On the Job | From Miscellany editor to PR Pro

Acacia O'Connor Editor in Chief

As a freshman in 1974, Diana Pearson ’78 knocked on then-office door of The Miscellany News and stumbled upon a room of “good-looking guys” and a stocked bar. How the times have changed.

Pearson’s became editor in chief of the paper during her junior year, and later worked in editorial publicity for Newsweek and Time. Now she is returning to the world of academia—as Vice President of Communications at Dartmouth College. Her career demonstrates what many Vassar alumnae/i find: that the future sometimes has a mind of its own.

The Miscellany News: Where did you head after graduating from Vassar?

Diana Pearson: I was kind of a Watergate-generation baby. When I was in high school that was what was going on...so I wanted to find a local newspaper job.

A bunch of us had done a really fun vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Three of my classmates went back as a waitress, bartender and another one was a reporter for one of the newspapers. So I was a reporter for the other newspaper.

I stayed in the Virgin Islands for three-and-a-half years. I was also the Associated Press reporter, flying to the different islands covering different stories.

I grew up in Long Island Bay Shore, and I always wanted to work in New York and succeed in New York. The job interviews would very often be like, ‘Where should I go on vacation?’ ‘Where is the best fishing?’ This is at The New York Times, etc. It was very hard to be taken seriously.

MN: So now this change to Dartmouth, how is that going to be different from your jobs with Newsweek and Time?

DP: I think now more than ever people can make their news directly to their audience, you don’t necessarily need the filter of The New York Times. It’s for two reasons: a) to be right where the original research is being done, and b) to find new ways to communicate that. I like the idea of being part of a community like that.

It’s really a privilege to talk about ideas every day, and it’s something you should treasure.

MN: How does your Vassar education affect you today?

DP: Vassar obviously instills you with the idea that you can figure anything out, that you have the tools. You don’t have to major in business to be a good business person; you have to think well and be strategic.

And then you also have the feeling going to Vassar that you’re very special, and having been given this privilege, you’re called on to do something with it and make the world better—and I think that lasts for five or six months after you graduate, and then you figure out there a lot of really special people out there who are going to do some great things. And that it’s actually going to be really hard to qualify to get 18 pages of blank paper again.