By DOMINIQUE PERKOWSKI
STAFF WRITER
Rutgers alumnus-turned-journalist David P Willis stopped by Tom Davis’s journalism class Monday to speak to students about new changes in journalism and his own experience in the field.
Willis says that, although the circulation of physical newspapers is decreasing, journalism has been evolving and new types of media such as video are being introduced to the field.
But he assures students everything he does is still in writing.
“If you can put your thoughts together in a clear and concise way, you’ll be okay” says Willis.
He also says it’s all about getting rid of jargon, boiling the complicated things down and “writing so people understand.”
Journalism is about being a part of the community, according to Willis.
He says just providing news for the paper isn’t enough anymore,. Newspapers expect you to provide the news and be with people.
“We are a part of the community, not just [something] you buy at the stand,” says Willis.
Being a part of the community keeps people subscribing and buying papers, therefore allowing Willis to keep his job.
Willis is a consumer columnist for the Asbury Park Press and helps his community by solving problems they can’t solve themselves.
Willis says he gets around 50 calls a week from people who have a variety of different problems. Most of his disputes involve senior citizens who are confused and have a hard time dealing with customer service.
“What I do is correct a lot of mistakes,” he says.
He tries to help with incidents as small as $20 dollar extra phone bills to larger issues, like a man who was overcharged by $6,000 on his water bill.
A few years ago, after a big fire in Long Branch, N.J. a fire burned a whole city block and 20 apartments, but Comcast kept billing the victims even though the cable wasn’t being used.
“A man called me saying he had no money or insurance and all his stuff was gone,” says Willis.
Willis called Comcast to resolve the issue but they wouldn’t help and said the man would still need to pay for his cable box because he didn’t have renters’ insurance. Willis then slammed them in his column.
Because of his good deeds, Willis is known as a celebrity journalist in his area.
It took time for him to get comfortable with being known. When he first started, he didn’t want people to call him for thank him after the story was written but he realized selling newspapers is about self-promotion.
“Were all just trying to sell a product,” says Willis.
Willis also advised students to know their worth and get paid for what they write. He laughed at the idea of an unpaid internship and says, “what I do has value”.
Carly Topal, offering her thoughts on the presentation, said it had a lot of good points that will help her out in her journalistic field but also did not agree with everything.
“I don’t think he realizes how hard it would be to get a paid internship, nowadays” says Topal. “Things may have changed a bit since he was trying to get into the field.”
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