I’ve been a guest speaker at the College Media Association national convention in each of the last three years and on each occasion I’ve come away impressed and feeling good about the future of journalism.
On this episode of our podcast I did rapid-fire interviews with four student journalists Candice Borowitz (Chatham, Communiqué), Ellie Sileo (Lehigh, The Brown & White), Graham Goodman (Ithaca, The Ithacan), and Rebecca Borlace (Michigan, The Michigan Daily). All four are either first- or second-year students at their respective schools. They’re very much still in learning mode. But they seemed to have picked up a good amount of wisdom pretty quickly.
Excerpts below are edited for clarity.
Candice Borowitz, Chatham University
Candice is a first-year student with an interest in photography and she’s the photo editor for her college newspaper, Communiqué. She acknowledged she’s still got a lot to learn about writing and all the different facets of journalism, but it seems to me that she’s off to a good start.
What's the best journalism lesson that you've learned so far?
Definitely learning how to separate myself and my own opinions from stories. It was definitely a learning curve at first, but I think it's probably the most valuable lesson that I've gotten. And even just like, not just for journalism, for just life in general.
What do you think of artificial intelligence in journalism?
I personally really don't like it. I think maybe for organization it can be good.
But in general, I think we've done it (journalism) ourselves for this long. We can keep doing it.
How has being a journalist impacted how you view the world?
I definitely look at everything a lot more critically now, and I definitely question everything I learn and see.
Ellie Sileo, Lehigh University
Ellie is a pre-law student but one thing she has in mind is to go into media law, and she wants to be a journalist even if she does pursue a law career. She’s currently a community news editor at Lehigh’s student newspaper. She was also a participant in a fun program run by newspaper advisor, Matt Veto at the convention, several rounds of “speed dating” except instead of dating, participants looked for solutions to their journalism problems (it was fun, I did it too!)
What's your proudest journalism accomplishment?
There’s a requirement for all editors on the on the Brown & White that we all have to write an op-ed piece that's about anything you want it to be about. So I wrote about mental health and we had someone e-mail the Brown & White with a kind message for me, and that just was really impactful for me.
It made me realize that our stuff is getting distributed pretty far. And people really do care about what we do.
What’s the best lesson you’ve learned as a journalist?
That you really have to love what you do. You go really far with passion, and I think if you're excited to go interview someone, you're excited to sit down and write something that Is gonna get you really far and it makes you feel really good and fulfilled with what you're doing.
How has being a journalist impacted how you view the world?
It's made me realize that there is a story in everything. Everywhere, there's a story. Pitches just turn into 10 other pitches and it's really cool. We’re in a big room with 50 people and each of these people have 50 stories to tell.
Graham Goodman
Graham is a first-year student who wants to become a sportswriter, though a highlight for him at this conference was going on an office tour at ProPublica and watching a live production of Democracy Now. He’s already advanced up the journalism ladder. He’s the sports editor of the college newspaper, The Ithacan.
What's the best lesson you've learned since we became a journalist?
This applies more specifically to sports, but the human stories are the best stories you can do. The biggest way you're gonna grow your audience is if you tell the human stories because that appeals to people who don't care about sports and it appeals to people who do care about sports because they wanna learn more about their favorite athletes.
The storytelling is how you remain in the business the longest
What are the things that you wanna learn more about?
The storytelling. I feel like I've kind of built the reporting skills and tools and I feel like the storytelling is kind of what takes time. Getting to know people, building sources, contributes a lot to that. Getting people to trust you and getting the stories out of them through interviews is a big thing as well.
I feel like being a storyteller is the hardest part of being a journalist.
Rebecca Borlace, University of Michigan
Rebecca is a first-year journalism student with a strong interest in community news coverage, particularly community activism. She was an active participant in the talk I gave and was very thoughtful in her answers to my questions.
What is your best journalism accomplishment?
Starting.
Starting?
Yeah. I came from a high school newspaper that was so small. I think my last year it actually got somewhat shut down because there were not enough people taking the class, leaving me as I think one of the only guest writers left.
A lot of my journey has just been trying to figure it out along the way, a little bit, being scared to ask questions that I didn't know. I decided on journalism after getting accepted into a summer journalism program, and I was there suddenly in the same room with editors-in-chief of different high school papers and people were throwing around terms that I really just didn't know, like what a column was and the difference between breaking news and evergreen stories.
I'm sitting here (thinking) do I have the space to ask? Is there space for me within the realm of journalism here?
What's the best lesson that you've learned so far?
I think it's probably brevity. Brevity, especially within news writing has been something I struggled with at the beginning. I think by nature I'm a very narrative writer. Learning to see the world through other people's lenses and being able to convey that to other people in a brief way.
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.