If you live in the local area, you’ve likely seen his byline in the Johnson City Press. David Floyd is a 2017 graduate of the ETSU Department of Media and Communication, where he concentrated in journalism.
At ETSU, he worked with the East Tennessean in several capacities. David was executive editor during the 2016-17 year, copy editor in 2016, news editor in 2014-15, A&E editor in 2014 and a reporter in 2014.
He started working with the Johnson City Press part-time while still in college, and in May 2019 he was offered a job. At the newspaper, David reports on city government and business. You can read some of his work here.
We asked David about his career with the Johnson City Press and how working for the East Tennessean prepared him for it.
Q: What do you enjoy about your job?
A: I love taking dense, complicated information and teasing out details that matter to people. Government can be a complex, granular thing that most people don’t want to think about, but your city commissioner or state representative probably has a greater impact on your day-to-day life than you’d care to admit. Local governments decide your tax rate, pay for your roads and keep your water clean. For better or worse, their works matters, and I want to tell people why.
Q: How did the East Tennessean prepare you for your current role?
A: Learning to be a journalist means doing the work. You can only get so far by learning about AP style and story structure in a classroom. Working at the East Tennessean forced me to put those theories into practice, and it acted as an entry point to the job I have now. Writing on deadline also eased me into the fast-paced expectations of a newsroom, and serving in a leadership role helped demystify the process behind putting together a newspaper. It also served as a good place to make mistakes. In addition to serving as a stolid campus watchdog and a forum for the university, I think a student paper exists to teach people how to be a journalist.
