalist and her recent career change. She currently works as a Media and Communications Officer focusing on the impact of food on climate change. In this conversation, they discuss the similarities and differences between journalism and a communications role, leaving your comfort zone and making a career change and also Molly’s thoughts on what personal qualities are helpful for a career in journalism or communications.
Molly’s Bio
I’m a media and communications officer working with Professor Sarah Bridle, communicating about the impact of food on climate change and how we can make our food system more resilient. Until a year ago I’d spent my career working in journalism, starting off in newspapers before moving to the BBC and working as a tv news producer.
Useful Links
Marketing, Advertising & PR (the Communications sector)
Professor Sarah Bridle’s website
Transcript
Kate
You’re listening to the What Do You Actually Do? podcast. Each week we want to bring you an inspiring interview, a useful tip or encouraging message to help you find your place in the professional world.
Hello and welcome to this episode of What Do You Actually Do? My name is Kate Morris, and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about working in journalism and climate communications and also career change. Today we’re joined by Molly Watson, who was a BBC News journalist and TV producer for about 18 years and has recently embarked on a career change to focus on the impact of food on climate change. So Molly, that sounds very interesting. What do you actually do?
Molly
Such a good question. So I work in communications. I work quite specifically for an academic who’s called Professor Sarah Bridle, who works at the University of York, who works on the issue of food and climate change. Looking at the sort of different environmental impacts that foods have and sort of how resilient our food system is in the face of climate change and other sorts of issues, so my job is to sort of communicate, communicate the messages around that. The big thing really is that food causes a third of all climate change. So 1/3 of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production and that’s a really important message to get out to people because the decisions that individual people make about the food that they’re eating can have an impact on that. So it’s about communicating that message and thinking about who to communicate it to and how to communicate it and the best sort of methods for that.
Kate
How do you go about doing that then? What are the sort of key elements of your actual role?
Molly
So there’s sort of a few different things. I mean, the sort of key thing is that Sarah Bridle is a really good communicator herself. She speaks really well and she’s very passionate about the subject and obviously incredibly well informed, having done lots of research in the area, so part of it is about making sure that Sarah has the right platform on which to get out that message. So that might be if she’s done a new piece of research, it might be media relations. It might be trying to place a story in the newspapers or on TV or radio. Thinking about what the right audience is, it might be trying to get her onto podcasts depending on sort of what audience these podcasts are reaching. But it’s also as well as media work. It’s also Sarah has a lot of different projects she works on which are involved in all sorts of issues. So like one of them is about creating educational resources for kids that are connecting the idea of food and climate. So telling children and helping them engage and learn about the fact that the food that they eat has an impact on the climate. And so it’s about working out how to get these resources used by schools and the sort of working out where the best sort of contacts for making sure that these resources are in the the best place and sort of used widely and also communications can be… like, here’s a big sort of funded project which is looking at bringing researchers together with people right across. the food system working in food and farming and looking at how food and farming can transition for net zero in the UK. And so for that it’s much more about sort of practical like, well, there’s all these members in this project, you know, there’s sort of more than 1600. So how are we going to communicate to them? Are we going to have a newsletter or you know, we need to redesign the website because the website isn’t really explaining what we do properly or, you know, running social media channels. What are the best social media places to be and thinking about how we use those channels? So it’s a massive sort of different range of activities, but all of them are sort of centred on the idea that you’re trying to bring people together and explain to them what you’re trying to do and sort of communicate to them and tell stories, really about this big issue and why it’s important.
Kate
So are you actually making those resources for school children and writing those news letters and kind of shout outs on social media or whatever? Or are you coming up with a strategy that these things would be good things to do, or is it like a mixture of both?
Molly
It’s a mixture of both, really. I mean, I definitely don’t come up with the resources because there’s this really amazing team of researchers. There’s this project called take a bite out of climate change and there’s sort of researchers who are working right across the UK, who’ve been working on this project and sort of pulling in people who work in education and sort of other areas to create them. So with that it’s more about sort of public engagement my role and working out how to get them into the right hands. In terms of sort of in other areas, yeah, I sort of manage the social media channels. That’s sort of it’s mainly sort of things like X and LinkedIn and less on Instagram and I work with a couple of other people on sort of doing things like, you know, working out how we should be sending out the newsletter and what should be going in it. I’ve been working on redesigning the website so it’s sort of strategy, but then also putting that strategy into effect.
Kate
What was your sort of starting point, where did your interest in climate communications come from?
Molly
I guess I always had an interest at school, you know, doing geography. I always had an interest in climate but it wasn’t until about probably about five years ago. I was working at the BBC as a TV news producer, and there was a scheme right across, I think it was probably right across the whole of news where everyone had to go on a climate change workshop and it was, you know, half an hour like you got sort of dashed away from your desks and what you were doing for half an hour and you went and sat in the room with 10 other people and it was led by this guy, and he sort of ran you through the basics of climate change, so everything from you know, sort of like looking at the sort of projected models, but but talking a lot about the sort of future implications of climate change in terms of, you know, this is what might happen to the world and if this happens on a climate basis, then, this is what will happen on a social basis. So you know migration will start to happen around the world as people begin to be unable to live in certain places and be able to make a livelihood and that will have this sort of impact and this will lead to social conflict and I sort of sat in that stuffy meeting room and I, even though I’d been, I guess I’d, you know worked on, although I was a general news journalist, I’ve worked on a lot of climate stories before. I sort of had this moment where I was like my God, you know, this is such a massive fundamental issue which is going to completely change the world and it would be this, you know, this is sort of something that I want to work on specifically and I’d say sort of from that seed that’s sort of how I ended up where I am now.
Kate
So that sounds like it had such a massive impact on you, it really sparked your interest. What parallels have you found between the sort of journalism and production work that you did and what you’re doing now with climate communications?
Molly
So people always say that a lot of people move from journalism into communications, like it’s quite a well worn path. A lot of people who leave journalism move into communications because people always say that the sort of fundamentals are the same. So in journalism, you’re essentially, identifying a good story, you know what’s a story that is going to resonate with people that is going to interest them, that’s going to spark an emotional engagement and sort of you know, thinking about who your audience is. Like you might be working on a local newspaper where you’ve got a very sort of specific local audience or, you know, you might be working on a specialist business programme or and you know, not every story will work for every audience. So as a journalist, you’re constantly thinking about sort of, what’s a good story and who your audience is, and also how you’re going to tell that story. So those things definitely crossover into sort of communications and also you know just the fundamentals of journalism being able to write clearly and communicate clearly translates obviously into communications, so I think that sort of the core things that you need for both career are the same. But in terms of the practical sort of stuff that I do now on a day-to-day level, it’s completely different from what I was doing before apart from the writing I guess.
Kate
What are those key differences then?
Molly
So, I mean there’s so many and it sort of depends. Obviously journalism can mean a huge amount of things like you could be, you know, a newspaper journalist who’s churning out news stories all day. You can be a radio journalist. You could be a, you know, digital video journalist who’s filming and editing your own stuff. So what I was doing for the majority of my career was TV news. So you’re in that role, you’re basically doing sort of one of two things, you’re either creating a piece of TV for a news programme that day. So like, you know, a sort of anything in between, a sort of two to five minute news package. Or you are building a programme. So you’re thinking about what all the different stories are going to be in that programme you’re writing what the presenters are going to say, you’re thinking about the headlines and you’re sort of tying it all together. Most producers who work on programmes are sort of doing one of those two things, they’re either looking at the whole structure of the programme, or they’re working on an individual element of that programme, and so, you know, if you’re creating a piece of TV, then your day is almost in a way, it’s almost quite formulaic like you know that you’ve probably got a reporter or a correspondent. You’ve got to find some people to interview. You’ve got to get a camera crew to the right place to do those interviews. You’ve got to have some pictures in order to put in your package. Have you got those pictures already, or do you need to go out and film them? What graphic do you need? If you need one in order to explain this story in a particular way, and then you need to edit it altogether, either yourself or with the picture editor and obviously that changes every day depending on what the story is, you’re going to tell your story in a different way and you know, one day it might be sport and the next day it might be a court story or the next day. It might be a feature, but ultimately those are the kind of things that you’re thinking about and you’re kind of doing that day in, day out. You don’t really do anything different apart from make TV or create the programme or write the programme. Whereas what I do now is completely different in the fact that you know I used to come in every day and each day would be new, but I would leave at the end of each day having created something, whereas now obviously my projects are much more long term, you know if I’ve been redesigning a website and that sort of might take months and you’re sort of, you know, you’re doing bits here and there. I’m also working remotely, sometimes I’m at the University of York, but I’m not working sort of in tight teams every day so I’d say that’s one of the really big differences is the sort of the way you work with people. It’s much more sort of self driven and independent now compared to how you work in TV, which is very sort of close knit teams.
Kate
It’s so interesting to sort of have those two experiences. So for many people, sort of a successful career in journalism, which is what you had, that’s living the dream, working for the BBC. What led you to make this career transition? I appreciate you had that light bulb moment with the real passion and interest for the climate, but actually then making these massive changes in your life and in your career. What led you to actually do it?
Molly
So I think in jobs I’ve always just wanted to do a job that interests me at that moment. Like for me I’ve done quite a lot of sideways moves because I’ll do a job and I’ll find it really interesting and then I’ll think, oh, actually, I really want to do that job and I’ll sort of move on to a different programme or whatever. I felt like I had done quite a lot of really interesting jobs at the BBC, like worked on really interesting programmes like I worked on the Children’s News Programme Newsround and I’d worked on Newsnight and then I went and worked at the 6:00 and 10:00 News for about 6 years and you know, they’re all really different, but really interesting programmes. So I kind of felt like I’d done sort of quite a lot of interesting stuff and I had always sort of had it in the back of my mind that I didn’t want to spend the whole of my life doing that and at some stage it would be good to do something different. Then as a family, my husband and I and our kids decided that we wanted to move up to Yorkshire so previously I was living in London and it sort of could have been possible maybe for me to carry on doing my job in London if I wanted to commute, but it seemed like that maybe wasn’t a great option in terms of sort of lifestyle and so it just seemed like a really good opportunity to say actually, do you know what, this has been really great and really interesting, but this is the kind of perfect time to try and do something a bit different.
Kate
Amazing. So often we sort of think about what skills do you need to do a job? But I’m just interested in what do you feel are the kind of personal strengths or qualities that you need to not just be successful working in journalism communications type work but also happy doing that type of work? It sounds like the journalism stuff, quite high pressure, fast turn around. It sounds like some of the stuff you’re doing now you’re having actually to say it’s very self driven. So what are the qualities you need to have to sort of really make that work and feel good doing it?
Molly
So I think you need to be quite an organised person, particularly in terms of journalism. Particularly in terms of TV, because you’re managing a lot of different people and you have a very tight deadline that you have to hit. There is no way that you can not hit your deadline because it’s not moving for you, the programme is going out and you have to have something to put in that slot so you have to be quite organised. You have to be good, you have to be curious in terms of, you know, identifying good stories and interviewing people, You have to like talking to people and be confident talking to people in terms of, you know, not being afraid of sort of picking up the phone and talking to someone that you haven’t met before. When I say confident, some of the best journalists I’ve known are actually quite shy people. I think there’s a sort of idea that in order to be a, particularly in TV, that you need to be really sort of confident and you need to be happy to sort of walk up to anyone and, you know, stick a microphone in their face. Actually that’s not the case at all. Actually sometimes the people who were really shy but you know, just really good listeners and a bit shy, but sort of happy to just sort of, you know, put out a question and then stand back are some of the best journalists I’ve known. You do have to be able to cope with quite a lot of stress because it is quite stressful. Things go wrong all the time that you can’t control and you have to be able to change your plan and come up with sort of backup options without completely falling apart, you basically kind of have to keep it together In order to be able to do your job. I think your question about happy is a really good one because I think that’s probably something that you don’t think that much about, but actually it’s like the most important question basically I think that like for example I really liked the adrenaline. It’s almost like a high because it’s so intense. You know, you’re sort of over 7 hours you’re just completely focused on one thing and not thinking about something else. If you’re someone who likes doing that and you find you get satisfaction out of creating something, then I think that you will find that really rewarding. The other thing that I think Is good about it is that, and I don’t know whether to some extent this is the case with any job where you do shifts but the fact that you can walk away from your day or your programme and know that it’s over and there won’t be, you know, occasionally something might go wrong and that stays with you and you sort of feel bad about it and you might spend time thinking about what could I have done better. But generally it’s kind of like a clean slate that you can wipe and then you can start again the next day. So if you’re someone who worries about things, like if you’re quite an anxious person, I think sometimes it almost can be a good thing because you don’t have that. You don’t go home and you don’t worry about a big project. You know, you don’t wake up in the middle of the night generally and worry about something because you don’t know what’s coming the next day. You don’t know when you go into the newsroom what you’re going to be facing.
Kate
Yeah, I can see that would actually be really nice. I’m guessing that’s a bit different in your current role then because it is these more ongoing projects. So has that been a sort of thing to have to adapt to?
Molly
Yeah, it definitely has. I think the thing that I said about the thrill of creating something and then walking away. I’m not sure I totally identified that previously until I sort of realised Ohh I quite missed that. So that’s been a challenge and I think that but I think that there are other, there are other sort of benefits, you know, there are still those wins because obviously you do still have projects that you work on and then they complete and you know, so you still you still sort of take that with you. But you know, there are loads of other things that I sort of hadn’t really anticipated that would be really great. Like just, you know, over the last year, the sort of the amount of different people I’ve been able to meet and work with has been really amazing and the variety of the work. It’s really exciting and I don’t know whether this is the nature of Comms or whether it’s the nature of starting a new sort of career, but I’m constantly doing things for the first time and at the beginning thinking ohh, I don’t think I know how to do this, but then sort of working through it and thinking actually I do know how to do this. It’s the same principles but just a different sort of method of doing things and then sort of realising that you have got this skill or you know you can sort of turn your hand to more things than you realised?
Kate
So it sounds like making the career change for you. It’s taking you out of your comfort zone, but it’s also been really refreshing to sort of just spice things up and, you know, look at things through fresh eyes. What advice would you give to anyone considering making a career change because it can be a huge thing to actually undertake.
Molly
Yeah, I think it is a huge thing but I think it’s great. I think it’s really good, like it’s quite terrifying. It can be quite a terrifying thing because you’re definitely like I think that you mentioned out of the comfort zone, you know it is definitely nice to be in your comfort zone sometimes and to think you know, I can do this job jolly well and everyone else thinks I can do this job jolly well. That’s a great thing and it is scary to step into a place where you think actually like do I know how to do this job.
Kate
So it sounds like it’s really exciting, but really scary. Any sort of practicalities of giving, I don’t know if it’s like giving yourself that time, reminding yourself constantly that it’s new and it’s gonna take time kind of thing. I don’t know if there’s any pep talk that you had to give to yourself.
Molly
So I think not expecting yourself to be perfect at the job straight away and perhaps you know, not feeling awkward about saying to people, I actually don’t know how to do this or even just I’ve never done this before. I think, you know, people will appreciate what you are bringing to the table. You know you might not have done this particular thing before, but you’re bringing to the table a whole load of experience that someone who perhaps has been in this job for a long time and can definitely do the things they don’t necessarily have that external experience. So I think sort of being confident and not feeling that sort of too much on the back foot and kind of owning it really, saying you know yes, I’m new at this, but I’ve done this other stuff and that’s really valid as well and I’m going to bring some of that to this which is going to be really great as well, and yeah, I guess not being too hard on yourself. Part of the thing also about being honest about, you know, what you’re finding new or sort of difficult is also, you know, being able to ask people for help and you know, the fact that you’ll be surrounded, I’m sure, by people who do know the stuff that you don’t know and who are always happy to help and guide you on your journey
Kate
Thank you. I think that’s really useful. I think especially that point around valuing your previous experience and reminding yourself that, hey, OK, I might not know this or that thing. I’m new to this, but I’ve got all this other stuff which you don’t have. So just keeping on reminding yourself of that and that it is of use and you’re bringing something fresh to the team. Looking ahead, what do you think will be the sort of key challenges facing journalism and broader communication sector over the next few years? What kind of things should students or graduates be anticipating and perhaps researching a little bit more or thinking a bit more about?
Molly
I think one of the big things is that a lot of people are sort of thinking about in these industries is artificial intelligence. Just in the last few years there’s been sort of massive changes that have sort of changed how people do their jobs, and I think that there’s loads of positive stuff around that. You know, there’s loads of ways in which it can help in terms of comms, but I guess there will probably be impacts as well. I don’t know what those impacts will be, but that’s definitely something that is going to change the industry quite a lot and that people will be looking at. I think that generally like the media industry says in terms of journalism is always In a case of flux as well, it always sort of feels, people always feel like sort of massive changes are around the corner, but in some ways I think sort of some of the changes that have been more recent and are sort of ongoing are kind of helpful in terms of, you know, the rise of sort of digital video and social media means that there’s lots more sort of opportunities and from a common point of view that there’s more opportunities to sort of tell your if you’re working for someone sort of tell your story yourself using a variety of different channels that maybe weren’t available to you before. I also think that, you know, for people coming into the industry for the first time, there’s a real opportunity like I definitely think that, you know, from working in newsrooms in sort of recent years, people are definitely very focused on younger audiences and how to attract younger audiences and that perhaps those older sort of news executives don’t have as much understanding of the way in which young people are accessing news, but obviously younger people do, who are interested in journalism and do have all of that knowledge. So I think there’s like, huge, like you’re arriving in an industry where you’ve got something you’ve grown up with, whether it’s like you’re totally, you know, you’re great at social media and you’re all over TikTok and stuff. You’ve kind of got an asset there that people who are more senior in the industry are really keen to try to harness. So that’s the sort of really useful thing for people who are sort of thinking about moving into those sorts of jobs, I guess.
Kate
Brilliant. Thank you. Any final bits of advice for students thinking about sort of either working in journalism or communications more generally, or the idea of shaping your career in line with your values, any tips for people with those thoughts going on?
Molly
I think the key thing that I’ve sort of found in my career is if there’s something that you really want to do, sometimes the barriers to entry when you’re just at that sort of stage where you’re starting out can feel quite big, but actually, if you really want to do something and you’re really focused on it then I think it can be a lot easier than you think it’s going to be. And that actually particularly sort of in terms of journalism, people really want to help people, and if you’re, you know, someone who’s got good ideas and you’ve got good stories, you sort of you’re a good communicator and you’re really determined then it’s really, you should feel like, you know, you can reach out to people and you can ask for their advice and people want to help. Actually I’ve sort of always been really interested when I’ve worked on teams that seeing the people that come in and do really well and it’s not always the people that have, you know, been on the best courses. It’s generally just people who are really up for sort of working hard and who are really approachable and just sort of get stuck in and actually that can take you a really long way.
Kate
That’s interesting. I hear that from so many different types of employers that basically enthusiasm outweighs so many other credentials and qualifications and and assets. It’s kind of if you’re really keen and you sort of demonstrate that, that is the the key thing most people want to work with.
Molly
I honestly I think that’s so true, Kate. I think that’s really, really true.
Kate
Well, For more information about the careers we’ve mentioned today, I’m going to add some relevant links to the episode description and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Molly, thank you so much for taking time to talk. It’s been fascinating to hear about all your different careers that you’ve had. It’s absolutely brilliant and I’m sure this will be super helpful to lots of our students and graduates. So thank you very much.
Molly
Thanks for having me.
Kate
Thanks for joining us this week on What Do You Actually Do? This episode was hosted by myself, Kate Morris, and edited and produced by the careers and placements team. If you love this podcast, spread the word and subscribe. Are you eager to get more tips? Follow University of York careers and placements on YouTube and Instagram. All useful links are in this episode description. This has been produced at the University of York careers and placements. For more information, visit york.ac.uk/careers.
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