Great River Review

Common Ground: Balancing Careers in Journalism and Academia

Keelia Estrada Moeller is a first-year Ph.D student at the University of Minnesota. She specializes in examining uncanny phenomena in Gothic literature, and applies film, feminist and psychoanalytic theory to her work. Keelia also works at MSP-C as the managing editor of IBM Systems magazine, IBM Z, and has worked full time in both journalism and academia for nearly four years.

When I first announced my determination to apply for the English Ph.D program at the University of Minnesota, not everyone was on board. 

“You already have a career.”

“You can’t do both.”

“Eventually you’ll have to choose.”

“Most people apply to 5-10 schools in case they don’t get accepted. Aren’t you worried?”

But I wasn’t worried. I knew I could do both—and I have been doing both, furthering my career in academia and in journalism, for years now. I worked full time during the end of my Bachelor’s degree, and throughout the entirety of my Master’s degree. It’s a balancing act I’m continuously mastering, but it’s worth every moment. Those who knew me didn’t doubt my plan—but those who didn’t, particularly in the world of academia, believed I was making an uninformed mistake. “Your career in journalism has nothing to do with academia, and you’re only going to hurt your academic career,” they said (and in fact, many still say). “Be honest with yourself about what you can really do.” To that, I only said one thing: “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t confident in my abilities. I’ve thought this through more than you know.”

Communication, Project Management and Digital Tools

I work as the managing editor of IBM Systems magazine, IBM Z at MSP-C, a content agency in Minneapolis. I started as an intern at the company four years ago, during my final year as a Bachelor’s student. Within a year, I was promoted to a sales-related position, and a year later, entered into my role as a managing editor. During this time I completed my Master’s degree a semester early and made the decision to pursue my doctorate.

Working at MSP-C, I learned how to communicate effectively with my peers, and have difficult creative discussions even when we disagreed with one another. I learned how to use digital tools such as Adobe, Skype, Zoom, Kentico, Squarespace, Google Analytics, SiteImprove and more. I learned how to organize between five and 15 projects simultaneously, write productive emails, manage clients in a friendly yet firm way, adapt my writing to an audience, edit other people’s work respectfully, accept revisions with grace, respond promptly and respectfully to messages, follow up on missed inquiries, decline work when it didn’t fit my publication, fact check and conduct thorough research, conduct interviews, the list goes on.

My skills with digital tools—especially CMS skills, a background in website redesign and Google Analytics—proved particularly effective as I worked on website development during a Great River Review course. I joined the web team, and together we revamped the website to be more organized, user friendly and accessible. My editorial background also gave me unique insight on how to solicit content submissions for Great River Review, and how to say no to submissions if they weren’t quite up to par.

Digital skills and my ability to do most of my work from a computer or via virtual conference calls have also been invaluable in the wake of COVID-19, and it seems we’ll be in this distance learning situation for the foreseeable future.

Presenting at Conferences 

As a managing editor, I also learned how to present my work at conferences and have

conversations with an audience—before I was ever attending conferences as an academic. Most recently, I presented at the SHARE conference in Fort Worth, Texas, in late February 2020. Our panel was titled “The Technical and Business Vision of Women Creating the Mainframe Industry of Tomorrow.” Panelists included:

·      Moderator: Jeanne Glass, Founder and CEO, VirtualZ Computing

·      Jennifer Chisik, Head of Product, Automic Automation Intelligence, Enterprise Software Division, Broadcom

·      Marie Godfrey, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Syncsort, Inc.

·      Susan Hagar, Senior Professional Manager, DXC Global Mainframe Capability, DXC Technology

·      Amanda Hendley, Managing Director and President, CMG

·      April Hickel, Area Vice President, BMC

·      Rebecca Levesque, President and CEO, 21st Century Software, Inc.

·      Luisa Martinez, zNextGen IBM Rep, Software Engineer, IBM

·      Keelia Estrada, Managing Editor, IBM Systems magazine, IBM Z

·      Calline Sanchez, Vice President, IBM Worldwide Systems Lab Services and TechU, IBM

·      Lisa Wood, Chief Marketing Officer, VirtualZ Computing

Over the course of an hour, Jeanne Glass asked a series of questions as the moderator. Some questions were aimed at specific panelists, while others were open to all of us to answer. As someone who has touch points between IBM, business partners, vendors and customers, I was asked how my broad perspective of the market has shaped my view of the mainframe industry today, and how that is informing my editorial planning strategies for 2020.

In short, my conversations across the industry have led me to focus content on cloud, security, and training—this last one is particularly important. The mainframe industry is retiring quickly, leaving positions to fill and missing expertise gaps. My readers want to know how to combat the retirement gap, how to facilitate effective mentorship programs, which companies are successfully doing so, which young folks are working in the industry already, and what inspired them to be there. To get information on these subjects, I had to find the right people to talk to, the right sources to research. I asked questions, and dug deeper. This is something I challenge myself to do continuously.

More technical panelists or executive leaders were asked specific questions about enhancing the mainframe community through technology, acquisitions, forward-thinking and more. In short—we all had our areas of expertise, and we knew it. We learned from one another without competing. We wanted to educate those who attended the panels, and help improve the mainframe community as a whole.

With 11 panelists from varying backgrounds and expertise levels, this was the first panel of its kind. We knew it would be difficult to design a panel where everyone had a chance to speak and share their industry expertise, but we worked together because we had a common goal in mind: Show the world which women in the industry are already making a difference. Move beyond the “men and women haven’t been equals in technology” discussion and showcase what’s working, how far we’ve come, where we will continue to go.

Our audience was fantastic. After our panel was complete, we received 4-5 questions on various topics, and a few general comments communicating hope that we continue to do a panel of this format at future conferences. We seamlessly answered each question without speaking over one another, offering various perspectives without conflict, in a productive manner. As of right now, we’re planning to assemble a similar panel for the SHARE conference in August, assuming it isn’t postponed due to COVID-19.

Normalizing an Alternative Approach

My point is—the work I do in the journalism industry allows me to cultivate my management, cooperation, editorial and communication skills, which I bring with me to academic conferences, graduate classes and writing sessions. For instance, one week after the SHARE conference, I presented my essay “Resisting Patriarchal Domination: The Female Gaze and Medusa Figures in The Awakening,” at the NeMLA Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. While NeMLA was my first official conference—aside from a practice conference I participated in at the University of St. Thomas as a Master’s student—I wasn’t nervous because I knew how to present under pressure. I knew how to respond to audience reactions, how to present my work in an informative and prompt manner, what to do in case of technical difficulties (of which there were many, in this case, for all presenters), the importance of confidence and humility, and more.

Despite the overlaps between my journalism and academic careers, the way I’m pursuing my Ph.D still isn’t normalized. I’m not sure it will ever be. What I do know, however, is that the job market for graduating English Ph.D students is dismal at best. If you’re in an English Ph.D program, you’re there for the sheer love of the field.

As first-year students, we receive constant advice on how to differentiate ourselves in the job market and find alternative career paths to pursue while we wait for our desired position in academia. Pursuing a career in journalism while establishing myself as an academic has enabled me to do just that—but I’m still left jumping through unnecessary hoops. My dedication is questioned, my resilience challenged, my opinions second-guessed. Luckily, the positivity I’m surrounded by and have encountered so far drowns out the negative voices.

If I had to sum up my point, I would say this: If you’re in a successful position in a different industry but have always wanted to further yourself as an academic, you can find a way to do both. Your unique perspective will get you farther than you realize.

Research in Fiction: Outtakes (Part 1) by Mihret Sibhat

As part of research I’m conducting for an autobiographical novel, I spent a month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this winter, looking at old newspapers from three decades ago. This trip was part of a broader research project I’m undertaking to gain a better understanding of the social and political milieu of 1980s Ethiopia, when the country was still under a socialist dictatorship. My time in the archives was as entertaining as it was enlightening. I spent most of it going through old issues of the state-owned daily Addis Zemen, which has been around for 78 years, serving whoever is in charge. Full of propaganda language, the editorials and “news” articles read like great satire. But my most favorite were the Letters feature, which came out on Sundays, carrying messages (almost all complaints) from the citizenry.

I found these letters entertaining at first because of how petty the contents seemed to me: so many people were writing to a national daily complaining about movie ticket prices, undelivered mail, and buses transporting more passengers than they should. But when I thought about the political context of the time, the Letters section took on a darker meaning. I’m sharing a few of the letters here (translated from Amharic by me):

Not For Sale

The government has been purchasing coats for security guards at various government agencies, sometimes spending up to 200 birr*, in order to keep them from suffering in the night cold and morning frost. However, some security guards have been seen selling these expensive coats for cheap. Since the coats were given out for use and not for sale, it would be good if government agencies were to oversee the use of these coats they are purchasing.

— Janka from (Addis Ababa, 6 December 1977**)

The Riddle of the Beer

There is a serious shortage of beer in the city of Bahir Dar. When beer deliveries arrive once a month or every other month, the bars would give us a bottle each and tell us they only received two crates and that one of them sold out before they even managed to take it inside. Whenever we hear that deliveries have arrived, those with enough money can go from bar to bar and get enough. But everything is gone within twenty-four hours and the only people who can get beer are loyal customers or those with a special relationship with bar owners.

…

Although it isn’t a basic need of the working masses, considering the growth of the city and the expansion of state and public organizations and projects as well as increase in construction, we find that beer is important.

…

In general, is the source of this talk of no beer and no deliveries a shortage issue or distribution issue or lack of city oversight? We might understand the origin of this riddle if the concerned parties explain it to us.

                        —Tilahun (Bahir Dar, 1 June 1977**)

From 1974 to 1991, Ethiopia was under a brutal military dictatorship that repressed speech. If people were given the chance to truly express themselves, they would have been complaining about being forced to pay for the bullets that killed their children, about terrible economic policies, and the general atmosphere of fear. Deprived of the chance to do that, they could only express “petty” local concerns that didn’t implicate the government. This served the regime in at least two ways: first, the Letters section became a propaganda instrument that sent the false message that citizens were allowed to express themselves when, in fact, there was a limit to what they were allowed to say. Second, the section also functioned as an arm of the surveillance state by encouraging people to tell on each other (“Not For Sale”) and on lower level officials (“The Riddle of the Beer”). Every week, the Letters section arrived bearing a two-headed unwritten message: 1) you can gain national fame by telling on someone; 2) whatever unacceptable thing you are doing (which is not always clear), someone will tell on you. So, readers of that section were either hopeful or afraid; or hopeful and afraid—either way, exactly where the regime wanted them.

While the first two letters were straightforward in their purpose, the third example below (“Before It Takes Root”) was doing more in that, in addition to telling on others (new musicians), it showed the author’s anxieties about old and new cultural forces.

Before It Takes Root

We have been seeing posters announcing the arrival of new music and musicians at record stores, public squares, and on fences and walls and utility poles. We are witnessing an increase in the number of new vocalists. On the one hand, the situation indicates growth, so it is pleasing. On the other, the new songs neither seem to have a clear identity—traditional or modern—nor are they giving considerations to the listeners’ tastes. Instead, they seem to have only been measured by the singers’personal will and desire. There are many songs coming out but no one seems to be paying attention to quality. I suppose the growth of the music business has contributed to this phenomenon. It appears that anyone, regardless of musical talent, can put out whatever he wants and take his earnings home. There is no argument that this is denigrating the respect art has gained since the start of our revolution, so the association of artists, itself a fruit of the revolution, must do all that it can to stop this trend.

—Elizabeth Tesfaye (Arat Kilo, 1 June 1977**)

To understand this letter, it’s important to know that performance art wasn’t respected in dominant Ethiopian cultures prior to the socialist revolution of 1974. Musicians outside the church, for example, were derided and looked down upon. Nobody wanted their children to become musicians or to marry musicians. The revolution brought about radical change in this area because performance art became a critical aspect of the new regime’s propaganda operations. It wasn’t only encouraged but also forced upon the masses from the capital city to the smallest towns—young people had to join bands, drama clubs, and dance troupes. The taboos around those professions were largely crushed. But the author of this letter clearly feared that if something wasn’t done about the “denigration” of the arts by new unmoored artists, old hatreds for the arts might return.

*At the time, 200 birr would have converted to about 83 USD.

**These dates are according to the Ethiopian calendar.