By CAROLYN JOHNSEN and CHRIS EMMA
J Alumni News staff
Katie Juhl
Katie Juhl recalls J school teachers telling her, “We’ll give you the tools and guidance, but it’s up to you to run with them.”
Juhl, a 2001 graduate, took the tools and the advice to broadcast jobs at ABC affiliates, at PBS and Reuters. Now, from her base in Washington D.C., she leads efforts at two international groups working on the cutting edge of journalism and providing both traditional tools and new tools to journalists and to people who rely on journalists for information.
At Agence France-Presse — an international news agency — Juhl is business-development manager for mobile technology in North America, her full-time job.
“Say you’re a newspaper or a media property and don’t have the first idea of how to get into mobile. AFP provides all the tools to get into those spaces. I do the deals for AFP to be in those spaces,” Juhl said in a telephone interview.
Those spaces include cell phone screens, digital signage and the Internet as well as mobile communication tools that haven’t yet been invented. Juhl’s work requires her to have a keen eye to the future.
“The word ‘broadcast’ is not going to be around. The same with print journalism,” she said. “It’ll be around in a different format.”
Not knowing what that format is hasn’t stopped her. Juhl may not be reporting or gathering the news any more, as she once did at KLKN TV, an ABC affiliate in Lincoln, or as a desk assistant for “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS.
Finding new ways to keep news alive
“I call myself a recovering broadcast journalist, but I still love journalism,” Juhl said. “With my position now with AFP in particular, it’s about finding new distribution channels so news can live.”
Juhl is also helping news to survive through what she calls her part-time job at Global Media Forum, described on its Web site as “a consortium of top international reporters determined to raise the standards of journalism in the world through training, education and media counseling.” As the executive director of GMF — a job she took in March, 2009 — Juhl said she arranges training for journalists “who come from places where First Amendment rights and freedom of speech aren’t a given.” These emerging journalists might work for Radio Free Asia or Voice of America; typically, Juhl said, “they speak their native languages and have a passion for telling stories of their own countries.”
GMF board member Catherine Antoine said, in an e-mail, that Juhl brings important skills to the organization: “Katie Juhl is very energetic and has a communicative enthusiasm for what she does. She is very hard working and organized. She understands quickly the needs of an organization and its goals and she knows — nearly intuitively — how to get to the objectives right in focus.”
GMF provides training both to journalists and to employees of humanitarian, nongovernmental organizations that give interviews to the press, including UNESCO. Juhl brings to this task experience as both a journalist and teacher; for a time, she taught graduate students at Syracuse University, and she usually has a few piano students of her own.
Advice: Do everything you can do
When asked what advice she has for young journalists, Juhl answered as both a teacher and a journalist.
“Take anything that’s given to you. Take advantage of every single opportunity,” Juhl said. Juhl was apparently following her own advice, even as a J school student.
Professor Jerry Renaud said, “I think the one thing everyone remembers about Katie is how driven she was. She would challenge you to teach her. She wanted to get the most out of every class she had.”
In an e-mail interview, Juhl said, “I wanted to be the next Diane Sawyer before I entered college.” She set a goal to be a network producer by the time she was 27. By age 26, she had already become a producer for Reuters.
“So after that, I figured I should diversify myself a bit and get into the business of news,” Juhl said.
In these precarious economic times in which the journalism business changes daily, Juhl said students should consider options other than traditional journalism.
“If you have a passion for news, it can be useful in other areas,” Juhl said. Many students have a one-track mind. I would highly discourage that one-track mind, especially in this economy.”
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