Mike Brothers launched a new chapter in his career on Dec. 16 when he started working as Drury University’s media relations director, succeeding Mark Miller, who left to work for his alma mater, University of Colorado. Since 2007, Brothers has been fine-tuning his strategic communications skills with positions at the city of Springfield and the Springfield-Greene County Health Department. He previously spent seven years writing for the Springfield News-Leader. Brothers comes to Drury as the school prepares to cut $2.3 million from its budget.
Panther Pride “Obviously, the institution itself, its reputation in Springfield, the region and around the country was a big consideration. After six years in the public sector, I thought it might be an interesting move back to the private sector. … I work with a team of communications professionals here, and while it is not my primary thing, being a part of an institution that as a matter of course does some branding and marketing also seemed very interesting to me.”
Two-way Street “As director of media relations, I’ll be in charge of what I always thought about as the two-way street. My last couple of positions with the city and the Health Department will be similar to here in that the media will come to us looking for story ideas. They might have a story or want to flesh out an idea. Also, we are pushing out information to the media and public and different audiences … and I am standing in the middle directing traffic.”
Beyond Bands “I was one of the rare kids who knew exactly what I wanted to do. Probably in elementary school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Within a few years, probably even before I hit high school, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. I like to write. I wrote these long stories as a kid, and I just figured there were a couple of things I could do: I could be a teacher, which is great, but it personally didn’t appeal to me; I could try to be a starving novelist or something like that; or I could go into journalism and write and actually pick up a paycheck. I had that idea early on, and I was just extremely fortunate to get that opportunity right away. I had an internship with the News-Leader. I was a (Missouri State University) grad, and I had an internship there after my junior year, which turned into a part-time job my senior year and then a full-time gig not too long after graduation. That was great. Over there, I did the music coverage, which I still get comments about. Someone here on campus mentioned it to me just today. It was really gratifying to see that people noticed that, and it was a fun beat to cover.”
Goals “Goal one really is getting to know people. That’s how I can most effectively do my job (and it’s) a learning process I’ll be involved in during the next few months. Along with that comes context. … Also, digging into the video side of things – anything I can do to learn what I can do to help should be really fun and key to what we’re doing. … It goes without saying I’ll be doing some writing. It all depends. We do have some folks on staff who are writers here, but I have thrown out my hat and said anything involving the written word, I’m game for. With that, talking points, speeches, stuff on social media, our biannual magazine, I look to have some part in all of that.”
Budget Crunch “(The planned budget cuts) did not give me any pause at all. In fact, how we move through this and communicating that to various audiences – students, prospective students, alumni, the greater community – that is a challenge I really welcome. I can tell you that just from my experience with a few days on campus that everyone is up for that challenge here. We know what is in front of us. It didn’t give me any pause at all, though, because when I started with the city, it was just one month before that state audit hit. It was also right in the middle of the police-fire pension fog. We really didn’t know at the time what we were going to do or how we were going to get out of that. At the city, we worked through it and came out stronger in the end. Communicating what was going on and being very clear about it, very transparent and not sugar coating things was really important because you’ve got to be truthful when the stakes are high.”[[In-content Ad]]
