Steven Jackson has been appearing on local television screens for more than a decade as a reporter and anchor for WTOL 11.
Now the veteran journalist is trading the newsroom for the classroom to share his industry insights with the next generation of journalists as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media.
Steven Jackson, left, a longtime reporter and anchor for WTOL 11, joined colleagues Amanda Fay and Kaylee Bowers for a production of Good Day at UToledo’s Savage Arena in 2024.
“Steven is the real deal,” said Dr. Benjamin Myers, a professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Media. “He brings years of experience, a clear sense of industry trends and lots of connections in the Toledo area. He instantly elevates our media program and students are going to benefit from learning from him.”
Jackson joins a strong team at The University of Toledo, where communication and media students benefit from ample experiential learning opportunities including a student-run newspaper and radio station and courses like Multimedia Journalism, which facilitates the student-run, student-produced newscast UT:10, and Live Sports Production, which trains students as camera operators, audio technicians, graphics operators, video replay operators and production assistants in live broadcasts for ESPN.
Jackson said he’s likewise looking forward to putting his students in the field in courses like Single Camera Production. It’s one of three he’s teaching this fall.
“I’m looking forward to making this very hands-on,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of doing. There will be some lecturing but we’re stepping outside of the classroom a lot.”
Jackson knows well the value of hands-on experience — and of professors who draw on their own real-world insights as they facilitate these opportunities.
He benefited from such a professor at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, where the suburban Chicago native pursued an undergraduate degree in mass communications and landed a job at a local television station by his senior year. He learned his way around a newsroom working weekends as a behind-the-camera editor and photographer at WAPT, always showing up in a suit and tie in hopes of catching his big break on-air.
That opportunity came on a providentially slow news day over the holidays.
“I did a story about Christmas lights in the community,” he recalled. “The assistant news director called me that night after it aired and he critiqued it, and from then on I would also shoot, edit and report from time to time.”
The resume he’d developed by the time he graduated enabled him to land a job at Toledo’s WTOL 11, where over the next dozen years he covered the full spectrum of newsroom roles — on-camera and behind-the scenes, in the field and in the studio, the adrenaline rush of breaking news and, most recently, the opportunity to develop a relationship with morning viewers as the personable traffic anchor and co-host of the morning show “Good Day.”
His favorite part of the job?
“I loved the opportunity to connect with people,” Jackson said. “You have a unique opportunity to have people open up to you as a journalist. That’s something that I’ve always enjoyed and that I think I’ll miss the most.”
Jackson now looks forward to sharing the challenges and opportunities of the industry with students at UToledo, drawing on his experiences and connections to explore how to apply old-school journalistic principles in an ever-changing media landscape.
“I’m excited to be here,” Jackson said. “I’m excited to be a Rocket.”
