Mike Valerio, BA ’10, a weekend and breaking news anchor in Richmond, Virginia, and his team at NBC recently won two local Emmy awards for their weekend news coverage in the DMV market—t he only station in the area taking awards in that category.
Valerio has come far in five short years since graduation and wants current SMPA students to know that a lot of success can come from taking risks and forging a career path less common than your peers.
Valerio credits much of his post-graduation success to avoiding the temptation to work in a big city market after graduation. “I was tempted to stay in DC or go to New York after graduation,” Valerio said. But instead, he made the decision to work in a small North Carolina town, a move that helped him build confidence and experience covering important topics. While in North Carolina, Valerio reported on the John Edwards scandal, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and other natural disasters.
After Hurricane Sandy, Valerio moved to Richmond where he started working as an anchor for NBC 12. There, he started doing more political journalism, an area he wasn’t as familiar with.
“Taking another risk was valuable to me,” Valerio said. “I was able to switch away from what I was comfortable with.” On just his second day at the new job, Valerio was covering the corruption allegations surrounding former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.
Valerio said SMPA helped him gauge the appropriate way to handle tougher topics, and he often relies on what he learned about media ethics as a student. Since working in Richmond, Valerio has been faced with covering tragic stories like a hot air balloon accident and the discovery of student remains at the University of Virginia. It was NBC 12’s coverage of these two topics that earned his team their Emmys.
“SMPA prepared me to tell the stories of people who had lost everything,” Valerio said. “You need to balance the sensitivities to families with your role as the fourth estate to report on tragedies to help prevent them from happening again.”
Valerio recalled getting advice on how to cover sensitive topics from the late SMPA professor Michael Shanahan. While an undergrad, Valerio had taken Shanahan’s media ethics course. “Professor Shanahan continued to help guide my coverage,” said Valerio who called on the professor for his advice on covering sensitive topics through phone calls and Facebook message .
Valerio plans to stay with broadcast news, and said that no matter the chatter you hear about journalism turning into an online only venture, broadcast news is here to stay.
“When news happens, people will check headlines online,” he said, “but the strength of broadcast news is to capture the energy of a story as it unfolds.”
His advice to students: Take advantage of everything DC has to offer, and don’t be afraid to start your career in a smaller broadcast TV market. “These stories we tell in smaller markets are ones of value,” he said. “They get sent on to the network level, and they matter to thousands of people.”