Grad student Milios experiences variety of mass media

Matt Milios

Matt Milios ('93) has returned to the classroom, both as instructor and student.

"I left the Salida Mountain Mail about seven years ago, spent a year and a half at the University of Missouri working on my master's degree in photojournalism but left before I was finished to work with MSNBC.com. There I spent about three years working in New York City as a multimedia producer, splitting time with NBC Sports, 'Dateline NBC' and MSNBC.com proper," he said.

"It was lots of fun, but New York can really wear you down. I then spent a year in San Francisco consulting for Travelocity.com. Now I've come full circle to Missouri, where I'm teaching a class in online photojournalism and finishing my degree."

Milios, 33, came to CU as an undergrad to study mathematics and engineering, but after a year he decided there had to be more to campus life than graphing 3-D models of the globe.

"Pasty-faced and sun-blind, I ventured out of the math department to see what else CU might have to offer. I stumbled through several fields of study – poetry, anthropology, history, art – and finally landed at the pipe organ-journalism school in Macky Auditorium," he said. "Lucky for me I was met there by two outstanding instructors, Don Ridgway and Paul Maloney, ('56) who showed me two ways of storytelling, reporting and photojournalism, that interested me tremendously."

On graduation, he took a job in southwestern Colorado at the Ouray County Plaindealer.

"There I was able to explore all aspects of the profession and put the varied skills I learned at CU to good use. I did everything from report to photograph to design to paste-up and even delivered the paper every other week. It was a lot of work but a tremendous experience, and there is no more beautiful place to spend your first year out of college," he said.

From Ouray he moved to the daily paper in Salida, where his duties were relatively unvaried: take photos and write news.

"I found that photojournalism was truly my passion and determined I would go back to school to expand upon the solid foundation I'd received from Paul Maloney at CU," he said. He was accepted into the master's program at Missouri and began his studies in 1996.

Milios said his temporary diversion into multimedia producing was a rich learning experience.

"I took advantage of the vast resources there to learn video-photojournalism and editing, and also several Web-based multimedia programs, to expand my abilities as a storyteller. I was able to live in New York for a couple of those years, and I found the ethics I learned at CU and MU came in handy the closer I moved towards network journalism," he said. "I was able to produce a lot of documentary-based work in a more entertainment-oriented side of the industry."

Milios said network journalism perks were somewhat different than those provided by rural Western Slope newspapers.

"I traveled to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics, covered the 2001 NBA championships, rode on a New York Yankees float through the Canyon of Champions ticker-tape parade twice and met many very intelligent, highly motivated people," he said.

After moving on to San Francisco, Milios came to an academically imposed crossroads. Faced with a graduation deadline at Missouri, he decided it was time to head back to Columbia and finish his degree.

In March, he married Callie Fromm, whom he had met shortly after moving to Columbia in 1996.

"We took about 35 of our friends to Tuscany for a weeklong celebration and were married at Il Borro, Italy," he said. "It was perfect."

After finishing work on his degree this summer, Milios said, he hopes to move back to the Northwest, where he grew up.

mtmilios@hotmail.com