[397] MTSU Graduate Promoted to NBC News Deputy Bureau Chief

CONTACT: Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919

MTSU GRADUATE PROMOTED TO NBC NEWS DEPUTY BUREAU CHIEF

MURFREESBORO—Some graduates from Middle Tennessee State University are nearly impossible to follow because they’re continually on the move, aspiring to newer and greater heights. Ken Strickland (B.S.’89) is one of them.
Strickland, MTSU football player-to-be, turned-mass communication major, was recently promoted to deputy bureau chief at NBC News in Washington, D.C.
“It’s very different from what I’ve done for the past 14 years in the field as a beat producer,” Strickland said. “You can do a lot as an individual producer or reporter, but as a manager you can really help effect change on a much larger scale. It’s an evolving industry, and I’m excited about NBC news.”
Strickland started at WKRN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Nashville. He also worked at WVTM, the NBC affiliate in Birmingham, Ala, where he won a Peabody Award for a documentary. He considers working as a tape editor for CNN in Atlanta as his first real job after college. He joined NBC in 1995 and served as an associate producer for “Dateline.” Two years later, he was name White House producer and still later moved to Capitol Hill.
Strickland’s interest in journalism evolved from the high-school gridiron in Joliet, Ill., to making the Blue Raider football team as a walk-on player.
“I wanted to play football, but my high-school coach also knew that I had an interest in communication,” he said. “My coach had gone to MTSU for a clinic under Boots Donnelly, and he came back and said to me, ‘Strickland, there is this school you should look at. It’s a Division 1-AA school in football, and they have a really good communications program.’
“So I got on the bus and met with the MTSU coaches and also with (Dr.) Dennis Oneal [chair, electronic media communication] in the School of Communication. I was trying to decide between going to Southern Illinois and MTSU. Dr. Oneal encouraged me to go to MTSU. I ended up quitting football before the season started, but I stuck around for the communication program.”

Strickland has no regrets about his lackluster football career. Nor does Blue Raider football or certainly NBC. Today he coaches students who want to pursue a big-league career in journalism.
“We get a lot of applications for interns, and one of the things that puts some candidates above the others is their educational background.” Strickland said. “My experience at MTSU—and I was there long before digital journalism crept in—put me far ahead of my competitors.”
Strickland advises college students to do as many internships as they can and gain real-world experience.
“By the time I graduated from college, I had already done enough internships and had had enough part-time jobs where I was writing for WSMV, the NBC affiliate in Nashville, on the weekend, editing tape for WTVF, the local CBS affiliate and had gotten an internship at CNN between my junior and senior year where I was editing stuff during the 1988 Democratic Convention for broadcast. None of that would have been possible had I not learned those skills while in college.
“I really think the foundation I got at MTSU was for me what made the difference,” Strickland said. “I was talking with the interns this morning, telling them that being successful is about ‘buffet service’ not about ‘white tablecloth service’—where people come to you with menus. You have to get up and go get it.”
“I have to say that the faculty and staff, specifically Bob Spires and Pat Jackson, were a critical part of my development as a student—they and others were a constant source of encouragement and guidance,” Strickland added.
Strickland and his wife, Christina, have two children, ages 9 and 4, and the family has resided in suburban Maryland since 1995.
“I’m on the Board of Visitors for the College of Mass Communication, but it’s been a few years since I’ve been back to MTSU. It’s been hard to find the time. I’d like to get back and talk to the students,” he said.

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