Confidence in chaos: USU alumna Emilie Wheeler’s JCOM journey and advice for students

Alexis LeBaron, writer 

Within the last 20 years, the growth of social media and content creation forums baffled the journalism community. Growing from MySpace’s milestone in 2004, to multitudes of social media formats with billions of participants around the world, print journalism has grown into a vast scape of disseminated knowledge accessible in seconds.

Due to these quick changes, journalists act quickly and find “confidence in chaos,” Emilie Wheeler, Utah State University print journalism graduate and Utah State News director.

Wheeler recounted that in her nearly 20 years of experience in the journalism field, she wears many hats and learns skills she did not anticipate needing when an undergraduate Aggie.

 “I wish I would have spent a little bit more time learning. Maybe a second minor, or even a second major,” Wheeler said. “ Maybe take some business classes or graphic design courses, literally anything outside of the required course I had to take.”

Wheeler said that if she had taken the additional time to really take advantage of her undergraduate education, she would have entered the workforce more prepared for the changing environment that is workforce journalism and public relations.

 Something that did prepare Wheeler for her fast-paced career was working for the Utah Statesman as an undergraduate student.

 “Back then, the Statesman published three times a week and we had to turn things over really fast,” Wheeler said. “We entered a lot of the same newspaper competitions and saw ourselves as peers to the real-life journalists.”

 Through being involved in student media, Wheeler was able to learn how to meet deadlines, think quickly on her feet, alter or change plans effectively and collaborate with all kinds of people within and outside of student media.

 Due to her involvement in student media, Wheeler said it was easier to get a job in print journalism at the Herald Journal in Logan, Utah.

 “At that time, print journalism was much larger than it is now so getting a job in print wasn’t very difficult for me, especially because of my work with my professors and my job with the Statesman,” she said.

 As the big news recession hit in the mid 2000s, Wheeler altered her career path and goals to a more marketing and social media-based approach to maintain marketability.

“I’ve had to learn a lot of things on the job and willing to learn everywhere I went. I even took a few online courses so that I could learn what I needed to do in my new roles,” she said.

As her career shifted from a print media focus to more public relations work, she took a job with the State Board of Education for six years, where she collaborated with legislators on public education pursuits.

 “It was a good learning experience on being very nimble and having to change messaging and tactics depending on the people that I was working for,” Wheeler said. “This structure helped prepare me for my role at Utah State in late 2019…where everything about my day is go, go, go.”

 Wheeler anticipates going forward, JCOM jobs will continue to evolve and grow in diversity.

“When I started in journalism, I was only expected to know how to write an article for a newspaper, period, and maybe design a page occasionally. Nobody thought that 10, 15 or 20 years in the future, we would be writing social media content and doing some back-end website work,” she said.

Today, Wheeler’s job entails so much more than social media work and a bit of marketing. She manages teams, leads discussions and meetings, organizes conversations, plans initiatives and provides structure to USU’s news department.

As journalism continues to grow, Wheeler provides two insights for all journalism students to make themselves indispensable employees, even with changing news-dissemination formats.

“I would suggest that anyone wanting to foster a career in journalism or public relations develop basic relationship skills, work with people of different backgrounds and who hold different beliefs… was very helpful to me,” she said.

Additionally, Wheeler suggests all JCOM students learn how to write effectively in all ways. Whether on social media, speeches, informal or formal writing or even PSAs, there is so much writing in communication jobs and being able to form a sentence cohesively enabled her to excel in her career.