By: Kristen Tomaiolo
Posted In: News
Photo credit: Kristin Tomaiolo
Beth Bottis, editor of Newport This Week, sits in front of a display
As the youngest editor in her company, East Bay Newspapers, Beth Bottis, 24, not only
writes, edits, fills out invoices and gets times cards ready, but she loves doing it. This new editor landed the job at Newport This Week in October 2005. Bottis graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a journalism degree in 2003. In college, Bottis completed several internships. Her first internship was at Rhode Island Monthly magazine. She bagged her first job as a reporter at the Standard Times in North Kingstown while interning. After a year, she became assistant editor. Leaving the newspaper scene, she dove into the field of public relations. Bottis returned to the newspaper world and worked in May 2005 as an editor for East Bay Newspapers in Bristol. Bottis and East Bay Newspapers plan on bringing Newport This Week back to the way it was in 1974. Back then, the paper was introduced to the community as an alternative newspaper but has since changed into a small town community newspaper. As a young Rhode Island native from Jamestown, Bottis feels at home working for the paper, which is targeted to young professionals between the ages of 25 and 45 in the Aquidneck Island communities. Despite the long nights and early mornings, Bottis plans on staying at the paper for a long time. “I guess throughout all the searching I’ve done in the past couple years to try and find my niche, this is it. For me, this is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do and I really enjoy doing it,” she stated. Q: Have you always enjoyed writing? A: Yeah. Yeah, I’m not a math science person…since basically elementary school. Q: What is your day like as an editor? A: I never realized how little I could accomplish in a day. Because, I’ll come in, I’ll sit down and I’ll get my coffee and I’ll say,”all right this is everything I’m going to do today. I’m going to write all these stories; I’m going to talk to all these people.” And then an hour into it when you’re the editor, you get the phone calls from everybody who’s mad, from everybody who’s happy, from everybody who’s looking for any question in the world. . . But, if I wanna write about something I can write about it. If I wanna write a column, I can just go out and write a column. Marilyn is my reporter and she and I can just kind of pow wow on what we feel like doing this week. Sometimes that’s good. Q: How did you work your way up to this position? A: I think the combination of the internships, and then the reporting, and then working in corporate communications kind of gave me a taste of everything, so by the time I went back to newspapers and applied for an editor’s position I kind of had that well rounded foundation. And,it was a learning process going from hard news to a kind of life styles features editor. When this position opened up, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. I’m the target age for our audience. It’s my community. It’s 10 minutes away from home. It’s art and entertainment. It’s the bands that I’m going to see, anyway. The bars that I’m going to on the weekends, anyway. So, I pushed for it and I got it. It’s a lot of hard work but it’s also setting goals for yourself and trying to meet those goals and sticking up for yourself. I’m the youngest editor in the company, so people will say, “oh you know, she’s 24. She’s a woman. She’s 24. She doesn’t know what she talking about.” But, I do. Q: What’s the hardest part of being a young editor? A: Sticking up for myself is probably the hardest part…there’s a responsibility that I never really had to deal with and deal with it so soon. I have people working for me and free-lancers working for me who are old enough to be my parents that I have to say, “no, this isn’t right” or “don’t do this,” and it puts me in an awkward position sometimes ’cause who the hell am I? I’m 24 years old. What the hell do I know? Trying to prove that yes, I may be 24 ,and I may be a girl, and I may have just graduated college two years ago, but I’m here for a reason. . . it’s always a learning process. I certainly don’t pretend to know everything. Q: Who are your inspirations? A: Well, my parents obviously. Huge. Both hard working people. My first editor who was actually my professor originally, Rudi Hempe. He has been in the business for years. He just actually retired from journalism. He’s kind of an institution. He’s definitely a huge inspiration. He’s old school journalism all the way, and it’s great. I think close to me in my life right now, they are the biggest inspirations. Then, you have the people like Tom Brokaw, the typical journalist, you just can’t compare. John Pantalone was a professor of mine at URI. He was actually the first editor of Newport This Week back in 1974. I was his teaching assistant; he was my advisor. And now, it’s kind of freaky ’cause our lives are paralleling each other. I followed him. He was my professor and now I’m in the same position he was in 20 something years ago. He’s been a really good source of inspiration; sanity for me. Q: Do you have advice for aspiring journalists and writers? A: Yes. Do internships. Underline that. Triple underline that. Internships are the most important thing that you can do for your career. Get as much experience before you get out of college as you possibly can, preferably in as many different venues as you can, magazines, newspapers, public relations. Try to do it all.Be hungry for the news. Don’t just do the minimum. Search for stories and search for interesting people and find them and get them to talk to you. I can’t be a shy person anymore. I’m outspoken and I’m loud and obnoxious and Italian, but I used to be shy and I can’t do that anymore because you won’t survive in this business if you don’t put yourself out there. Q: Anything else? A: You really got to be open to change and to learning, ’cause you’re always constantly learning something. Every time you do a story, every time you talk to someone, you’re learning something. So, you can’t ever go into anything thinking, “oh, I’ve been doing this forever. I know everything,” ’cause you don’t, no matter how many years you’ve been doing it. No matter what paper you’re working for; you don’t know everything, so, you got to be open to criticism. You got to be tough, because you cant take everything personally. You’re going to get criticized.
