Alumni Q&A
Paul Connolly, the deputy bureau chief at Bloomberg BNA, served as editor in chief the year The Hatchet became independent from the University in 1993. Paul spoke to assistant news editor Leah Potter about his time at The Hatchet and how it prepared him for his career.
Q: What led you to join The Hatchet?
A: I knew I needed to get writing experience, and The Hatchet was a great place to get it. The first weekend of school they had an open house my freshman year, so I went and checked it out. Also, I was a work study student, so I needed a job on campus, and they had a job for an editorial assistant. I applied for the job and got the position. This is back in the ‘90s before the internet really was a thing, so you would clip stories and put them in files so editors could go back and refer to them. Again, nicely fitting with my news junky side, just being around the paper, and hanging around the office a lot, I got to know more of the editors and started writing more and more, and then just got more involved throughout my GW career.
Q: What is your favorite memory from your time on staff?
A: We used to have our offices in the Marvin Center, and I remember playing frisbee in the hallways at like 2 a.m., typical college-kid stuff like that. Those are the G-rated stories, anyway.
One April Fools edition after the editor in chief before me, Deborah Solomon (Class of 1994), went home, we took stacks of old Hatchet issues that needed to be recycled, crumpled them up and threw them in her office, and totally filled her office from floor to ceiling with crumpled up issues of The Hatchet. Silly stuff like that, those are things you can’t really do when you’re in a grown-up job.
Q: What do you do now and how has The Hatchet prepared you for your career?
A: I feel that working on The Hatchet helps you lay that foundation for the skills that you’re going to need if you want to be a journalist. In particular, I’m the deputy bureau chief at Bloomberg BNA. We are a unit of Bloomberg LP which runs Bloomberg News, the big, giant media company. My day to day job is, I’m the number two person in the newsroom in our offices. We produce four main products, Bloomberg Tax, Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Government and Bloomberg Environment.
A lot of what I learned being an editor at The Hatchet applies to my current job. How to work with reporters, how to work with editors, how to understand the needs of your readers, what they want to read about, what they’re interested in, what they’ll click on, what they won’t click on – because you learn all of that at The Hatchet.
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