Profile of Jesse Garcia

By Elizabeth Lucas

Pacific Tribune Staff Writer

The Assignment Editor and Internship Coordinator of NBC Universal had paid Southwestern College a visit on Wednesday, September 22^nd, 2010.

Jesse Garcia, age 33, a native of San Diego, is the Assignment Editor and Internship Coordinator of NBC 7/39. He has worked at NBC for three years, and prior to that he has worked the same positions at the ABC affiliate, Channel 10, for seven years, making it ten years total in the business, eight years as an Internship Coordinator.

Before starting off in the business, Jesse Garcia had graduated from the University of San Diego as a Communication with Media Emphasis and Spanish double Major.

Jesse Garcia was pulled into the business in an interesting manner. He explained the situation that started his career into the media:

“Basically, I was at a San Diego Gulls’ hockey game. I saw the news crew doing a live shot down from the tunnel area where the hockey players come out, and I’d always had a curiosity about news…I went down there, kind of checking it out. I saw them doing their live shot, recognized that it was a sports guy at the time….During in between hits, he was hanging out. I got his attention, kind of introduced myself, told him I was interested in sports….So, how can I get into this? How can I be on a sports team or, you know, reporting for one, or ESPN and all that stuff? He told me, ‘well, you got to start by interning.’ So, how do I intern? I didn’t know anything about it. I was already in college, but I never really asked about it, didn’t know anybody who’d gone through one, and backing up even further than that, I was the first generation college student, so I couldn’t ask my parents about it. So I was kind of taking my first steps by myself. He told me how, asked me some questions, told me to call him on a certain date for an interview. As a sports junkie, I aced his little quiz, and he brought me on board.”

Working for the sports department, though, had some disadvantages for the sports fanatic.

“So, I interned at the sports department at Channel 10, really enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun, but I kind of noticed that as a die-hard fan of sports, working in sports was kind of like it took away from being a fan,” Jesse Garcia explained in discussion of his internship. “I kind of noticed that about myself, it was a job….I never thought about that. I’m a die-hard fan, but does that translate into what I want to do for a living, and covering everything else? Not so much.”

Then Jesse describes the shift in career path that he took during his internship for the sports department.

“Well, in between doing that and running tapes down from the sports department, which was upstairs, to the news room to the tape room, I would notice all the chaos in the news room, and at one area in particular, called the Assignment Desk,” he explained. “So, I started poking around the Assignment Desk, ‘hey, what do you guys do?’….They said, ‘well, we oversee pretty much the news of the day, we’re in charge of breaking news, we monitor police scanners, we make phone calls, we set up stories, we assign stories.’ [It] pretty much the main, central part of the news room, as far as information gathering, assignments, and everything else. I thought, ‘wow, that sounds pretty cool.’ Second semester came around, I decided, well, I’m going to apply to the Assignment Desk. Got an internship as an Assignment Desk intern, poked around, got to know what everybody did, started doing it myself, started developing my own networks, making phone calls, and just kind of being involved, they’re all hands-on, asking them what I can do, and trying to be as helpful as I could. Asking lots of questions and what not.”

Transferring over from the sports department to the Assignment Desk at the Channel 10 station, an opportunity opened up for Jesse Garcia that he jumped at the chance to have.

“That translated into the possibility of getting a job because somebody was going out on maternity leave, and they decided that they weren’t going to come back,” he further adds in detailing how the internship turned into a career. “So I knew the position was coming up. I asked about it, I applied for it, and they said, ‘well, the job is yours, but under one condition….’ This is back when I’ve been out of college for a while, so they said, ‘Your first day is going to have to be an overnight shift, December 31^st, 1999.”…I told them, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it, no problem,’ on the spot. I did it, worked the overnight shifts….And I’ve been in the business for ten years, so it was worth it.”

In further explanation of the situation that led to his job, he added, “There was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to work at an ABC affiliate, there was nothing more important to me at the time than getting my foot in the door and starting off my career. That’s everybody’s goal out of college, I would hope. So I took it….”

Of course, there shouldn’t be a job where there aren’t places and benefits for someone to look forward to, and there was no exception to Jesse’s job. He specifically enjoys the breaking news part of his job. “When something crazy is going on, a major news story, it gets my adrenaline going. I’m real competitive by nature…so, when big stories like that come up, I have the opportunity to perform and get people moved to where they need to be so I can beat the competition. To me, that’s number one. Getting the information out accurately, getting it first, being there on the spot first, and having it covered first, is what drives me.”

Jesse Garcia also goes further into detailing the method that he goes into upon hearing of a breaking news story, and how his employees are sent to cover it.

“Literally, we have twelve scanners on the assignment desk. We listen to anything that has a dispatcher….Soon as I hear something, I’m locking it down, I’m listening to see where it’s at, I’m listening to see what it is, what the location is, and at the same time I’m thinking about where all my news crews are, as far as the geography,” he states. “So, I’m thinking of that, I’m thinking about the newsworthiness of it….I’m thinking all of these things while I’m making phone calls….You kind of kick into reporter mode yourself, start asking the appropriate questions that are going to get you the story. So, basically thinking all that stuff, at the same time.”

No job, though, wouldn’t be as fulfilling without the challenges provided.

“Three years ago I was brand new at NBC, so knowing who the people were, what their strengths are, who was who. A lot of the times things happen so you’ve got to call them at home, so where they live, that type of thing,” he explains. “Any general assignment, a reporter can report on any breaking news story, but you get to the point as an Assignment Editor where you kind of have an idea of which ones you’d rather send for certain stories, so that’s where I’m at now.”

The biggest challenge that he’s had to face in his career, though, seems to affect every form of career and position in today’s working environment.

“I’ve seen a lot of turn-around in the business. We’ve had, just at NBC, three waves of lay-offs, people tend to bounce around between stations, too,” he stated. “So, I think one of the biggest challenges is when the economy hits, just like everybody else. People are getting laid off, they’re eliminating positions, so it’s just kind of the fear. It’s a cut-throat business, really.”

With all these changes in the media, and multiple platforms blossoming as methods and ways for the networks to share their information, Jesse Garcia is no exception to the rule that journalism is following the digital and quick path.

“We’re following the trends, already,” he said. “It was a slower process than a lot of the younger generation would’ve liked….Now that [the social networks] exploded, they’ve seen that and seen how it can be useful, and they’ve caught onto it ….We’re all required to have them now, which is great, because it’s now they don’t have one source doing it, now. Now it’s everybody.”

With the success about his job at ABC, there is concern and curiosity about changing over to NBC.

“My switch-over was due to the changing in upper management at ABC,” he explained. “They changed news directors, they changed general managers, their overall vision on news was changing. They were trying to make everybody into a one-man band, so to speak….Which is fine and it works, I don’t think it necessarily works if everybody is doing it, because of the quality. Photographers are experts in photography and video-shooting, editors are experts at editing…writers are experts in writing. I think that’s why they have each position and I think that’s what the majority should be. Now, we do have some one-man bands…and they’re good at what they do, but it’s not like a whole crew doing that and putting together a subpar quality story.”

To him, though, the most rewarding part about working, “as an assignment editor in that position in itself, I would say beating the competition. That’s what I enjoy the most.”

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