Thomas Ritchie talked about how journalism has completely changed since he started. Thomas studied journalism and mass communications at a private school in Yankton South Dakota. He worked in journalism for 25 years. Today, media consumption is everywhere, making it hard for a journalist to make their own mark.

An interesting story that Ritchie talked about was one about a 100-year-old guy whom he visited in a nursing home. He quoted that the guy mentioned that “the key to longevity is smoking cigars and having a lot of sex.”

He realized journalism wasn’t for him due to the newspaper circulation declining. In 2012, he made the change to switch to Marketing because the corporate world has far more benefits, and journalists are said to be overworked and underpaid. He saw far more opportunities going into the Marketing field.

Ritchie remarked, “Journalism died, so I went to Marketing.”

Richie’s day-to-day job is as a strategic digital marketing specialist at Great West Casually. His company tracks what his customers are looking at online. They do this to see who is interested in buying insurance and they use that information to target that group of people.

Thomas Ritchie loves where he’s at now. He talked about how he likes how he works with a hybrid schedule. Not only does Thomas get to work the social media of his new job, but he also is starting to incorporate short video content now.

Even though Ritchie found his new career path in Marketing, he still explained that “I miss journalism every day.”