Meet Our HU Students: Neil A. Carousso

Sean: Alright, can I please have your name, your hometown, and your major?

Neil: Sure, it’s Neil A. Carousso. I am a Journalism and Accounting major with a Political Science minor. I’m from Bayside, Queens, New York.

S: So, Neil, when you were young what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up?

N: You know when I was young I remember, and you know I work at the radio station here at WRHU [Radio Hofstra University] and I remember calling games in front of my TV. Like, I would sit in front of a Mets baseball game and I would call play-by-play of it into a recorder and I would keep the score of it and everything. So I’ve always loved TV, I’ve always loved broadcasting so it has actually been one of my passions since I was a little kid. And I used to do even a talk show in my living room, so I always kinda wanted to do radio and TV in some fashion. Whether I knew it or not I always did broadcasting and always wanted to be a broadcaster and a journalist.

S: So what job do you hope will be the first job that you take after you graduate?

N:  Well I do a lot of producing here, a lot of producing, a lot of executive producing, and building the content for a show. Luckily here at the station, here at WRHU, I’ve been able to put together shows that I’ve been producing on air for. I mean ultimately I would like to produce and be on air for the same program. However any producing job I think is you know really powerful to control the content of a program so I’m looking towards television and hopefully working for a network in New York City.

S: So what experience do you believe has best prepared you to reach this goal?

N: Certainly my experiences here at WRHU as the producer and host of the morning show, WRHU’s Morning Wake-Up Call, doing the evening news as a producer and anchor for Newsline, and really just going out and reporting and finding stories. Enterprising stories, tracking down people, going out on location, meeting people in person, doing interviews, and reporting on those stories people don’t know about or people wouldn’t have a chance to know about unless you actually put it there on the airwaves so we’ve a powerful job to do and I think that when you could enterprise and report a story you’re doing the community a better service and that’s something that has prepared me the most.

S: What advice would you give for others that are trying to follow in the same career path?

N: I advise that you really delve into your college radio station, into your college TV station, or your high school. Try to get some experience in some way, write for the school newspaper, and really you learn by doing. So if you want to be on the air, I mean, the biggest part is writing so definitely get involved in your school newspaper and learn how to write properly and learn proper English and really just get involved. I mean, if you can get into your college radio station and pick up a few slots and the more time you put in the more you’ll get out of it.

S:  So who here at Hofstra University would you say had the biggest positive impact on you?

N: I would probably say John Mullen, who is our faculty advisor here at WRHU and he has given me great advice whether it’s putting together a report or going out on location or just the business of news, the business of sports, the business of broadcasting and ratings, and things like that that they don’t normally teach in the classroom. So John has been a big influence on me in preparing me for the outside work.