William Jones: establishing connections through journalism

Deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life is a very intim­i­dat­ing deci­sion. You go through all of your hob­bies, inter­ests, and strong suits to fig­ure out what works for you. Sometimes, how­ev­er, we can pick more than one.

Teacher William Jones is a prime exam­ple with his teach­ing career, pho­tog­ra­phy, and sports jour­nal­ism business.

Mr. Jones start­ed his web­site, 10thRegion.com, after tak­ing pic­tures for his high school’s yearbook.

“I remem­ber cov­er­ing the 10^th Region Baseball Tournament in 2017,” Jones said. “Throughout high school and col­lege, I cre­at­ed a web­site and social media for the Bracken County Polar Bears from 2014 until 2022.”

Jones did his best to con­sis­tent­ly pho­to­graph his high school’s sports, even while work­ing hard to become a teacher.

“While get­ting my bachelor’s degree from NKU, I would often dri­ve 45 min­utes back home to cov­er their games. I still real­ly enjoyed it and had fun sup­port­ing my alma mater. I was hap­py because it allowed me to do the two things I enjoyed most.

Starting a jour­nal­ism career isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, mon­ey, and deter­mi­na­tion to get start­ed and keep up with it. 

“I only did the 10^th Region account for a few months before I real­ized it was too hard to keep up with that and Bracken County sports,” Mr. Jones said. “After I got my first teach­ing job, I was about an hour and a half from home and knew I couldn’t cov­er just Bracken County. So I decid­ed to expand to the entire 10^th Region and its 16 schools.”

(The 10^th Region includes George Rogers Clark High School.)

Jones said the hard work is worth it because of the inter­ac­tions and rela­tion­ships he’s made along the way. 

“It is exhaust­ing and tir­ing work­ing some events. For some state events, I spend almost eight hours a day going through tens of thou­sands of pic­tures,” Mr. Jones said. “What makes it worth it is get­ting that one pic­ture where you’ve cap­tured a his­toric moment filled with emo­tion and it tells a sto­ry. I get mes­sages from peo­ple telling me they appre­ci­ate the work I do and it means a lot. A great part is also meet­ing all the new peo­ple at these events and mak­ing con­nec­tions and friend­ships with them.”

Managing 10thRegion.com has also enabled Mr. Jones to con­nect more close­ly with his students.

“The best part is the con­nec­tions I have made with stu­dent-ath­letes, coach­es, and oth­er media mem­bers,” he said. “I enjoy see­ing stu­dents doing what they love on the field or the court. Sometimes they look like com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent peo­ple out­side of school. It is fun to cap­ture some of the excit­ing moments, and it is a great talk­ing point with students.”

Mr. Jones says choos­ing a career path is dif­fi­cult when you have sev­er­al dif­fer­ent inter­ests. He has changed his path­way many times through­out his education.

“I knew I want­ed to be a teacher in my junior year of high school. However, I also want­ed to be a sports jour­nal­ist. By my senior year, I had changed to a jour­nal­ism major, before even­tu­al­ly chang­ing it back to edu­ca­tion after being inspired by my col­lege US History pro­fes­sor. When I first start­ed teach­ing four years ago, I thought I want­ed to be a prin­ci­pal or super­in­ten­dent.  Now, I am work­ing on my master’s degree in School Counseling and Educational Technology.”

Mr. Jones encour­ages stu­dents to keep an open mind when decid­ing on their careers. 

“Take class­es that you are inter­est­ed in, don’t just take them because your friends are. The best part of col­lege is being able to take class­es you are inter­est­ed in. Use that time to try new things and find new inter­ests,” he said. “I have made so many con­nec­tions through­out the state in the edu­ca­tion world that have helped me tremen­dous­ly. Just keep an open mind and be hap­py with what you do!”