On the latest episode of The Journalism Salute we were joined by Alana Van Der Sluys. Alana is a journalism teacher at Kinnelon High School in Kinnelon, New Jersey, a conservative New Jersey suburb not far from New York City.
Alana was a guest on episode No. 16 on this podcast back in December 2020. She's back nearly 250 episodes later to reflect on what happened since, which includes writing a book about diet culture and her experience with eating disorders.
Here's a lightly-edited excerpt from the interview. If you want to learn more, listen to the whole interview here.
How does the progression of journalism classes in your school work?
We have a Journalism 1 class, and that is mostly the basics. That's your form and function. That's your law and ethics. And then we go into the actual process of writing an article. So I take them through, researching and interviewing and how to select strong quotes and how to write a good lede.
Then we go into things like how to write a basic hard news story. Then we go into some of the sub factions: feature writing, opinion writing, combat journalism, arts and entertainment writing. And then that course culminates in an online portfolio, like a real professional journalist would have of all their best work.
Journalism 2 is a little bit different. It goes into the other facets of creating a publication and it's not just focused on the writing. So we focus on marketing and advertising and podcasting and video broadcast. Journalism 3has all my editors for the school paper (The Colt Chronicle).They do beat work. They do podcasting and then a lot of their job is just to run and maintain the student newspaper. Journalism 4 is reserved for whoever our editors-in-chief happen to be at the time.
I remember that when we talked five years ago, you said you wanted to talk about the importance of learning journalism as a skill that could be applied, applied to other aspects of everyday life. And I presume that that's part of how you measure success, getting that point across to them.
Absolutely. I'm a realist and I think most journalism teachers are. We don't believe that most of our students are going to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and have the bug, right?
But at bare minimum, you take the course, you get communication skills, interview skills, writing skills, research skills. It forces them to become news literate and question the things around them and force them to keep their eyes and ears open. It shows them that they have a voice and that they get to illustrate their rights as citizens and it forces them even to be uncomfortable.
The whole idea of interviewing a stranger at first is very uncomfortable to them, and then they get over it. Then they can prove to themselves that they can do hard things. There's so much more to a journalism class than simply this as a vehicle to become a journalist.
What advice would you give to someone who's writing a book about personal challenging experience?
Someone needs to hear the story. I'm one of those people that believes everything happens for a reason and I feel like everybody has a story to tell and everybody should tell it. That's the beauty of writing and literature is that we understand that we're not alone in our struggles, in our positive or negative. To tell your story is to connect your heart and your mind to somebody else who needs to hear that story.
What's the best part of being a teacher?
You get to inspire. I get to mess up in front of them and show them that it's okay to mess up. I get to laugh at myself and try new things. I think it's just being a role model for students who maybe don't have someone to look up to.
What's the hardest part of the job?
The fact that you won't reach everyone. I am a recovering people pleaser and there are some students that will just hate you for whatever reason, because you hold them to a higher standard or some other reason.
That's hard to know that you won't reach everybody and that you're not everybody's cup of tea. But, even if you just reach a couple of kids a year teach them something about either reading or writing, or better yet themselves, I think you've won the battle.
In 2025 we had a new episode each week and featured more than 60 guests. I don’t know that we were the most diverse journalist interviews podcast out there, but we certainly tried to be.
We look forward to bringing you more journalist interviews in 2026 but we can use your help. Tell a friend, a relative, a colleague about us and let them know that our episodes are worth their time.
A reminder to professors and teachers
You can find episode guides that you can use if you wish to integrate the podcast within your classroom. There are more than 50 available. Each one has suggested questions for discussion and activities a class can do.
I’m also happy to help you find an episode that would be appropriate for what you’re teaching. Reach out to me at [email protected].
Additionally, I’ve curated some of the 2025 episodes into groups. If you’re teaching a class or unit in any of these subjects:
- Investigative Journalism
- Feature Writing
- Covering government policy
- Social justice, immigration, and identity
- Local News
Check out the sets of episode guides that would be useful to you. I don’t have a good term for them, so I’m borrowing from Bluesky and calling them “Starter Packs” - sets of 5-8 episodes in each category that may be useful in your classroom.