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Behind the Curtain

: A reporter turned analyst reveals why sometimes it's good to be gone.

"Not every journalist was right for this kind of work"

Erika Rosenberg fell in love with journalism like so many others – as a student at the University of Illinois, where she worked at the school paper, the Daily Illini.

For more than a decade she worked as a reporter, moving around to move up and finally found herself in Gannett’s Albany bureau. It was a good job, a challenging job. But in 2005, she found herself wanting to move again – this time not for a reporting job, but for her husband, who lived in Rochester.

It was time to leave, both Albany and journalism. Now Rosenberg works as a senior research associate for the Center for Governmental Research, a non-profit based in Rochester, NY.

Q: What were you looking for when you moved back to Rochester?

Erika: I had already worked at the Rochester paper and I didn’t want to go back; I had already been there – it didn’t feel like it would be a move up.

Q: So if not the newspaper, what did you want to do?

Erika: I thought about teaching. I thought about looking for adjunct jobs, but they don’t pay anything. I thought about teaching in a charter school. I knew I didn’t want to do public relations.

Q: How did you go from teaching to working as a research associate?

Erika: I had known about the Center from when I worked in Rochester before. It had a good reputation and I had followed their work after I left. It was really a wild shot in the dark – I called up one of the people I knew and said “I don’t know how this might work for you….” They had hired people with journalism experience before, so they were willing to get together and talk about it.

Q: Were they specifically looking for journalists?

Erika: Well, what they figured out was that not every journalist was right for this kind of work. Some skills translate and some don’t. We do a lot of data analysis and in-depth studies, and that’s not for everyone. And it’s a much different atmosphere, it’s very quiet. I spend a lot of time in my office, alone.

Q: What do you do, exactly?

Erika: We work mostly on a contract basis, doing analysis of different programs, like if the government or a non-profit group wants a report, an evaluation of how something is working. We cover a wide range of areas, from education to the economy to tax policy.

Q: What do you like about the job?

Erika: I like being able to still work on public policy issues. I like being able to get to the bottom of things, like I did when I was a reporter. But what I didn’t have as a reporter was a chance to go behind the scenes. There’s a whole other view behind the curtain.

Q: What skills did you learn as a reporter that have been most useful to you as an analyst?

Erika: There were certain skills that were helpful – interviewing, and doing an analysis. Having a broad background in different issues is critical. Just being able to write is really valuable.

Q: What has been hard to learn?

Erika: Well, there’s the thing of working with clients, which is different. I’m supposed to be way more deferential to leaders than I had to be as a reporter, and it’s not my nature to suck up. But you learn how to work with people. We tell them bad news if we find it, we don’t skew things or bury findings. But it’s a negotiation process.

Q: What do you miss about the newsroom?

Erika: So much, there’s a lot I miss. I miss being in the newsroom, it’s fun and stimulating. I miss tracking down stories and getting to be kind of brash and getting away with it. There’s that sense of camaraderie and teamwork and the rush of meeting deadlines. There’s a team atmosphere here too, but it’s more business-y. And I miss being in the paper, even after years, it was still a rush to get on the front page. I missed that a lot in the beginning.

Q: What don’t you miss?

Erika: There’s a lot I don’t miss too. I don’t miss working in an industry that feels like it's dying and attempting to cling to life. The hours are more regular, although I never had a night cops job. I still have to work really long hours.

Q: Any advice you might have for others about life outside the newsroom?

Erika: There’s definitely a need for analysis and good writing. You need to think about the environment you want to be in; where you want to spend eight hours of your day.

Erika Rosenberg, 37, is a Senior Research Associate for the Center for Governmental Research, a non-profit based in Rochester, New York.