Author: Michael Castengera
Michael Castengera is a newspaper reporter, turned television reporter, turned news manager, turned news consultant, turned university teacher.
He started out as a newspaper reporter, first while living in Australia, and then for newspapers in Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida. He made the cross over into television reporting in Jacksonville, going to work for Post-Newsweek’s WJXT.
Since then he has worked in virtually every position in the newsroom, including reporter, assignment editor, producer, managing editor, assistant news director, news director and, finally, station manager. His career has covered markets large (Miami and St. Louis), medium (Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Oklahoma City and Lexington, Kentucky) and small (Beaumont and Corpus Christi, Texas).
He cites as career highlights, investigative reports into police abuse, tornado coverage in Oklahoma and riots in Miami, being at the birth of the first 24-hour news station (KMOV) and heading up what was, at the time, the highest rated news affiliate in the country (WINK).
It was while he was station manager and news director in Fort Myers that he made the cross over into consulting, working with Audience, Research and Development of Dallas as a senior strategist with a variety of stations around the country.
He now is a senior lecturer in Digital and Broadcast Journalism at the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia. In addition to that, he runs his own consulting company, Media Strategies and Tactics. Clients include media groups in America as well as in India.