Too Good to Pass Up: Albright Focuses on Reporting

Professor Charlotte Albright has shifted the balance of her hybrid career to focus more on reporting for Vermont Public Radio.

Albright has been teaching journalism full-time at Lyndon State since 2007 in unison with reporting radio broadcasts on VPR, which she has also been doing since 2007. She anticipates progressing as a journalist by gaining more reporting experience while continuing to teach as an adjunct professor.

Although the Lyndon State student community will be receiving less of Professor Albright's instruction, there are positive qualities to her shift in priorities. As the world of journalism changes everyday, having professors directly in the field offers students acute insight and accurate information.

"It's important to have practicing journalists who can report from the front lines," Albright stated with full confidence in her ability to teach and report. "Even if you teach just one course, you put all your teaching energy into it. If you teach four courses, you divide up your teaching energy among four courses," Albright said.

Even as she is reporting fervently for Vermont Public Radio and teaching at Lyndon State and its time-consuming and taxing nature, Albright is still driving hard after 18 years as a journalist and four years as a professor. "It is a balancing act. Instead of being a teacher who does journalism, I am now, again, a journalist who teaches," Albright said. "I was balancing before. I've just adjusted what gets more time."

The shift is affording Albright new and great opportunities. "The VPR assignment was too good to pass up because it meant starting my own bureau in a place where they've never had a bureau before," she exclaimed. This will provide the Northeast Kingdom with public radio that did not previously orient news locally. "I think it's going to be, in the big picture, a good thing for the region to have a voice on public radio."

Over the past four years, Albright has influenced aspiring journalists at Lyndon State. "I just really like to teach. I think journalism and teaching are the same thing. When you do a piece of journalism that is valuable, you are teaching something that you have learned." How do you think I learned to write this article?

As all teachers do, Charlotte has been molding the minds of young writers. "I'd like to have just a little bit of influence on the next generation of journalists because I'm going to have to be consuming the stuff you guys do," Albright said in a way that expects great journalism. And as for advice to this next generation of journalists, Professor Albright encourages to, "Stay versatile, and stay flexible."