By Beth Jones 

For Harrison High School senior Jackson Martin, what started as fun with friends has turned into a potential career passion. As one of SAMI’s newest interns, 18-year-old Jackson will spend the next school year learning the essentials of audio and video production in the hopes of one day fulfilling his dream to work as a sports broadcaster or analyst.

Jackson has grown up in what he describes as a football family with strong ties to Purdue and is a cornerback for the Harrison High School football team. Besides his passion for sports, he has also long enjoyed the hobbies of video and photo editing—something he started experimenting with in middle school. Jackson says he most enjoys putting something original together and sharing it with others on social media. One of his earliest video editing endeavors included putting clips together of him playing video games with his friends complete with audio and humor added in. 

It’s through this casual exploration of audio and visual editing that Jackson realized, “I’m not too bad at this, and I think this is pretty cool.” He decided during his sophomore year at Harrison that he wanted to take things more seriously and applied for the radio and television programs through The Greater Lafayette Career Academy. This has introduced him to the broader world of mass communication. With the GLCA, Jackson is gaining experience as on-air student talent with WJEF-FM 91.9 (JEFF 92)—Jefferson High School’s student-run radio station. He’s also learning about TV production and even served as an announcer for some Jefferson High School basketball games last year.

Jackson says he looks forward to getting even more practical experience through his SAMI internship. He wants to learn as much as he can about audio and visual production but will also receive guidance in various aspects of broadcast like presentation, writing, and crafting stories. He also hopes his internship will put him closer to his academic goal of studying communications at Ball State or Purdue University. 

Ultimately, Jackson says he’s “found something that I know I can be good at, and I know that I’ll be passionate about and love, and that’s audio and video. And the fact that I can watch sports and do all of that really puts it all together for me.”