{"id":8234,"date":"2016-09-20T09:28:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T13:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/?p=8234"},"modified":"2016-09-20T15:16:36","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T19:16:36","slug":"journalist-walter-middlebrook-com-76-gives-career-advice","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/articles\/journalist-walter-middlebrook-com-76-gives-career-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Walter Middlebrook (’76) Gives Career Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"h_butoday_15-8939-MIDDLEBROO-004\"
Photo by Brad Ziegler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In BU Today’s<\/em> \u201cJump-start Your Job Search<\/a>\u201d series, BU alums are featured with\u00a0short interviews describing their\u00a0leadership\u00a0in their field. Topics range from banking, advertising<\/a>, tech start-ups, journalism<\/a>, and nonprofit organizations.<\/p>\n

Alums\u00a0talk about how they got to be where they are, mistakes they\u2019ve made, and what they\u2019ve taken away from those mistakes. They tell us what they look for when hiring and offer advice for those just embarking on a career.<\/p>\n

This week’s featured alum is\u00a0Walter Middlebrook<\/a>\u00a0(\u201976), an assistant managing editor at\u00a0The Detroit News<\/a><\/em>, responsible for overseeing the paper\u2019s investigative team. He also edits its weekly entertainment and opinion sections. Over the course of his career, he has written and edited for numerous newspapers, including the\u00a0Minneapolis Star<\/em>, the\u00a0St. Paul Dispatch<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Pioneer Press<\/em>,\u00a0USA Today<\/em>,\u00a0Newsday\/N.Y. Newsday<\/em>, and the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, where he edited the paper\u2019s \u201cStyles of the Times\u201d weekly section. Middlebrook was an assistant features editor at\u00a0The Detroit News<\/em>\u00a0for a year in 1987 before heading to\u00a0USA Today<\/em>, and returned to the paper in 2007 as director of recruitment and community affairs. He was promoted to assistant managing editor of the \u201cMetro\u201d section in 2009 and assumed his current position in 2014.<\/p>\n

Middlebrook received a\u00a0College of Communication Distinguished Alumni Award<\/a>\u00a0in 2015.<\/p>\n

BU Today:<\/strong> How did you come to study at BU?<\/p>\n

Middlebrook:<\/strong>\u00a0I was a transfer student who took a tortured path to get back to the school that originally accepted me for admission when I graduated from high school. At that time, I turned down the invitation from BU and spent two years at MIT, where I was introduced to journalism, believe it or not. I took a year off and spent a year as a clerk at the\u00a0Boston Globe<\/em>.\u00a0I returned to my hometown of Memphis, Tenn., under the assumption that I was getting a reporting job at the newspaper there, but that fell through as I was told the only thing available at the paper was a \u201cclerk\u201d position. So I worked nights at the paper under horrible conditions and took a semester of classes at\u00a0Memphis State University before returning to Boston, where I was admitted to Boston University,\u00a0to begin studying for a degree in journalism.<\/p>\n

Learn more about careers at COM Career Development<\/a>.<\/p>\nRead more on BU Today<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In BU Today’s \u201cJump-start Your Job Search\u201d series, BU alums are featured with\u00a0short interviews describing their\u00a0leadership\u00a0in their field. Topics range…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12163,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[771,1237,6,780],"bu-publication":[],"discipline-type":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/8234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12163"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/8234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8243,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/8234\/revisions\/8243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"discipline-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline-type?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=8234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}