Welcome to Ornella Off Camera
A little about me and this newsletter
There’s a version of me you’ve seen on camera. The polished presenter. The tech journalist speaking in timed segments and clean soundbites. And then there’s the version sitting at home after the makeup comes off when I’m still thinking about the stories long after the camera stops rolling. That’s who is writing this newsletter.
Welcome to Ornella Off Camera - a weekly space for people who think too much about the state of media, journalism, technology and the strange ways we consume information now. Such as,
Push notifications,
TikTok clips,
Headlines,
Summaries,
Screenshots of tweets,
AI generated recaps,
Or someone else’s reaction to a story, just to name few.
Somehow people are more informed than ever and at the same time somehow also more disconnected from truth. This contradiction fascinates me as a trained broadcast journalist with a degree from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism who no longer reports the news daily.
Today I work independently as a content creator, on camera presenter and storytelling partner for brands that need a credible face, voice or narrative for their marketing and content needs. And this newsletter is an outlet for me to speak more honestly about the industry I’ve spent years trying to navigate.
I tried the newsroom path multiple times. From crypto publications to startup YouTube channels that had no idea how to market themselves to heavily funded journalism ventures that promised to “reinvent media” before eventually firing half the company when profitability didn’t come fast enough.
Each time, I left a little more disillusioned than the last. At one point I even stepped away from journalism entirely to work in PR and communications after earning a Master’s degree in international management from the Paris School of Business. But the journalism instinct kept pulling me back.
Meanwhile, Al has entered the chat and I’m oddly optimistic about it. Whether we like it or not, Al is changing the economics of storytelling. This is a good thing because news has always been a bad business. Journalists are in dire need of better tools, more ownership and more freedom than traditional media ever gave them. So now the future of media can belong to credible individuals who know how to leverage these new tools to build trust across platforms.
Personally, this newsletter serves as a place to think out loud while the industry reinvents itself. And hopefully it can help readers make sense of this shift and of what comes next. We have a lot to talk about!