Hector Mackenzie
Verified
(He/Him)
As seen in:
Highland News & Media,
Ross-shire Journal,
The Daily Mirror,
Daily Express,
Scottish Daily Record,
WICZ-TV (Vestal, NY),
KTEN-TV (Denison, TX),
WFXG-TV (Augusta, GA),
San Francisco Weekly,
Victoria Advocate,
WCAV-TV (Charlottesville, VA),
WV News
and
Covers:
General news, features and human interest.
Citizen of the world.
Word wrangler for Highland News and Media.
hector.mackenzie@hnmedia.co.uk
Interview
What was your first job as a journalist?
Covering community councils that no one else wanted to do while holding down an unlucrative school cleaner side hustle as a teenager.
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes!
How is social media changing news?
It's Aladdin's cave and Pandora's box in one and the journalist's job is to find the treasure and slay the monsters.
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
Mikael Blomkvist.
What does it mean to be a journalist?
It means having the privilege to hear and share other people's stories and play a small part in revealing what binds us together.
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
In a spam-free, specific and relevant way.
What's your favorite social network?
Face to face chat.
Why did you become a journalist?
It seemed a good idea at the time.
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
In high school I recorded stories from the local newspaper for the blind.
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
The story of a brave, terminally ill woman who had lived her best life possible and was ready for to experience a good death.
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Be open to telling stories in many different ways and listen carefully to every answer for the possible killer follow-up question.
What's the best pitch you ever got?
'How would you like to spend three weeks in Washington State on a training exercise with the British Army with a side trip to Seattle?'
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
How long do you have?
What's your favorite drink?
Tea.
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
Cycling to go walk someone else's dog, dreaming of travel while jogging or next to a boiling kettle.
Would you like to take the Muck Rack Interview?
Create a Muck Rack profile.