Ed Crowder is a Senior Communications Specialist at the Regional Water Authority in New Haven. Crowder graduated with a B.S. in Journalism in 1994, and later received a master’s degree at Quinnipiac University. He formerly wrote for the West Haven News, Connecticut Post, and the New Haven Register.
Why did you choose to study journalism?
I transferred to Southern from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and I’d taken one journalism class there, just kind of on a whim. It seemed interesting and practical, and I just loved it. I left Hampshire and transferred to Southern. I was just going to enroll in the English department or something, and then I thought back to that class, and I was [thinking] journalism seems more practical. I kind of made a spur of the moment decision to go into journalism. I got involved in the student paper, the Southern News, kind of right away, which I think really helped to give me a sense of just how much fun and interesting journalism can be. Even though Southern is sort of a small world, you get to meet all the players. You work with an interesting group of people. It feels very fast paced and exciting, and I really got into it. We had a good crew back then. We had some great professors. It was a lot of fun, and I stuck with it and decided to make a career out of it.
What was your experience in campus media like during your time at Southern?
I was a managing editor at the time I graduated. I think we had co-managing editors. I was the news editor for a while. Probably my first year I was just submitting articles, but they always need people on the editorial staff. We had had the little Southern News office, and pretty much had the run of the place. It was a cool experience.
How have the skills you learned in journalism helped you in your communications and public relations career?
A lot of what I do is adjacent to journalism. I’m collecting information and finding ways to communicate it to people that are understandable and interesting. I think that’s a valuable skill to have almost no matter what you’re doing, just this sort of ability to identify what’s relevant to people, pick through a whole lot of information, identify what’s relevant to people, and present it in a digestible way. That’ll help you in almost any walk of life.
How would you describe your experience in the journalism department at Southern?
Southern was a great program. It really gave people a lot of opportunity to shine. The journalism program really felt like a community, very supportive. I think Southern really gives people an opportunity to become their best selves in the program there. It really encourages that if you put the work into it, you’ll do well.
What advice do you have for current journalism students?
I would say, just really develop those skills of gathering information, fact checking, and assembling it in digestible ways. Those are basic skills, and those will serve you in almost anything that you’re doing. I think what humans can still really do that machines can’t is identify what people are going to be talking about tomorrow. Working on that sort of instinctive level, I would say that’s really something that they can add to, whether they go into journalism or whatever they’re into. But just develop their guts and their instincts a little bit, learn from the experience. What will get people talking? What will get people excited? Then the sort of block and tackle skills of writing and fact checking and all that. I think the broader skill set you can bring into the business now, the better the ability to work with multimedia, to use the technology that’s available. Try to be a Swiss army knife right now, because it’s really not clear what the workforce is going to need in five or 10 years.