The double career of a Saddleback College professor

Scott Hays (left) working on a production for OC World. | Courtesy of Scott Hays

Scott Hays doesn’t have much time to talk after ending his 9 a.m. class earlier than originally scheduled, planning to head out the door very shortly after his students. He has been quite busy the last few years of his career, juggling both college-level teaching and his now three-year-old news website OC World.

“It’s been kind of like a balance between the two for the last two years,” said Hays. “My teaching is still solid, don’t get me wrong – but I’m going to slowly probably have to taper that off a little bit because this is taking almost all of my time.” 

Hays has a background in journalism that includes producing and hosting multiple shows on both radio and television, mentioning that he has been in the media industry as a journalist his whole life and has mostly worked for himself. And while teaching wasn’t a part of his career until 20 years ago, he still treats it with the same passion. 

“When I stepped into teaching, I found I loved it,” Hays says. “I have no intention of giving up teaching because I love it so much.”

Before launching the website, Hays helped produce two shows. OC Caravan was a radio show that he hosted, and Inside OC was a TV show that he co-produced, hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Reiff.

Hays had worked on OC Caravan for about two years, saying that he used it as a way to see how he could involve cameras with radio, adding a live video feed that would give the hosts’ personalities more life. “We had one camera, then I tried two cameras and then I tried three cameras, finally I got it right,” Hays says.

Hays’ time spent on Inside OC was what became the catalyst for his venture into founding his own media platform in OC World. “I was co-producing ‘Inside Orange County’ with Rick Reiff,” says Hays. “When he retired, it left a void in Orange County … I got inspired then to try and fill that void.”

Using his experience and connections gained at Inside OC, Hays was able to assemble OC World and bring it to life. He had looked at all the guests from his time spent producing ‘Inside OC’ and picked one out by the name of Manuel Gómez, the former vice chancellor of student affairs at UC Irvine, to help him found this new website. “I figured if I’m devoting my time and resources with somebody, I want to like them and I want to be able to work with them,” says Hays.

Hays was confident with what they had in the early days of OC World, even if he didn’t know exactly what it would look like. “I didn’t have a plan, I had a vision,” Hays says. “[Our sponsors] probably thought we were going to do one documentary and that would be it, but I had greater ambitions than that.”

Hays launched OC World during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021 which came with its own set of struggles. “We were only able to make three documentaries that year,” Hays says while noting that the original goal was to publish one per week.

OC World only had the green light to take off as a successful organization after COVID restrictions were lifted. Hays added that being able to go into the studio and not needing permission to film on properties anymore made covering stories and producing documentaries just that much easier.

Aside from the pandemic, Hays says their primary challenge when starting out was simply being a new media platform. Not many people knew who they were for the first few months, making interviews difficult to land and experienced employees difficult to find.

Today, Hays says they have a far better outreach and reputation since being picked up by PBS. “We say we’re working with PBS and everybody is going to open up the door for you.”

Today, while Hays’ future will certainly be dedicated to furthering the success of OC World, he says the decision on his future in teaching will be made at the end of this summer. Either way it’s a win-win for Hays. He can keep working in both fields that he’s passionate about, or he gets more free time during the week, but that free time will likely go into more career projects.

Comments

comments