ANNA KING
Assistant News Editor
While covering ongoing tsunami relief efforts in Phuket and Khao Lak, Thailand, Fox News correspondent and Pepperdine 1994 alumnus Adam Housley and his crew decided to forgo a plane trip back to Bangkok and instead make the 12-hour drive in order to enjoy the scenery. While stopped for dinner, an English-speaking local recognized Housley and his crew and ushered them into his house to meet his family.
“We walked into his house, and on the television is Fox News,” Housley said. “The world is a big world, but it’s becoming a small world with the growing levels of communication available to us.”
As a telecommunications and political science double major, Housley has found that the communication field is one that can be both rewarding and difficult, as it was while he was on location for the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
“To me the most exciting thing about the communication field is just going to the story and seeing the history first hand,” Housley said. “Unless you are there and you are seeing it, it is tough to explain. Sometimes it’s tough because you don’t want to be there.”
“I go to New Orleans every year for Mardi Gras, and no one wants to be in New Orleans going down Canal Street, and instead of being on top of a float, I am in a boat and bodies are floating by. You are still in the front row for history.”
It was never Housley’s intention to become a news correspondent, or even to work in the communication field.
“Since I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was play baseball,” Housley said. “I was the pitcher for Pepperdine when we won the national championship, and after graduation I went into the minor leagues.
By the time I got to the AA league I realized that to make baseball work as a career was going to be hard for life and for a family, so after three years in baseball I started to think about what I wanted to do.”
Housley got a job with a television station in Chico, Calif., through an internship, and was there for 11 months before going onto Santa Rosa, Calif. for two years. After working with a Fox station in Sacramento, Calif., for two years, Housley joined the Fox News Channel in 2001 as a correspondent based in the Los Angeles area. Throughout his career, Housley has won numerous awards, including a Regional Associated Press Reporting Award in 2001 and a Regional Emmy Award. He also received an award from the Department of Forestry for convincing a wanted arsonist to turn himself in.
While at Pepperdine, Housley served as student body president and was involved in the United Way campaign, the television station and the radio station. While he said that his background in political science helps him with his work and understanding the stories that he is reporting on, he also said his work with the television station gave him a different kind of preparation for his career.
“At Pepperdine, communications-wise, we were on our own a lot,” Housley said. “We had to go out with the camera with a lot of trial and error and without someone there holding our hand.”
Students at Pepperdine have many opportunities besides broadcast journalism available through the Communication Division.
The division offers bachelor of arts degrees in advertising, intercultural communication, organizational communication, journalism, speech communication, public relations and telecommunications in both production and broadcast news.
One of the major reasons that Housley said he enjoys his work is the chance to go a lot of places and meet people and tell their stories, but he also mentioned that the face of journalism is changing, and students need to be prepared for that.
“I enjoy the big story, because I love to see and do and hear,” Housley said. “However, no longer is reporting simply broadcasting.”
With the expansion of radio, television and most dynamically, the Internet, a correspondent’s responsibilities while on a story have greatly expanded. With this new form of reporting bears a greater responsibility for aspiring journalists to take advantage of the opportunities to learn the trade while still in college.
“You are now doing more than what you used to be doing,” Housley said. “Nowadays your job as a reporter requires you to really organize your time.”
Housley said all journalists need to learn everything about their field, and in some cases learning something behind the scenes is more important than in front of the camera.
“We have a lot of reporters who did not get a thorough education, and if they just learned a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes they would know how to do things behind the camera,” Housley said. “Similarly, behind the camera people need to know what goes on and how difficult it is in front of the camera.”
Housley said he believes that being a good reporter requires a student to have a broad understanding of a variety of topics.
“As a good reporter you need to know a little bit about a lot, or if you want to specialize you need to know a lot about a little,” Housley said. “You need to be able to have an idea of whatever that story is involving.”
He also said graduates need to be able to communicate in a respectful manner, and also have a minor or another major in a different field of study.
“Do history or political science, something that will give you a broad level of information. If you can’t minor or double major, you have elective classes and you can at least take a couple classes in foreign policy or international affairs.”
Ultimately, the best way that a communication major can do is to observe others in action and learn from their techniques, Houseley said.
“Try and meet as many as you can,” Housley said. “Don’t copy any one person, but take a part of each person that suits you, and mold yourself. Look at different reporters and decide, ‘I like the way this person speaks, I like the way this person reports the story.’ Never stop learning, and try to take a little bit of everyone.”
03-23-2006