New interview: Student Journalists Maggie LeBeau and Divya Thamman

On the latest episode of our podcast we're joined by Maggie LeBeau and Divya Thamman. Maggie is a student at the University of Missouri majoring in journalism and history. Divya is a student at Edina High School just outside Minneapolis.

Together, they are part of the reporting team for PBS News Hour Student Reporting Labs producing and reporting for the On Our Minds podcast.

This season's theme for the series is an audio road trip exploring what’s unique about teen life in every corner of the country through hyperlocal stories about cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Maggie and Divya talked about the stories they covered, with Maggie telling the story of the local drag community and Divya reporting on a quirky festival in Minneapolis that reminds people that there are positive stories coming from that city. They also shared their backgrounds and the valuable lessons they've learned in their journalism pursuits

You can find all the episodes for the On Our Minds series here.

An excerpt from the interview is below and is edited for clarity and length.

What led you to be interested in journalism?

Maggie:  I got interested in journalism my freshman year of high school, during COVID. I was a remote student most of my freshman year. And I felt really disconnected from my high school because I was just at home. I found out about the student newspaper and my mom was like, oh, you should join. It might be a nice way to meet some people. At the beginning our newspaper was over Zoom but it felt really personal and connected and all of the other students, we would just get to talk about things going on in our community and our school.

And I really fell in love with journalism and reporting because I think it's a good way to connect with your community. It's a good way to understand what's going on, and talking to all different types of people, and understanding the issues and helping explain those to other people. That was my start. I did that for four years and I realized I wanted to continue journalism. I love writing, I love current events, and I also really love the hustle and bustle and how every day is different in journalism. It's been a really great experience over the past six years.

Divya: I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I've never really remembered a time where I wasn't interested in journalism. I remember watching the news or listening to my grandparents read the newspaper when I was really little, and I always thought that was so cool. I loved hearing about all the different stories and I was always wondering  how I could do that when I grow up.

I love how it gives you an ability to share your own voice and to represent your community, or to represent voices that aren't being heard. Journalism has always just been so central to me, so I've always seen the importance in it.

Is there anyone in your family or heritage that would've foreshadowed your interest in telling stories?

Divya: My parents and my family definitely love telling stories. My great grandmama, especially, she's 99, and I could probably recite dozens and dozens of stories that she's kept on telling me. Both of my grandparents are librarians, so I can go over to their house and ask them about a topic and they can bring out tons of different stories and books about it and tell me all about that. And I've grown up hearing about my parents’ childhoods. So I've come from a family where storytelling has been just such a central part of our life and a central part of our family. So that's definitely foreshadowed my interest in storytelling and my interest in journalism.

Maggie: Similar to Divya, I was raised always following stories and current events. My family always really valued the importance of keeping up with that kind of thing. I remember when I was young, my mom would always show me all of these PBS history documentaries, especially the local Chicago ones. I really loved hearing stories of people, understanding the place that I'm from and what the history behind it was.

I remember when I was in third grade, my mom showed me this documentary about Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine. The feminist movement in the seventies. She wanted to raise a strong woman and a strong feminist in her household. So I just became super passionate about feminism in third grade and I told all my friends and family about how I was a feminist. That's kind of what was  my start in history and it always had been my favorite subject in school. I think history and journalism go together really well. It was a natural occurrence that I decided to major in those two things.

Interrupting to share the results of our Question of the Week:

For this newsletter I asked: What was the most prominent thing you covered for your student newspaper in high school or college?

I got seven responses, including several highly serious ones, so I’m splitting them up over two weeks

“The most memorable thing I covered for my college newspaper was the development of vending machines that provided students with COVID tests when UCLA reopened its campus in 2021. It was so interesting to talk to the scientists about the challenges of developing tests that could be safely stored in vending machines and made available to thousands of students every day.”

“The most memorable thing I covered as a student journalist was Brother Jed’s visit to DePauw University. After I wrote a column about what I witnessed behind the scenes while covering the controversial street preachers, I was removed as editor of the campus newspaper. It permanently shaped my views on journalism and free expression. SPJ came to my defense, and it’s my why for giving back to the organization today.”

Can you explain the story you're doing for PBS Student Reporting Labs and why you picked it?

Divya: There's definitely been a lot of hard stories coming out of Minneapolis recently, and there's been a lot of challenges facing our community, and you've probably seen that on the news, and that's your perception.

But another big part of our community is the people who are really strong, they're really resilient and they're really incredible people. People will stand up for our neighbors. We're the only place to ever be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. And we have a lot of fun.

We have fun, vibrant communities. We have a great art scene and music scene, and we get together for these fun and vibrant events that are definitely uniquely Minnesota. So one of those events is what I ended up making my story about, and that's the Lake of the Isles Pencil Sharpening event. The festival is essentially where thousands of people get together for this huge ceremonial sharpening of a 20-foot pencil with a 100-pound sharpener. People are dressed up in pencil costumes. There's choreographed dance routines, choreographed and performed by dads in the neighborhood who don't know how to dance, so that makes it even more funny. There's t-shirt rockets, there's a q and a with the pencil, and it's just this super funny, fun event.

And the reason that I decided to pick it as my story is because I wanted to share some of the fun, colorful, vibrant, unique parts of Minnesota that a lot of people haven't really been seeing or you don't know about.

Maggie: The story that I did was highlighting the community of drag queens in Columbia, Missouri. I thought to myself, as somebody who isn't from here, and as somebody who moved here (for college) what would it be for someone to drive into Columbia? What are some preconceived notions they had about the city or the region or the state, and how can I show people that there's a lot more than just that?

So, I thought about what I thought of Columbia, Missouri, and Missouri as a whole and what my thoughts were before I moved here. What's something I can do a story on? I thought about how the LGBTQ community here is really vibrant and the local government has done a lot to protect their rights. And there's several organizations here in Columbia that are there for the LGBTQ community here. Within that, there's a really vibrant drag community. And I'm not saying that everyone here welcomes them. There's definitely still some people that don't support them.

But it's been really interesting seeing what their community looks, why they're here. Why they think that what they're doing matters. It's been a really cool story to explore what is drag, who are the people behind the outfits and the hair and the makeup and also just their impact on the community.

It's a way for them to express themselves, but it's also a way for them, as they say, to spread queer joy. Which means showing people what drag queens are, what they do, and it's just a really fun, exciting environment.

And they even go to smaller towns around mid-Missouri that are more rural and more conservative and they do shows for those people to kind of show them what drag queens are.

What journalism issues are you most passionate about?

Divya:   I'm most passionate about freedom of speech. I think that's a really important issue when it comes to journalism. I think that a lot of people have really important essential things to say, and I think it's important that they feel confident and they don't feel they have an issue with being able to say those things.

I just think that freedom of speech is essential to represent diverse voices and to make sure that everyone can feel heard.

Maggie: Something I've been really interested in and passionate about the past couple of years is how to get your news in an ethical way. So I try to get my news from as many non-profit outlets as I can. And also public media. Public media has been defunded by the federal government, which has been really hard, especially in local news. A lot of smaller stations have lost a lot of their funding and in rural places and in states that are really big, Alaska for example, people depend on their public radio stations for   weather alerts and important information.

That's a big reason why I wanna work in public media. Some ones that I really like are the Missouri Independent. It's a statewide newswire. In Chicago, I really like Block Club Chicago. KBIA in Columbia, KCUR in Kansas City. They're really great.

And then just to round this out, we asked Becky Wandel,lead podcast producer: How are the students mentored?

Becky:   For our student producers, Maggie and Divya, we coach them through the entire story production process from afar from beginning to end.

So their journeys both began with pitching stories, sending in a paragraph, a few details about the story they plan to tell, and then they get connected with a youth media producer or a few others on our team who have a lot of experience doing this. So we would have some Google Meetings, they'd submit scripts, I'd review them, they'll submit several cuts of their story. I give some feedback and send it back to them. That's a big part of what we do is trying to introduce young people to the professional process of having an editor going through multiple drafts. These two (Maggie and Divya) definitely thrived in that environment.

E-mail me at [email protected] if you have any thoughts on the podcast. I’d love to hear from you.

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.