The end goal of many first-year journalists is to cover national news, a dream often perceived as requiring decades of working in local news before gaining a foothold in the industry. However, for Madison Scarpino, this traditional trajectory took a shift when she decided to apply to join the Fox News Multimedia Reporters (MMR) team.
“When I was in college, I saw a former MMR who posted about the job, and I had not heard of it, but I read into it and just never heard of anything else like it,” Scarpino said. “I did not think that I would get it and somehow just made it through the process, and it was the best thing that I ever did for sure.”
The 2020 graduate of The University of Mississippi School of Journalism & New Media has since been promoted to the job of national correspondent. In the last couple of years, she has covered a wide variety of stories, including the United Auto Workers strike, the Titanic submersible implosion in Canada, as well as the border surge in Arizona and Texas. Currently, she is based in Atlanta.
“That is one of my favorite things about the job, you get the opportunity to travel around and cover all types of different things,” she added.
To adjust to the role, she mentions the importance of being open to criticism. Scarpino recalls during her training months, “I remember my first few scripts were just ripped to shreds, but at the end of the [training] program, they would change absolutely nothing. So just go in with an open mindset”
Additionally, Scarpino said interested reporters should have a good mix of being able to cover politics, breaking news, and the economy, among other subjects, and be able to show their performance on tough topics as well as showcase their personalities.
Other necessary skills include being flexible and self-sufficient enough to be able to troubleshoot problems and stay calm under pressure.
“I had to step up in a lot of ways and that’s kind of part of the job,” Scarpino said, sharing one concrete example. “The cold and the hot temperatures could kill your batteries a lot faster, and you have to keep everything dry. That’s hard. You could find ways to help you, gazebos or balconies at a hotel, something that you can do to keep your gear covered.”
Despite the challenges, she said there is always a team ready to support the Fox MMRs in every aspect of the job, often through official and unofficial mentors.
Scarpino said, “My official mentor is Chad P, he is the senior Congressional correspondent. One of my goals, which I’m still very much working on, is to get really good at politics because I felt that was my weakness… and if you’re going to be paired up with someone in Fox, it’s going to be someone really good who has a lot of knowledge and experience.”
This has been a crucial element for her learning and growth, but also confidence.
When talking about her daily routine she said, “It is a hard thing to answer what is a typical day like because it sounds cliche, but that’s not a thing in this job, but that’s what I love the most about it and you just get unmatched experiences”.
The reporter recalls one day having a normal day covering a story in Memphis, Tennessee when she received a call from her boss, “The first thing I said is what’s happening in Canada and that was when the missing Submersible submarine stuff happened… I had to be on a flight, I think in like an hour and a half, and it was freezing there. I wasn’t prepared for that, but I ended up being in Canada for almost two weeks covering that.”
Scarpino concludes, “There’s a lot of days where you’re going to be working from sun up to sun down and that’s why you got to be passionate about it and want to work hard. You have to really love the thrill of being immersed in those big national stories.”
