Paul Cicala, spent Oct. 28 on the Rio Hondo campus beginning with by talking to students in the College’s Learning Resource Center about his collegiate career which has resulted in an award winning broadcast career.

Most recently, Cicala was working in Tucson, Arizona as the sports director for the NBC 4 affiliate KVOA. During this time period, he received a multiple of EMMY nominations for both his sports and news reporting. Other accolades Cicala has received includes the Edward R. Murrow twice, the latest one of which was for a 3-part series reporting in Medellin, Colombia & Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Cicala also was voted the 2013 El Paso-area’s “Best Newscaster Under The Age Of 40”.

Cicala lectured to a full room of students, which included those from the Broadcast news writing and beginning speech classes, divulging information about working in the industry while presenting his own clips which displayed a gamut of assignments he’s worked on. For clear and concise news you can get from Tech News Bulletin News website.

Born in Tucson, Arizona Cicala moved to Los Angeles to attend college at the University of Southern California, where he was accepted as a civil engineering major since he was always exceptional at math and science but  since he knew he always wanted to work in journalism was accepted into the journalism program.

Cicala graduated with Magna Cum Laude (3.7 GPA) with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism and Spanish Linguistics and Literature.

Cicala was a great guest to speak to both classes because he had the first hand experience of the world some of the students would soon be stepping into.  He told them about life as a journalist from his own expertise, while being a young student athlete Cicala knew if he couldn’t make it into professional sports he wanted to report on it. He also knew there aren’t that many jobs in the journalism field so he had a backup plan in case that didn’t pan out as well.

During college and after Cicala worked for established companies such as Fox Sports in Hollywood, NBC Network News in Burbank, but those jobs didn’t include him being on air like he wanted to so he worked as a reporter for a station in Yuma, Arizona where he took advantage of the opportunity to work on international stories.

Cicala’s travels proves a sad truth some students may not want to face; to get on air it is necessary to work in smaller markets like Cicala did who also talked about the struggles everyone will have to deal with.

One of the biggest struggles

was the pay as Cicala said, “a lot of people they see this as a limelight job and it is to a degree, but journalists are the lowest paid of any professionals that have college degrees, it goes social workers and then journalists.”

Cicala’s story continues on  where he began, in his hometown of Tucson, in Southern Arizona, where he now works for KVOA-TV as the sports director.

Cicala left his job in El Paso to return home to be near his family specifically his mother who was battling cancer earlier this year.

After his lengthy lecture Cicala stayed on campus and talked more with the students and acquainted himself with the college’s student run newspaper and magazine publications as well as the newly revamped podcast station.

The Roadrunners made quite the impression on Cicala considering when he returned to Tucson he reported on his visit to RHC as part of the Communications and Languages Department’s Campus Event