By Sydney Antoszyk

Doug Oster, an Emmy Award-winning producer, photographer, and journalist advised college students on how to be successful in journalism. 

The sixty-five-year-old began his career in photography when he was just 19 years old, working for a local newspaper. He then took his photography to the Post Gazette, where he worked for 17 years, and then worked five more at the Pittsburgh Tribune.

“The first message to you today is accuracy,” Doug Oster said, as he began speaking to his audience of 16 La Roche students. “When I start my interview I say, tell me your name and spell it,” he said. 

Oster stressed how important it is to get a name right in a story because for most people, it is their only chance to be in the news. 

His second piece of advice was about welcoming change in your profession. “You’ve got to embrace technology,” he said. “The people that didn’t were just left in the dust.” 

He described his own journey with adapting to change when he started writing the garden column for the Post Gazette in the 1980s. He said he was adamant about turning it into a radio show and then a TV show. 

He managed to do both, creating The Organic Gardener Radio Show and appearing weekly on Pittsburgh Today Live. 

“Then came this thing called the World Wide Web,” Oster said. The internet faced skepticism from journalists and news outlets, he said. “Well, I embraced that web,” he said, “And when I did, I started a garden forum.” 

Almost everything about the development of photographs has changed, too, since he began his career. “We’d shoot eight rolls of film, 36 pictures on each role,” Oster said. “We’d go back to the office, and we would develop it in this little dark room,” he added. 

Things are different now, everything is shot digitally and there is no more film. “No one could stay back developing pictures. There’s no more dark rooms,” he said.

As Oster continued with his column and morning news, he was offered an opportunity working for a feature show, On Queue, with WQED, he told. This job required him to film, write a script, and edit by himself, something the talk show host had never done before. 

“I wrote the script for this first thing. It was awful,” he said. However, by watching how his producer fixed it, he learned how to write the script, he said. “Don’t let yourself stop you from doing things,” the producer stated.

Finally, Oster stressed the importance of respecting the generational gap in writing and any area of life. We can learn from people of all different ages, he said.

“I don’t know any of that corporate stuff, okay? I don’t know how to play those games,” he said, “I need somebody in between.” This “in-between” person, happened to be a 25-year-old fresh out of school, he said.

 “We have this amazing relationship and she’s a super hard worker,” Oster said. 

The journalist pointed out that older people tend to criticize younger people for their lack of experience and knowledge. “Earn their respect and they’ll treat you with respect,” he stated.

Oster’s eyes beamed with pride as he wrapped up his talk to the prospective journalists in the room. “The fun part of all this,” he said, “is finding the stories.” 

He reminded the class that there are stories everywhere. Some people think they must live in a big city or during an important time to get a good story, but that’s not how it works, he said. 

“You have to think of it this way,” he stressed. “Everybody has a story. Your job is to find it.”

Doug Oster spoke to a La Roche University Journalism class on Monday, November 18.