Former KHOU 11 reporter Lee McGuire left Houston for Boston and is now the Chief Communications Officer at Boston Public Schools.
"We have a very active and smart local news community here, and working with them has been fun," McGuire told the mikemcguff.com blog. "More broadly, however, my job is about shaping our communications strategy. We have a team of people here who want our teachers and students to get the credit for the hard work they do every day, so it's been an easy story to tell. Working in communications is very, very different than local news, but I'm enjoying the transition. Plus, sometimes I get to go to meetings where they bring cookies."Cookies in meetings are always a plus in my opinion too.
McGuire tells me that he can almost see the Old State House from his new office. That's where the Declaration of Independence was first proclaimed to the people of Boston.
"On Monday, a fife and drum parade wandered by and somebody thought it would be a good idea to fire muskets into the air," Lee said.
But don't worry, McGuire has not forgotten his former city, "I never would have ended up here were it not for some very helpful friends in Houston. The team at KHOU is fantastic, and many of them provided job references for me. The same is true for many, many people at City Hall. I won't name names, but several people in particular went above and beyond and made a mighty big, very positive difference in the direction my life has taken."
Boston is McGuire's hometown. If that was not enough of a reason to move there, McGuire just learned his little sister is pregnant. But don't worry, he is still a big fan of the Bayou City.
"I have been telling people up here to spend their winters in Houston," he joked. "I'm like a one-man Chamber of Commerce annex."
Also celebrating a new job is former KHOU 11 airborne reporter/photographer Chris Barnes (his work also appeared on KPRC 2, KRIV 26 and KTRK 13).Barnes is now working for TV One in Silver Spring, MD as the network's Systems/Database Administrator. I had to know how he went from chopper duty to an IT sounding gig.
"I was the Systems Admin for Westwood One while I was also doing traffic from their chopper," he told me.
Smart man. Younger readers new to media need to start learning everything and diversifying as much as possible. Learn from Chris!
Congrats to both. CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here
