Perseverance pays off with broadcast job for James

DECIDING whether to identify himself as being from Gort or Kilbeacanty is a dilemma James Mahon has not faced in a while. In Chattanooga, he just says he is Irish. Sometimes even that seems too specific. Speaking to The Clare Champion from his new home in Tennessee, after a pause, he decides on Gort.

James graduated from NUI Galway with a BA in English and classics in 2011, before undertaking a masters in broadcast journalism at the University of Sheffield. Since January, he has worked with WDEF News 12 in Chattanooga, Tennessee as a broadcast news reporter.

This summer he will be the subject of a lifestyle programme Through Irish Eyes, which sees him try local cultural activities for the first time, while in the web series Working the South, he is trying his hand at “regular jobs in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia”. This is particularly apt since it was his work in a chain shoe shop on a J1 Visa that fuelled his love of America and his desire to return there.

“My sister came in [to the shop]. She said ‘you are very easy to find. You are the only one who is under 6’ 4” and you are not African American’. I had a great experience doing that. I didn’t really learn a whole lot about retail or anything but I had a great life experience and I spent a lot of time with people I would never spend time with in Gort or Kilbeacanty. Most of them had criminal convictions and they all wanted to be rappers,” he recalled.

After finishing his masters, James realised the recession and a lack of experience would keep him off television screens in the UK and Ireland.

“Last summer, I discovered the economy was really falling to pieces and it wasn’t just in the UK but in Ireland it was absolutely falling apart and the media industry was absolutely on its knees. It was pretty much ‘look towards Canada’ or ‘try to get back into the BBC’,” he recalled.

James believes his age proved an obstacle to developing a career on this side of the Atlantic.

“At 21, I knew that regardless of how many university qualifications I had, I was never going to be on air. I knew I was never going to get to do the things I wanted to do like talk to people, interact with people and that was annoying. But I knew that in America, your age doesn’t matter. It is about whether you can do it or not,” he stated.

James got in contact with Atlanta-based Emmy Award-winning journalist Jim Clancy.

“We emailed back and forth and built up a bit of a connection. He asked me would I ever consider moving to America. I said I thought it was a bit of a leap and we discussed how there had never been an Irish person who had done the news in the US because Irish people don’t go to America to do television,” he noted.

There are 210 television markets in the United States ranked in order of population. Jim advised James to start somewhere between 70 and 180 on the list. He had to go somewhere he would get a chance on air based on his qualifications and somewhere where his accent and visa wouldn’t put people off.

“You have to strike a balance between getting in somewhere and not scaring the life out of them,” James said.

James applied to 180 television stations in 12 states.

“Twelve replied and out of the 12, only seven understood the visa. Five people told me I would never work in television in America because I am not American.

“They said ‘if you were British it would be different because you could go to New York or go to Washington’ but they said ‘because you are Irish, people won’t take you seriously or they won’t understand you’,” he recalled.

In late November, James told his mother about the setbacks. She asked James if he wanted to come home for Christmas and this was a turning point.

“I knew I couldn’t go home for Christmas. If I did, I would never come back. It was just you were constantly getting kicked in the teeth. You were constantly being told ‘you are not going to be able to do this’, ‘we can’t take the risk’, ‘we can’t put someone on air who isn’t from America because we might isolate the viewers’,” he recalled.

“Chattanooga is top 90 in America. Normally you wouldn’t start here. You would start in South Dakota or North Dakota but in late December, I went for an interview here and the news director turned around and said ‘if you can get a driver’s licence, a car and a place to live in the next 10 days, you can have a job on January first’.”

James did.

Now, despite producers’ initial skepticism about his accent and lack of understanding about his visa, 22-year-old James sees his Irishness as an asset.

“Instead of isolating viewers, I have helped bring in viewers because the curiosity outweighs the fear. They saw that with gangland issues too.

“African American folks who live in an isolated environment where it is entirely gang controlled will open up to someone they associate with leprechauns and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings quicker than they will to a white American blonde girl. It is very odd.

“It is very odd to walk into these environments where everyone has guns, they hate the media, they all live in their own world and they all have a huge list of criminal convictions. They are still younger than you but they open up because they are incredibly curious,” he explains.

From here, visa permitting, James wants to connect with the Irish diaspora in the United States.

“The dream is to someday go to Boston or New York and to be the first figurehead for Irish Americans on television news, to represent their interests as much as I can and the interests of the new generation of emigrants that have come over,” James concluded.