Talking Entertainment With Multimedia Journalist Gia Peppers

TAKING IT BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE AT RUTGERS, WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO GET INVOLVED IN THE INDUSTRY?

Gia:  In high school, I knew I wanted to start the track to become a journalist early. They had the newspaper and the morning news and I did both. I was on the morning news once a month and I really liked it.  I started writing for the school newspaper and really liked it. I thought “Journalism is cool because my mom will pay for this degree!” She said I will not pay for you to go play on some stage. My mom’s mindset was that you go to school and go to work but it’s a different mindset and grind to be a journalist. It’s about your network. How many internships  did you have? It’s about creating relationships where people remember you, and if they remember you did they liked what they remembered?  Are you working hard enough to the point that if you are walking down the red carpet, will somebody know your work? That’s how I met Ebro. He was like, “Oh you’re that girl Gia. I think you’re dope and have seen what you do.” Ebro and Essence were before the Wizards.  He’s been my big brother for a minute.

In college, I started interning.  The best part about being a journalist is that I can call my dad and be like, “Today was rough!” but he understands why it’s rough. Who wants to talk about the imbecile running things? It hasn’t even been a full year. It gets crazy but it’s dope because I get to talk to my dad. When I first started out, I was like, “Duh, I have a mentor in my dad!’ so I would talk to him about what to do.  When I first started, entertainment wasn’t that big of a field. It is very real how much social media has created this new lane for not only income, but a new way of living. No one had phones out at concerts 10 years ago. We were all enjoying in the moment, seeing celebrities singing the song. My dad said “The one thing you need to do is get an internship and to start as soon as you get into college.” My first summer outside of Rutgers, I came home for the summer and interned with Donnie Simpson. It was his last summer at WPGC and  he taught me I could be a really nice person. You always hear about people in the industry that everyone is sheisty and crazy and there are those people, but you don’t have to be one of those people and Donnie taught me that. He is one of the nicest, most incredible person. He’s one of those people that makes everyone feel like you’re a millionaire. He has all the character in the world which is why he’s been on the radio since he was 15. After that, I did my internship with Big Tigger and his style is a little bit different. He’s younger, fun and really friends with these celebrities. His relationship with the entertainment industry taught me that you can make friends but it’s a line that you have to watch. Danella was there and she’s been a personality for a while and then Free came. That was incredible because I was like, “That’s one of the reasons I even started.”

After that, I did two seasons of the Wendy Williams show in New York, and I did Live with Kelly and Michael. All of these were internships. All of these were apply online and they hit you up, and you show up for the interview. My thing was be willing to learn. Never go to an interview thinking you know everything. Don’t go being arrogant because no one wants to work with that. As an intern, 90% of it making sure that they’re good, 10% is where they expect you to shine and they ask you for a creative idea and you have something that you’ve been waiting for, you shine there and then they give you more responsibility. It will go from 90/% “Make sure I have coffee and my papers are on my desk so I know what the latest stories are” to 70%. I was on the air with Donnie Simpson talking about Beyonce. The hard work really helps. I always knew that if I was going to do entertainment journalism, I was going to do it right. “Right” to me was making sure that I tried every single side of journalism- producing, writing, researching, on-air, editing, video directing. I wanted to try everything to make sure that I could do it and to make sure I knew how everything worked. I knew then that I wanted to be on-air talent.

WHAT’S ONE LESSON YOU LEARNED FROM THE INDUSTRY THAT STILL STICKS WITH YOU TODAY?

Gia:  What’s for you is for you is my number one thing. It’’s a competitive industry and there’s no other way to put it. I have friends that are on-air talent that will go out for the same jobs and it’s like, “Hey I hope you get it!” and you genuinely mean it, but whoever needs to be picked has to be picked. What God has for you is for you so at the end of the day if you go out for something and seven of your friends go out for it, if it’s your job it’s your job. On the other hand, if someone gets that job and you don’t get it, don’t beat yourself up. It just wasn’t your opportunity. “No’s” lead to all the “yeses” in the world that you didn’t even see coming. Also I learned the work works. Instagram is great but people lie so much  about what they do, and who they’re with, and who they know. Half the celebrity posts you see where people are like, “That’s my bro” they probably just took the one photo for two seconds. Don’t believe what you see. Believe what they create and what they are about. If you really want to make it work, don’t let anything that you think is cute be the reason you’re doing this. Don’t be on air-talent because you want to be cute.