I am a very different person than I was in 2012, the year I founded It’s All Journalism with my two classmates Megan Cloherty and Jolie Lee. Having just completed the master’s program in digital media at the American University’s School of Communication, we were filled with hope and optimism about the possibilities and promise of digital media.
For 12 years, the IAJ team talked to very smart people about the innovative work they were doing, the new tools they used and the challenges they overcame to report the truth quickly, efficiently and with care.
Twelve years. So much has changed.
At one of the podcasting conferences I went to over the last 12 years, a speaker asked attendees to finish the following sentence by listing the ways podcasting had positively impacted their lives.
Because of my podcast, I …
- Got to build a project from the ground up with my friends.
- Launched and updated a website to showcase our work.
- Had the opportunity to talk to a lot of very smart people about their passion for journalism.
- Fulfilled a lifelong wish to visit the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
- Learned valuable skills and new concepts that benefited my career.
- Started an LLC.
- Spoke at conferences around the country about podcasting.
- Got a book contract to write about how to start a podcast.
- Wrote my first book.
- Taught podcasting for three years as an adjunct professor in the master’s program at American University.
- Met visiting journalists from Vietnam and discussed how digital technology was changing journalism in both of our countries.
- Produced a podcast for the National Governors Association.
- Produced a podcast for Street Sense, the newspaper published by and for the homeless people of Washington, D.C.
- Produced and hosted five seasons of the Better News podcast for the American Press Institute.
- Gave webinars to journalists in Egypt, Albania and Indonesia.
- Traveled to Tajikistan on behalf of the U.S. State Department’s speakers program to teach young journalists how to podcast – I never get tired of saying that.
- Met so many warm and generous people.
- Collaborated with my friends and former colleagues in producing a podcast every week for 12 years and had a ball doing it.
All of those things happened because I believed in myself, took positive steps forward and learned to say “Yes” to things that once scared or intimidated me.
I don’t mean to give the impression that everything was rosy. Bad things happened too, but I didn’t dwell on them. Also, a graduate-level lesson in positivity I learned was that occasionally it’s better if you say “No.”
I have no qualms about ending the podcast that has had such a huge transformative impact on my life. 650 episodes is plenty. The end is just the last part of the journey.
— Michael O’Connell
