How USU College Of Engineering PR Director Matt Jensen Used A Journalism Degree For More Than News

By Bryan Hedelius

Can a degree in journalism and scrupulous writing classes help inform the public about the latest breaking story and influence coverage of technological advances internationally? The answer to Utah State University alum Matt Jensen is, yes, to both.

Jensen graduated with a degree in journalism and broadcasting in 2008 and a master's degree in technical communication in 2020. He is also a certified commercial pilot. As an undergrad, he landed an internship with Utah Public Radio (UPR). Following graduation, he worked as a reporter for The Herald Journal as the police and public safety-beat reporter. 

What stood out to Jensen during his time at The Herald Journal was the unpredictability of the job. 

“Police and public safety is an unpredictable beat,” he said. “If a structure fire goes up, you're called to go to the scene and report on the structure fire. In radio, if there's breaking news, you have to cover it, so there’s an unpredictability to the career in journalism. That is true from small town-beat reporters to international-war correspondents. You go where the story needs you to go.”

In 2014, Jensen decided to make a career change and was hired for a public relations position with the USU College of Engineering. He was also offered jobs at a creative agency in Salt Lake and a public broadcasting station in Boise, Idaho. 

“I thought, do I want to go into a creative world and work in PR and advertising?” he said. “Do I want to stay in journalism and work in public broadcasting in Boise, or do I want to take this nonprofit PR role at the college? It felt like the right decision and nine years later, here I am.” 

Jensen loved his time as a journalist, but found that both PR and journalism have been fulfilling in different ways. 

“I liked the individuality of journalism, it translated well into PR as well,” he said. “I thought that when I got into PR, all of the individuality that a reporter puts into their work would stop and I would be forced into dialogues and just be repeating and refining.  But it turns out that in PR, I had a chance to put my own voice into things and help keep that creative edge.” 

Jensen is now the director of PR and marketing for the college of engineering overseeing a team of four people and promotes the college to the outside world and the local-campus community. 

One of his favorite things about his job is when his work to promote the college is seen in the outside world through the news and media. 

“We have a page on our [web] site for our earned media,” Jensen says. “So any time we promote ourselves to the media and they pick it up, we count that as a piece of earned media; we earned that coverage to enhance our reputation.” 

One of the many projects he helped promote for the college to the media are a battery-powered train being developed by Swiss company Stadler Rail with the help of the engineering school that will be built, tested and proven in North America. 

Jensen also helped promote the engineering school receiving $2.5 million from the Utah State Legislature to launch the Utah Earthquake Engineering Center. 

When those stories were promoted, they were picked up by ABC 4, Deseret News, KSL and The Herald Journal. 

“Those are wins for us and those are the things I like to see,” Jensen says. “That's what I get to take home at the end of the day. A shoe salesman says I sold X number of shoes, a PR person goes home and says I got our brand into the media.” 

An element he said that was crucial to accomplishing the job and getting media mentions was to have a strategy or a marketing and communications plan to outline your strategic goals and what tools you have to achieve them. 

“Depending on what your particular role is in your job, you have to take ownership of the strategy of that job,” Jensen said. “If you’re the lowest on the pole as a junior copywriter or digital animation expert, you can't just take project in and project out. You have to look at the bigger picture and see how does this product fit into the broader scheme of our organization.”

After working in journalism and PR for more than 15 years, Jensen says the best advice he can give is to remember that there are opportunities in all journalism arenas. 

“Don’t let anyone tell you that print is dead or radio is dead or social is changing too rapidly,” he says. “If I were 20 years old again, I would want to take advantage of every rung on the ladder, starting as a weekend radio announcer and working up to a correspondent. If you want to pursue one of those channels, go through it in its entirety, start at the bottom work your way through, and before you know it, you’ll be in with the top dogs.”