About Me

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Me, with fellow CMU football writer Justin Berndt in the Indiana University press box, Fall 2008.

For me, journalism is a calling. A passion.

It began while I was a 10th grade student at Swan Valley High School, where my language arts teacher assigned us to write a sonnet, a 14-line Shakespearian poem with a specific rhyming sequence. This was probably the first homework assignment I actually liked doing — to the point where I wrote about 15 more sonnets. Then dozens of poems. I wrote in haiku, tanka, free verse, you name it.

In high school, teachers and counselors always held seminars and class sessions on career choices, telling you to do what you love doing. So I chose journalism as a career and Central Michigan as my college, one of two accredited journalism colleges in the state.

Here I was, waltzing into Mount Pleasant, Mich., with the intention of writing. What I gradually came to realize, beginning as a staff reporter at the award-winning student newspaper, Central Michigan Life, is writing is only one part of journalism. I entered college knowing nothing about the heart of it: The reporting. The storytelling. The “watchdog” role it plays.

In my five years since, I have worked my hardest to learn every tool and skill necessary to tell the greatest stories and survive in an ever-changing industry. I am not just a writer. I now have experience in video production, audio production, photography, copyediting, design and even Flash.

My latest efforts are in the world of online media. Last year, as editor in chief of Central Michigan Life, I took on the challenge of single-handedly rebuilding cm-life.com, using a new content management system (WordPress) and using it to reinvent Life’s news operation and workflow. We began hosting live chats, livestream video, crowdsourcing and empowering our social media resources. This all-around effort earned Life its first-ever Associate Collegiate Press Online Pacemaker Finalist award this past year.

There are many different ways to tell a story in today’s age, and many different techniques journalists can use to make those stories the best and most informative they can possibly be. There are many who fear of the future of journalism, an industry as uncertain as it is essential. I embrace it.

~Brian J. Manzullo

Objectives:

  • To build off my first internship with The Grand Rapids Press. I’m there for a second stint this summer, this time on the sports copy desk. I’m also looking to gain Web experience and bring fresh ideas to MLive.com.
  • To work as an online/sports journalist for a medium or large metropolitan news publication (Web or newspaper). My goal, in a nutshell, is to aid in the storytelling process in whatever role I work best.
  • To, in one way or another, help shape journalism’s future. Whether it’s to make one news outlet’s Web presentation better or invent something that completely revolutionizes journalism, I want to be a part of the next step.

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