Samie Solina from Hawaii News Now Talks With CSUN's RTDNA

On February 9th, CSUN’s RTDNA was visited by Samie Solina. Solina attended College of the Canyons and graduated from Arizona State University. She is now a multimedia journalist for Hawaii News Now. She stopped by our meeting to talk about her career journey and gave students some great advice.

Samie attributes her success to the hands-on experience she gained as a student. She explains that places like College of the Canyons and CSUN do allow students to be more involved in the journalism process. During her education, Samie interned at The Signal and was then offered a job there. “There was a lot of breaking news around us. And I fell in love with journalism that way,” she explained.

She further fell in love with feature stories and enjoys the projects that involve getting to know people. One skill Samie was told that set her apart from other journalists is that she began storytelling through her photography. She explained that it is a great skill to have as a journalist because you may not be provided with help when documenting a story.

When she transferred to ASU she wanted to expand her skills and gain more experience. She interned for news stations in Arizona and was able to utilize her photography skills. “Put yourself out there and offer to do different things,” Solina told students. She explained that she tried to apply this principle to every internship that she landed.

Samie found great interest in the National Press Photographers Association. She explained the organization is, “ A group that really cares about photography. I attended a couple of different seminars...It really taught me the format of a story.”

Samie offers some sound advice to students who may be comparing themselves to other professionals in a way that could negatively impact them. She explains how she stopped comparing herself. She explained, “ I think it is so important to watch the work of others and learn from it. But the best person to compare yourself to is the person you were yesterday and figure out what you need to improve by watching your work.”

Samie told students the story of how she landed her first job out of school in Anchorage, Alaska. She explained how she initially wanted to stay close to home but decided to push herself out of her comfort zone. When she was contacted by the station she was pleasantly surprised to find that they loved storytellers and human interest stories.

During her schooling she interned at Hawaii News Now and following her departure from her station in Anchorage, she transferred to work full time with Hawaii News Now in Honolulu. She really enjoys her position as a morning reporter and a dayside MMJ.

CSUN’s RTDNA was very glad to have Samie Solina come speak with us at our meeting and we can’t wait to hopefully have her back.

Watch the full meeting to get to know more about Samie’s experiences as well as advice on forming a reel by clicking on the video below:

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