Sara Davenport: From Burnt Out News Anchor to Entrepreneur

12/14/23 • 37 min

Sara Davenport is an award-winning journalist who followed her dreams and became an anchor in a top-10 market. But after winning all the awards, and covering all the stories, she need a plan B - something that gave her not just a fantastic lifestyle, but also a life.

She has created a life as a media mentor working with others looking to break the breaking news cycle.

She wanted to work from home or just work from phone/wifi
She wanted to travel and vacation for more than 8 weeks/year
She wanted to make 6-figures, from one or multiple businesses
She wanted to be a storyteller, content creator, and still remain
on-camera
She wanted to coach others to success

On this episode of MsInterPReted she discusses how she made a plan and went after it.

Davenport provides valuable insight into writing a resume to highlight transferrable skills, using LinkedIn as a true marketing platform to market and creating multiple revenue streams for profitability and stability.

Through her former and current career, Davenport has collected a plethora of stories about the good, the bad and the ugly of working in broadcast news. She shares the moment that she knew she had to make a change and what she sees as driving the mass exodus from TV News today.

She has created a life as a media mentor working with others looking to break the breaking news cycle.

She wanted to work from home or just work from phone/wifi
She wanted to travel and vacation for more than 8 weeks/year
She wanted to make 6-figures, from one or multiple businesses
She wanted to be a storyteller, content creator, and still remain
on-camera
She wanted to coach others to success

On this episode of MsInterPReted she discusses how she made a plan and went after it.

Previous Episode

2024 Public Relations Obstacles

As we head into 2024, Fletcher Marketing PR Vice President, Sarah Merrell and Director of Media Relations, Allison Lester discuss the PR obstacles we foresee clients and firms facing in the year ahead and tactics to overcome these hurdles.

Obstacles include:
AI - The rise of artificial intelligence raises ethical concerns and requires us helping our clients to understand the benefits and limitations of new technologies.
GA4 - With Google Analytics launching its new analytics platform in 2023, many businesses still don't have their GA4 and/or aren't yet using it to its fullest potential.
Other new technologies - as new platforms and software emerge, it requires education for our teams and clients to institute these new tools
Over-reliance on digital marketing - many businesses see digital marketing as a fast-fix for marketing goals, when it should really be viewed as one tool to pair with myriad of other strategies. It requires educating our clients on the benefits, but also limitations of digital marketing to keep them from making the mistake of relying too heavily on this strategy alone.
Media fragmentation - There are more media outlets today than ever before. This provides both an opportunity for media relations efforts, but also an obstacle. Media relations pros have to take the extra time to weed through the options to find the best fit and help clients understand the quality matters more than ever.
Content overload - With so much content being pumped out into the world today, it's more important than ever to make your content standout. This requires creativity, strategy and research.
The prevalence of paid media - As there are more pieces of the pie, each individual outlet has fewer readers/viewers. This has led to a rise in paid media as media outlets are forced to find new revenue streams. This means clients will need to consider options such as advertorials, affiliate marketing and paid placements in addition to earned media efforts.
Integrated marketing - we know integrated marketing is 300% more effective than silo-ing your marketing efforts, but helping our clients understand the benefits of having one party handle all of the tactics still proves to be an obstacle.
Reputation management - In the day and age of 'cancel culture' it is imperative to give careful extra thought to all messaging - this includes, not only the content you produce, but also responses on social media. It's important to have diverse voices at the table to ensure you are using sensitivity and not overlooking biases.
Rising labor costs and inflation - both firms and our clients are facing the biggest obstacle of 2024 that all Americans are facing with inflation and rising prices. It costs more to do business, which means many companies will be looking for ways to save. We encourage business owners and CEOs to consider the ROI you get from marketing, and to never save money but cutting good people.

Next Episode

PR Tips from Travel Writers

On this episode of MsInterPReted, Fletcher’s director of media relations, Allison Lester, talks about travel writing, pitching and hosting media tours. We welcome two travel writers to talk about their experiences in travel writing. They provide advice and talk about the trends in the travel journalism industry.

Susan Barnes has more than 20 years of journalism experience and writes for multiple outlets including USA Today, Food and Wine, Garden and Gun, Travel + Leisure - just to name a few. She writes about travel, lifestyle, food and beverage.

Ashlee Fechino is the founder of the Happiness Function, which is a travel outlet she started to inspire happiness through travel and outdoor recreation in the U. S. She's also a nationally syndicated travel writer.

On this episode, we discuss multiple topics:

· How our guests got into travel writing and what it’s like as a career.

· The dos and don’ts of pitching travel journalists.

· What qualities make for a great press trip.

· How to get coverage in some of the travel industry’s biggest outlets.

· Trends in the rise of wellness travel.