My First Byline: Eric Deggans
TV critic, NPR
What is your current job?
I actually have a few, LOL. My current, full-time job is that I am TV critic, media analyst and an occasional guest host at NPR. I was the first person hired by the network to primarily serve as a TV critic, particularly for the radio, and my duties can include everything from crafting a review of Severance’s second season for the newsmagazine Morning Edition to hosting Weekend Edition when Scott Simon or Ayesha Rascoe are on vacation. I also have a lot of stuff I do on the side: I’m an adjunct instructor at Duke University and Indiana University, I write stories as a freelancer for outlets like The New York Times and the BBC, and I do guest interviews for host Kim Masters’ show The Business on NPR member station KCRW in Los Angeles, talking to people like Gary Oldman and Pam Grier. I also have a Substack.
What was your first byline?
My earliest real byline was for a Black-focused community newspaper in my hometown of Gary, Indiana called Gary INFO. Back then, the newspaper asked local kids to write regular columns about what was going on in their high schools. And since my dad was also a columnist there, it made a certain sense they would open up a spot for me. But while my fellow student columnists did pieces about the weekend’s football game or big dance, I remember really wanting to tell meaningful stories. So, I wrote about a Black kid who took two buses to a white friend’s home, to help him work the family farm when his friend’s dad had a heart attack. Northwest Indiana had a lot of racial tension then, in the early 1980s, so my Black friend was likely taking a chance going into a white neighborhood like that. But I thought his story showed how my generation could get past the craziness of the times. And as I remember, a few readers of the paper told me they liked the stories I was telling, which got me hooked on the profession.
What was your first real job in journalism?
My first real job in journalism was a position covering news in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh for a paper which no longer exists, The Pittsburgh Press. At the time, it was the biggest newspaper in the city and the second biggest in the state. They assigned me to six school districts in the northern suburbs of the city, and I had to cover almost any news which happened inside those boundaries – writing for a weekly insert and covering any stories the main paper might want. I wound up covering everything from the Easyriders magazine motorcycle rodeo — where a racist fan/biker tried to beat me up until several attendees I had interviewed earlier stopped him — to a murder, where a young man struggling with mental issues beat his mother to death with a banister railing. I believe the murder was my second front-page story for the paper.
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How did you get it?
I wound up working there after I got my first front-page story for the Pittsburgh Press. It happened during an amazing internship where I essentially served as the newspaper’s second-string music reporter/critic over the summer of 1989, interviewing people like M.C. Hammer and reviewing concerts by Robert Palmer, Cameo and Was/Not Was. For one story, I was assigned to review a concert in downtown Pittsburgh featuring several R&B and rap artists, including M.C. Hammer (before “U Can’t Touch This” made him a household name), Guy and New Edition.
Guy and New Edition had been feuding during the tour, and it spilled onstage during their previous stop in Greensboro, N.C. When they got to Pittsburgh, roadies and production staff for both acts began fighting and the production manager for New Edition chased down the chief of security for Guy and shot him several times, killing him. I had gone to the arena to review the show, but wound up heading back to the office to get details about the previous altercation from police in Greensboro, while a more seasoned reporter handled the story on the actual killing. We produced two stories which both ran on the Pittsburgh Press’ front page — my first front page byline for the newspaper — and they offered me a job after I graduated from Indiana University in May 1990.
What advice do you have for people looking to break into journalism?
I hesitate to offer advice because the way I built my career – by working a progression of jobs at regional newspapers from the Pittsburgh Press and Post-Gazette to the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and the Tampa Bay Times in Florida – is much more challenging now, if not impossible. I know from my teaching work, that students studying journalism already expect to put in lots of hard work for limited pay.
But what is good about this moment, is that aspiring journalists can do the work right now, without waiting for a newspaper, TV station or radio outlet to publish them. They can create platforms on Tik Tok, YouTube, Substack and elsewhere that earn money right now, building their brand with work entirely under their control, rather than count on a larger institution’s permission to create work inside that larger brand. Now, just like when I was starting, employers in journalism mostly want to know you can do the job before the give you the job. Which means finding the best opportunities to create great work and learn the right way to cover the news – how to fact check, be fair to all perspectives, be transparent and avoid conflicts of interest.
My advice, is to develop a concrete plan for your career, but be open to taking advantage of opportunities you might not expect. Be willing to do some work short term that may not pay well — or at all — in exchange for great editing, a good platform and lots of opportunities to learn. But take on that work knowing exactly what you will get out of it and don’t accept situations which feel exploitive, especially over a long term.
People starting out in journalism who are not white should not let themselves get too twisted up about race – which is often easier said than done. I’ve worked in mostly-white newsrooms my entire career. And I’ve always known that my experience as a Black man raised in African American culture who also knows white culture offers a unique perspective which distinguishes my work as a critic and cultural commentator. I haven’t been shy about putting those perspectives front and center in my work. But there are other journalists of color who fear being marginalized as someone who can only cover issues involving race or culture, and they may choose not to focus on those subjects, which is also a perfectly valid choice. As long as people are making these decisions based on the work they want to do – and not what others expect of them – both notions are just fine.
Finally, I don’t think aspiring journalists should accept that a life in the industry has to be forever marked by economic instability and deprivation. You may not make as much as an investment banker or silicon valley executive, but you should be able to support yourself and your family doing work that is personally fulfilling, ethically impactful and of service to society.
Find Eric on his Substack, his website, LinkedIn and BlueSky.
That’s so cool, Eric!