Thomas Ritchie Interview

Thomas Ritchie, social and digital media expert, shares his personal interests and thoughts on new-age journalism in this interview recap.

From Waterloo, Iowa, Thomas Ritchie is a digital media expert who graduated from Mount Marty College. Ritchie grew up wanting to be a farmer as a result of the idolization of his grandfather, but ended up taking a different route in his career field. He also loved hockey, which he played all throughout high school, but went on to get a mass communications degree with a minor in marketing propelling him in to the business and media world.

For 25 years Ritchie did journalism at multiple different outlets, Argus Leader being the biggest, but he also has had a number of other jobs. Currently, Thomas works for the largest trucking insurance company in the world where he writes content for blogs as well as advertising content in order to get people interested in the company and to get people to understand the company is legit. “I miss journalism every day,” Ritchie reminisced when asked about his past in the field. He’s also worked in healthcare for some time, as well as teaching social media courses at a community college when social media was relatively new. He describes social media as being a big reason journalism has changed over the years.

“Journalism began to die out,” Thomas mentioned when talking about how social media has changed communications. He described media formatting as being a lot more strict before social media came about because it’s now a lot more common for media outlets to use an opinon-based type of journalism aside from the traditional television ‘news’ style.

He also got to experience the effects of social media first hand. Working at the Argus Leader, Thomas was alongside nearly 70 creative employers daily who worked with him as well, over the years that number of employers dropped down to less than 15 people. Nonetheless, Ritchie describes having worked at a large media outlet as being exciting. “I loved how going to work was never the same,” Ritchie said when talking about the Argus Leader.

Now, working in marketing, Ritchie believes that journalism transfers well. A lot of marketing involves being able to write and creativeness due to having to pull people into your business according to Ritchie. It’s different in a sense that you go from a lot of storytelling to advertising and targeting, but much of the skills needed in journalism and the media world are skills that are used in marketing.