040: Realistic Expectations in Media Journalism

Catalyst: A Creative Industries Podcast

Catalyst is a Creative Industries podcast, from Chapman University. Each episode features Chapman students who have completed a Podcasting course through the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at the university. Students who had no podcasting experience or technical ability in the genre before taking the course were able to contribute all the segments to Catalyst this season with the goal being that they will take this ‘hands-on’ experience and carry it over to the launching of their very own series. Each episode of Season 6 will feature one to two different interviews conducted by CCI students, exploring different aspects of the Creative and Cultural Industries.

This week’s episode features an interview by Lexi Freund and Claire Schulberg who reached out to Media Journalist and pop culture aficionado Fiona Zaring. Zaring currently co-hosts SHEIN Live a weekly livestream talking about collection highlights at the online clothing company SHEIN. In addition, she is an Anchor/ Producer at Shared News, a YouTube-distributed entertainment news channel launched by Shared Media. She has also recently launched her own entertainment media platform as the Co-Founder Tik Talk Daily, an entertainment news channel that covers Hollywood celebrities, digital creators and current news events, all from TikTok. A Television & Broadcast Journalism major in college, Fiona discusses the importance of being realistic when going into a field like media journalism. She reveals the hard truth that climbing the ladder at some of the well-known media outlets can take longer than you expect, so it is important to be patient and not to get discouraged. However, a silver lining of that situation, Fiona reveals, is how such a competitive landscape combined with something like a pandemic, can lead to creative innovation such as her TikTok channel.