UC grad finds unexpected path to success

Like many undergraduate students, Brianna Connock’s college path took an unexpected turn. When she enrolled in the American Journalism course to fulfill a political science degree, she found herself reconsidering what she wanted her career path to look like. Did she want to give up her progress towards a political science degree to replace it with her newfound interest in journalism? Or did she want to stick with what she started?

In the end, Connock chose to double her coursework and keep both. 

In 2023, she graduated with a double major in political science and journalism, offered through UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Her hard work and immediate know-how didn’t go unnoticed by professors in the journalism program. 

“Brianna was a knockout talent from the get-go,” says Jenny Wohlfarth, a journalism professor at UC. “In the classes she took with me, she pitched ambitious, compelling story ideas and pursued them with vigor. I wasn't a bit surprised by how quickly Cincinnati Magazine snatched her up when they had an open position because she had interned at the magazine and the editors remembered how terrific she was.” 

After graduating, Connock has found success in the worlds of both journalism and marketing, using the versatile skill set she fine-tuned during her time at UC.  

Today, she works as the Social Media Editor for Cincinnati Magazine, an award-winning publication based here in Cincinnati.

Here, she shares the path to her profession.

My freshman year began in 2019, and I went in as a political science major. At the end of freshman year, I took American Journalism with Jeff Blevins, just because it fulfilled a political science requirement. I didn't have any plans to switch majors, but I really loved it. He was telling me, ‘You know, you're good at writing, you should do this.’ So, I added journalism as a second major. I still kept political science as well.

At the beginning of 2020, I started writing for (student newspaper) The News Record as a contributor and started taking my first journalism classes. I stayed a TNR contributor until senior year when I became life and arts editor. I also did a remote internship with Gateway Journalism Review, a news source that writes about news sources. Then I was in-person interning at Cincinnati Magazine as a digital intern in 2022.  

Cincinnati Magazine is what got me to the point of digital content creation. I like social media, and that's what I'm doing now. As a digital intern, I helped a lot with making TikToks and just seeing how that stuff worked. It was so fun and flexible. Content creation in the digital space means so much to a print magazine, because print is dying without it. That second internship at Cincinnati Magazine set me exploring the digital space a lot more than I thought that I would. 

A few months before I graduated, I was hired by the Nancy and David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center. I was a marketing and outreach associate, so nothing to do with journalism. My boss who hired me was a former editor-in-chief at The News Record. She was in marketing, but she knew how valuable the skill set that a journalist has is. Even though I had no marketing experience, no PR experience, she was like ‘that doesn't matter to me, because I know that you have journalism experience, so you know how to write, you know how to follow deadlines, talk to people.’

What I liked about marketing, having a journalism background, is you got to see the flip side of things. I was sending out press releases instead of getting them, but I knew what they looked like, and I knew what a journalist would want to see in a press release. And again, because of Cincinnati Magazine, I knew what journalists would want out of that. It was very refreshing to feel like I'm not pigeonholed in the degree that I chose.

I don't want to downplay the decision of choosing your major, because college is expensive and a lot of people don't have the time to waste before making money and paying off their loans. But that being said, there's no timeline. If you need to, take time after graduating high school, or even during your college experience, to figure out what you truly want to do. So many more people do that than you think.  

For me, I was always good at writing, reading, social studies, that kind of stuff—absolutely not science or math. I found something that fit my skill set. As long as you're building your skills and you know how to market yourself, you can do really anything that you want to do. Just because you're in journalism doesn't mean you have to be a journalist. Just because you're in political science doesn't mean you have to go to law school. Tell wherever you work why the skills you have would suit the job that you're applying for, and you can do whatever you want to do. 

Featured image at top: Colorful stacked magazines. Photo/kconcha for Pixabay.