This is my second to last day at Spectrum. I am leaving with a six-month nest egg, two job leads and one burning desire to stitch journalism up – from the inside.

A few of my trusted confidants, including my Dad and Helen Thomas, advised me throughout 2009 to stick with my day job and ride the recession out. Well, I took that advice, and as a result spent twelve months packing away knowledge and pennies, creating digital case studies for my portfolio and simultaneously starting the process of graduating my brand from “EricaAmerica Citizen Journalist” to “Erica Anderson, Network Producer/Reporter.”

I have a driving instinct that now it’s time to put 100 percent into this ambition to help rebuild what I believe to be the most important industries to the health of our imperfect nation – journalism.

So stay tuned for what’s next; who I target and who I meet with, how I used social media to land opportunities and what the outcome will be.

One thing is for sure, now, more than ever, it is time to step into the fray and make the future happen.

Last Thursday Comcast was on my mind.

For obvious reasons, one might assume this was because Comcast acquired NBC Universal. In fact, Comcast’s purchase of NBCU gave the Philadelphia-based company control of about $30 Billion worth of media assets, including dozens of broadcast TV networks, online cable channels and a movie studio. It also gave Comcast and 89-year-old Founder, Ralph Roberts, a news and entertainment legacy as American as apple pie, and one that General Electric had owned since 1986: the iconic NBC News brand.

For reasons not so obvious, that morning the merger wasn’t on my mind. Instead I was thinking about the details of my trip to the Comcast service center later that week. But by the end of the day, and on the eve of one of the largest and perhaps most ambitious media mergers, I had a different kind of encounter with the largest cable provider in the country. I had the opportunity to talk with David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast, and inspect with questions the blueprint of the deal.

Cohen, who was in Washington for meetings and media appearances, sat down with five DC-based bloggers, including myself, to field questions. Here are some of his answers.

On NBC News | MSNBC | CNBC
We made a commitment to preserve the journalistic integrity of all the news assets on the cable and broadcast side…and we’re very serious about that. I think professional journalists need to feel they’re allowed to be professional journalists, and there isn’t someone looking over their shoulder saying, “What did you say that for?”

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