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Guest Column:
Tools and Tips to Save Time in Digital Publishing By Rob Tornoe
ARKANSAS
Ar k ansas
Publisher Weekly
PRESS ASSOCIATION
Vol. 14 | No. 49 | Thursday, December 5, 2019
Serving Press and State Since 1873
Former journalist leans on the lessons learned in Arkansas for Facebook communication job Like so many other high-level public relations professionals, Nathan Allen made some stops in the Arkansas newspaper industry on his route to corporate communications. Allen, a Fort Smith native, is now manager of internal communications at Facebook. He handles employee communications at the social media behemoth just a few years gone from his sports reporting gigs for newspapers formerly owned by Stephens Media in Fort Smith and Springdale. He set out for Silicon Valley in 2013 as part of Walmart’s e-commerce communications team, without knowing much about the Bay Area or having many connections to the region. However, Allen quickly found peers with the same types of backgrounds and experiences that he credits for his professional success.
“It’s funny, being in the corporate communications world, you would not believe the amount of people that I worked with at Walmart, or at Facebook today, that have a newspaper or journalism background,” Allen said in an interview this week. “There’s a specific skill set you must have when you become a journalist. You have to be able to write and to work fast.”
Allen cut his teeth on Arkansas newspapers, as the editor of both his junior high and high school newspapers in Fort Smith. He was hired as a sports clerk by the Times Record in Fort Smith in 2002, his junior year of high school. A couple years later, Allen moved on to northwest Arkansas to attend school at the University of Arkansas and work fulltime as a sports reporter for what was then the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas.
Chip Souza, previously the sports editor at the Times Record¸ was sports editor at the Morning News, and he offered Allen both of his newspaper jobs.
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Nathan Allen
The Arkansas Press Association Board of Directors met on Thursday, December 5 in Little Rock. Those attending included (left to right): Ellen Kreth, Madison County Record in Huntsville; Rusty Turner, Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette in Fayetteville; Jennifer Allen, Pine Bluff Commercial; Lori Freeze, Stone County Leader in Mountain View; Eliza Gaines, Arkansas-Democrat Gazette in Little Rock; Kelly, Freudensprung, The Saline Courier in Benton; John Robert Schirmer, Nashville-News Leader.