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Damon Romine, BJ '88

What do you do?
I am the director of entertainment media at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation's largest advocacy group fighting for the fair, accurate and inclusive representation of gays and lesbians in the media. In addition to being the organization's spokesperson, I lead our efforts to work with the television and film industries in ways that are proactive and sometimes reactive, but hopefully always educational.

How did you get your job?
This is a position once held by Cher's daughter, Chastity Bono, and has since evolved to one that requires you to wear the hat of journalist, publicist, entertainment executive and spokesperson. Fortunately, since graduation twenty years ago, I've followed a path that has exposed me to these different careers.

What is the best professional lesson you learned at the J-School?
Realize your strengths. While working as a reporter and producer at KOMU, I constantly pitched stories about local theater productions and weekend box office results. Entertainment stories were what interested me most, but were also hard to come by in 1988 when much of our coverage was focused on the presidential primaries and conventions. What's great about the Journalism School is the practical experience you get as a student to help you figure out what you want to do as a career; I realized as a student that hard news was not the path for me.

What is your favorite J-School memory?
I enjoyed the investigative class projects that were not put together under deadline pressure. I produced a multi-part KOMU sweeps series that took us to southeast Missouri to explore the area's earthquake zone and how a quake will affect mid-Missouri. Two decades later, that big quake has yet to happen, and I'm sure students are repeating this investigative report every few years. Because, as then-anchor Carol Kaplan said during the many on-air promos for the series: "It's not a matter of if, but when."