Professor Ken Paxson | Photo Provided by Ken Paxson
Wright State University (WSU) alumnus Ken Paxson has been teaching as an adjunct professor of digital media and communication at WSU since 2013, using his experience in the field of journalism to assist other students in achieving their goals.
What attracted Paxson to his field
Paxson graduated from Xenia High School and during his time at WSU, he earned a degree in mass communication with a minor in political science as well as a professional writing certificate.
He was not interested in the field in high school and thought about going to school for teaching early in his college career. Paxson also took classes towards a computer science major but disliked certain aspects of the major.
“While the programming part was fun, the math part was miserable,” Paxson said. “I hate math. And so I really quickly realized ‘this is not for me. I can’t get past Calculus I. I’m done.’ You had to take an ungodly amount of math to get through computer programming.”
Paxson became intrigued by journalism when he began writing for the Guardian.
“I got a few assignments where I just did general news or general features or whatever, then, a very short time later, the assistant sports editor job opened and I took that,” he said. “I really liked that whole newspaper atmosphere.”
Paxson’s journalism career after college
Paxson’s first job after graduation was as a beat reporter for the city of Oakwood. His minor assisted him in this line of work.
“Not a lot of crime happens there, but still, I had to go to school board meetings, had to go to city council meetings,” he said. “If there was any crime, I had to go cover that, and having that political science law minor really helped me understand a lot of things that were going on.”
This was because many of the topics he covered, such as school board by-laws and rules from planning commissions about how a house had to be built, were written in a technical manner.
After a series of newspaper jobs, Paxson began working at Cox Media Group as a digital specialist in 2002 and later transitioned into the role of project manager. Around 2010, the group bought a former NCR building by the University of Dayton and merged their radio and television stations, as well as the Dayton Daily News, into one workspace, and this had never been done in the U.S. before.
“A lot of the projects that I worked on were collaboration projects, like when a breaking news story comes in, how do we get it to the radio station, to the TV station and on our website and in the paper the next day?” Paxson said.
“We came up with what we call the breaking news desk, where those people were responsible for all of those platforms and for getting that information out for everyone. So, they manned the phones, they checked news feeds, they checked Facebook feeds. They checked everything you can imagine to stay on top of the news.”
After his first two years teaching advanced media writing at WSU, he was paired with instructor Ray Marcano, who he knew from his time at Cox Media Group. Paxson also works as an adjunct professor at Miami University, where he leads a course designed to introduce students to the basics of multi-platform journalism.
“Everything fell into place during those years when I was at Cox,” Paxson said. “I met some really good people, and took advantage of the opportunities.”
In addition to his teaching positions, Paxson works as the senior content marketing manager for the digital marketing agency Vivial Inc, where his team helps create websites for their clients.
Advice for student journalists
According to Paxson, he would not have gotten any of these jobs if he had not written for the Guardian.
“If you’re interested in writing and being in the media, you’ve got to get experience, because that’s all anybody wants to see,” he said. “In my portfolio, I had stories that had been published, I had newspaper pages that I had created and laid out, I had interviews that I had done. I had everything that someone would want in a reporter starting out.”
“I think that’s the biggest thing nowadays, no matter what journalism you want to go into, whether it’s media writing, the Dayton Daily News, news writing, or you want to go into marketing writing. Whatever it is, you need to have tangible things you can show people.”
