If you’ve watched the news recently, you might have seen one of our marketing students, Jonathan Kirby, on KY3 with Ashley Reynolds. As a requirement for his degree, Jonathan took on an internship with Contact KY3, a special segment on the nightly 6 o’clock news featuring consumer and business topics like scams, bad businesses and consumer reports. Jonathan says their job is to inform the public of ways to protect their money and how not to fall for scams. “I grew up in the Springfield area and KY3 was a huge part of my childhood,” Jonathan says. “It was really neat to go from ‘just a fan’ to working alongside the people I grew up watching.” Jonathan always had a love for journalism and was excited for the opportunity to link it with marketing.

Along with being in front of the camera, Jonathan’s other responsibilities include lots of research, writing, promoting on social media, participating in community events, producing videos and interviewing people. Last week, he and Ashley Reynolds did a special segment on eBay gift card scamming. They bought $100 worth of gift cards off eBay, and, in the end, they were ripped off a total of $67. They chose the gift cards based off popular companies in Springfield and each spent time trying to spend the cards and film the transactions. Jonathan says being on live TV brought him a lot of unexpected exposure, and he was surprised to know just how many people still watch the news at home. As well as phone calls and messages from friends directly after the segment aired, he says he still gets recognized by strangers at the bank where he works.

Jonathan says this internship and whole experience as been eye opening, and he’s sorry to see the semester come to an end. “Through this whole experience, I discovered new approaches to marketing, how to speak in front of a lot of people and be comfortable with it, and how to deliver accurate and detailed information to people on various media platforms,” he says. “I also learned a lot about myself and that I know for sure that marketing is the career path for me.”