I’m Luke DiStefano and this is the last article in my internship (from Mark, thank you and good luck, Luke!). I’m a student at The College of New Jersey majoring in Journalism & Professional Writing, with a minor in Creative Writing. Outside of this newsletter, I am the Nation & World editor at The Signal newspaper, and I am a published poet—with my poetry collection “the gentlemen gallery” available on Amazon.
On this episode of The Journalism Salute, Mark Simon spoke to Megan Tagami, a reporter covering education for Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom in Hawaii. She's a native of Honolulu and a 2023 graduate of UCLA, with a degree in political science and government.
“I cover public education mainly public schools and public education in Hawaii. Specifically K-12, and a little bit of the University of Hawaii system, but mainly K-12. And really, when I'm telling people about my job, I just tell them, it's a lot about just asking people questions, asking them what's the most interesting parts of their day, and really just going from there,” she said.
We’ve covered a lot of different types of journalists here on the podcast, but Megan represents your typical reporter, who fosters mostly one-to-one connections with the people behind the stories they’re telling. Now, this isn’t to say that Megan is an extrovert by any means. In this way, Megan reveals a certain misconception about journalism, that those of us who often interview face-to-face, with the subjects of our articles, are naturally confident and secure in our positions as journalists. This is all to say that, yes, we get social anxiety too.
“I think definitely the man on the street type interviews are still challenging. I definitely feel like I need to hype myself up a little bit every time when I'm at big events. I think another challenge for me has just been gaining confidence as a young reporter. I feel like over time I've been able to develop more confidence and develop more of a voice in my writing,” she said.
It’s one of the more minor problems that we face within the field, since evidently there are a whole host of other issues which demand more precedence, such as censorship by means of governments— but all the same, it takes a certain level of confidence to be able to report the facts with a complete certainty in their factuality. Any wavering in your tone, both verbally or written, is certainly gonna put off anyone who’s coming to your articles for verified and reliable information. It is in this regard that we must as journalists somehow both occupy our natural proclivities toward social anxiety, and also a tone of voice that Megan addresses here, which does not allude to any of these doubts.
“I talk a lot with my editor about writing with authority, but that's something that I think I've really needed to develop and grow into, and I'm still growing into over the past two years, and I think, in some ways, that was just a matter of time, and in some ways I was just growing more familiar with the beat and really just doing tons of research and reading over the past couple years,” she said.
As discussed many times on this podcast beforehand, while it is always nice to tell human stories about local successes or trials and tribulations, it is often more apparent that we journalists are called to speak to power. Megan herself has had many runs-ins with this reality in her recent work for Honolulu Civil Beat.
“I think this seems very obvious, but I feel like working as a journalist has really increased my sense of civic awareness or civic education,” she said. “We have students read Civil Beat or the local newspaper to increase their civic awareness. We tell them about the work of journalists and tell them this is an important part of staying an informed citizen. And it seems so simple and obvious, but I hadn't really thought about our jobs in that way, as a way to increase civic education and the civic responsibility we have as journalists.”
In any case, Megan represents a lot of us: the journalist who’s just trying to tell stories they find that matter, and is ultimately also struggling with that anxiety of being told ‘no’ when asking someone to share their perspective via interview. The hardest part of our jobs besides everyone trying to stop us from doing it, is convincing people to talk to us so we have stories worth telling.
Megan’s Salute: “Someone who I've always just really admired and I really appreciate his mentorship is Joe Hong. He previously covered education at Cal Matters at the time that I was a fellow for Cal Matters.”
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.