How a Press Club member successfully reinvented his career

Adam Konowe started as an ad guy. More like an ad kid.

As a pre-teen living in suburban New York he penned some copy for a Catskills resort his family liked to visit and sent it off the resort's management. The managers forwarded it to their big ad agency and the agency called Adam, shocked that he was still in grade school. They said, "call us back when you finish college." He never did.

Konowe was a radio guy too, broadcasting the hits from his bedroom to his younger brother's room.

Now, Konowe vice president of client strategy for TMP Government, the Washington division of an advertising and communications agency where he advises defense and aerospace clients.

In between bedroom DJ and D.C. communicator there was college radio -- University of Rochester’s WRUR (undergrad); American University’s WVAU (grad school); then television as a C-SPAN intern, BizNet producer-director and finally program development for the short-lived "PBS The Business Channel"; and AU as adjunct professor since 1999 and WVAU faculty advisor more recently.

Konowe has been a member of the National Press Club since 1999 and shared the story of his multiple career re-inventions with members of the Club's Broadcast Committee at its April 7 meeting. He presented statistics that said that 40 percent of TV content today is weather, traffic and sports. He noted that in 1980 there was parity in numbers between journalist jobs and public relations jobs. By 2008, the ratio was 4:1 favoring PR.

As job prospects shift, Konowe says it is clear that "we're all in the content creation business." And, he has latched onto the fact that as there are fewer journalists, they are more likely to be generalists and pressed for time.

Konowe helps his clients by helping reporters understand "here's why you should care." That lightens the load for the reporter and gets the client's message out. Before the Internet, PR people produced and placed case studies, speeches and bylined articles for executives. In today's multimedia world a successful communicator repurposes those pieces of content into blog posts, multimedia presentations, tweets and Facebook posts.

When you deliver a message to an audience "you still need the journalist to provide third-party credibility," Konowe believes.

Like a journalist, Konowe still finds opportunities where he's got to think on his feet. As a freelancer, he worked the international TV broadcast of the Jan. 1, 2015, Winter Classic National Hockey League outdoor game at Nationals Park baseball stadium and on another occasion had to scramble when a client was hosting a 40-person high profile dinner at the upper reaches of the Tower Bridge in London. The elevator broke down. Quickly he had to get the word out. "Walking shoes to climb the steps, no high heels." It ended well.

The Broadcast Committee is open to all members of the Club. It usually meets at noon on the first Thursday of each month in the McClendon Room in the Reliable Source restaurant. To join the committee, contact Chairman Mark Hamrick at [email protected].