How to Think Like a Change Agent: Building Your Skills to Spur Innovation with a Journalism Fellowship

3:00PM Aug 25, 2023

Speakers:

Lynette Clemetson

Keywords:

newsrooms

journalist

people

fellowship

fellows

class

maria

natural disasters

journalism

university

work

program

year

jared

covering

puerto rico

idea

give

learn

cohort

Oh

things moving. Thank you for the mic. My name is Lynette Clementson and I'm director of the Wallace House Center for journalists at the University of Michigan. We're going to talk today about being a change agents. But part of being a change agent is knowing your competition and staying on time and I want to acknowledge that probably all of you saw that they added Nicole Hannah Jones to the schedule at 1230. We're aware that you may want to get up and move to another room and so we're going to try to move through this quickly and finish about 20 After so any of you who want to move over there can go and we're working with with our team here to come back to the same room tomorrow at one and continue because we think you may have questions. We don't want to shortchange you and make you miss that. So we're just going to be nimble, which is part of what we're going to talk about in this session. I see at least one night wireless fellow in the back I can't I just can't see. Okay, but who's I can't. There you are. I thought you move I'd have a complete blind spot right there. So Wallace Howe center for journalist at the University of Michigan runs three programs. The night Wallace fellowships for journalists, the Livingston awards for young young journalist in the Wallace house presents public events series. We're going to build slubby talking about the night Wallace fellowship today. Wallace house for any of you who were wondering is an actual house named for investigative journalist Mike Wallace, who was a 1938 graduate of the University of Michigan. So the Knight Foundation gave us one part of our name Mike Wallace gave us the other part. This is Wallace house on the campus of the University of Michigan and this is where the night Wallace fellowship runs these two will tell you that it's a beautiful place to spend a year thinking and even though it's a beautiful house, what I say that I love most about Wallace house is that it is a very subversive space. And we do a lot of change making in that beautiful arts and crafts home. The night Wallace fellowship is a cohort based program. There are a lot of fellowships. Fellowship is kind of like the word producer. It means a lot of different things. Our fellowship is very cohort driven, if you're the kind of person who wants somebody to give you money so you can go off in a room by yourself and work. We are not the fellowship for that. You have to spend a lot of time together because we believe that journalists learn a lot from one another. These two have spent a lot of time together with very good results over the past year. We also do a lot of activities. We also believe in serendipity. And so while you have to apply with a project, to get into the fellowship, a lot of the work that we do together, a lot of the experiences that we create have nothing to do directly with what the fellows are working on. Because we believe that your aha moment can come when you are like this class in the robotics Center at the University learning about prosthetic limbs and robotics. And that might give you an idea for how to overcome a problem that you're working on. On your project. We also travel with our program. We we pair with journalism organizations and other countries to do at least one trip a year we've been on hiatus during the pandemic. We're starting back this year taking this year's class to South Korea for a week, very packed week of activities, where we're meeting with political figures learning about socio economics and culture and news and how journalism works in other parts of the world. And so one academic year, you spend at the University of Michigan, we pay you a living stipend. We pay for your tuition, to audit courses at the University. And the thing about being a fellow is that you're at a university accessing all the resources of the university but since you're auditing courses, you don't have to take finals. You don't have to write papers. So you're at a university, getting to take advantage of everything that a university offers without the most stressful thing that happens at universities and so it's like a candy store for curious journalists and unlike when you went to college the first time when you were working with an advisor saying to get this degree you need to take these things. We encourage fellows to look at the university really broadly. And to go to places that don't necessarily align with where they think their talents and interests are, to stretch yourself. Maria is going to talk to you about being in the College of Engineering and what she learned there and how that spurred her for something that I think is going to be absolutely changed making for many small and medium sized newsrooms that she can link directly to been feeling very out of her depth in engineering courses at the University of Michigan. So they'll talk about their projects. You apply with something that you want to tackle for the year. An area that you want to learn more about something a problem that you're trying to solve, and that's what gets you into the fellowship. So I'm going to sit down, let these two talk and then we'll have time for questions. And again, I think we'll be back here Hannah tomorrow. So that we can continue talking for any of you who'd like to, to learn more. And so with that, I'm going to turn things over to Maria Arcee.

Thank you, Lynette. My path to the fellowship started in 2017 After I was in charge of covering hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, you know, the most devastating hurricane in the history of the island, no power, no internet, nothing. And even though we had planned everything, a lot of things fail. And after that, I realized that I needed time to stop and rethink and change the way we were covering natural disasters. So I got to the fellowship last year. And the first thing that I was like completely amazed was by the amount of resource of resources that you can get access within University. My first challenge was to decide which classes I was going to attend, because the catalog was the catalog was offering 24,000 classes 24,000 classes. So I joined the name of I forgot the name of the of the college, the

College of Engineering.

Thank you the college. Yes, because I was looking for the classes, not for the colleges. And one of the classes that I was interested in was extreme weather. And then I discovered in the college of engineering that they have five wind tunnels where they simulate hurricanes. There are other colleges where we have earthquake simulators. I took classes on VR, because they wanted to see we could integrate something in the coverage of natural disasters. I took five I enrolled in five classes, don't do that. That's a lot. And so the amount of resources that university offers you, it's unthinkable, whatever you can think you need, it's there.

And I want to just just pause and tell them so how you ended up in the fellowship. So Maria never planned to become an expert on running newsrooms through crisis. It happened because she found herself in an area of the world where natural disasters are increasing. And she wrote a very compelling application that basically the nut graph of her application is yes, we're going through this in Puerto Rico. But we know that climate change means that small and medium sized newsrooms around the country and around the world are going that have never planned operationally to have to function through natural disasters are going to have to and not everybody has the resources of the major news organizations. And we think when a disaster hits we think editorially, but you have to be thinking both editorially and operationally, how do you run your newsroom? How do you assign journalists when their homes are being washed away when their neighborhoods are on fire? And and when the Internet is down and you've spent your whole career through organizations like this becoming a digital journalist, and everything that you've built your career around? Knowing how to reach your audiences? All of the infrastructure is down. Yes, it's completely gone. And so her application was so compelling because she said, I want to learn how to solve this problem and teach other newsrooms how to work through this on I had to do it I mean, literally baptism by water in in Puerto Rico and she wanted to help other newsrooms learn how to do it. And we said, okay, we can help you with that.

And during one of my classes is extreme. World class. I confirm that places that have never faced natural disasters will be facing tornadoes flooding you have. We have seen what happened in California lately, even though they are used to natural disasters. We can think of Hawaii right now. So this is going to affect many many newsrooms. So the idea was to build something that will help these newsrooms in the future. The part of the fellowships are the seminars. The topics that we see during this weekly seminars are completely different. And some of them you may think that how I'm gonna use this seminar, this information during my or with my project, and I'm just gonna give you one example. One of the last seminars that we had was about intimacy, intimacy directors, you know, this role of directors that are working with actors and actresses, you know, because of the me to movement, I was like, Okay, how I do relate this to natural disasters, but at the end, the intimacy director that was working with us and, you know, teaching us shared an exercise that they use at the end of the day, sort of like, you know, this Gallade emotions, and I said, this is something that we can do in newsrooms after a very, you know, a stress day covering natural disasters, and I included that in something a while I'll tell you a little bit more about this later. In my project, I'm going to tell you, how did I integrate it, but you can do whatever you want in the fellowship, and I think this is like the magic of the fellowship. So I propose one day diplomat to organize a symposium on how to cover natural disasters. And we invited journalists from California, Texas, and Florida. You can think why. And so we were about 20 journalists. And we invited also experts to talk about different topics. That's my my professor of the extreme weather class, amazing class. Don't miss that if you get to the fellowship. And also we invited Professor grudging Hogue from Kansas State University, who came and talked to us about occupational stress for journalists, who cover hurricane Harvey in 2017 in Texas, we also have one expert who came and talk about ham radio how how can we take advantage of partnering with amateur radio during natural disasters? During the evening, we workshop with this group of journalists about Okay, help me to get your ideas your needs during natural disasters and all of those takeaways and adapt and something that I call press guides. This will be available for free for everybody. I when I started the fellowship, I was thinking more about an operational guide to cover natural disasters. Then I added an editorial guide. And the last thing was the wellness guide. And in that wellness guide, with a lot of tips and recommendations on how to help you know, to the well being of reporters during natural disaster is where I included the intimacy intimacy, Director, exercise. So you will get there also you will see these cards, you will need to print a lot of stuff when you are covering your natural disaster. So these cards are sort of like pre designed to help you you know, to make your your your coverage easier. So this will be available very soon. But for me, the most important part where my fellow fellows Lynette told me was that she was putting a class together, you know, not only picking individuals and this is the most fascinating thing for me because we really became a family. The the fellows are my friends supported me, help me with everything that I needed during my my my project and my year in an arbor. We lived like amazing experiences like playing bow and arrow. Archery, archery. Thank

you for playing bow and arrow. Yeah,

we were actually playing bow and arrow No not really. And we had amazing times and we also I also encountered these unexpected fellows. You will you will find amazing things in the university and these little things were completely fascinating for me, and I want to I want to share this information because they saw me like every day feeding them and come on campus.

I've never seen someone who loves squirrels as much

and they join me and we created this bond this bond between them and the squirrels it was really funny. One of the fellows crew made a book for me for about squirrels. It's amazing. So the experience with the Fellows is one of the most Regis Regis experience that I've ever had in my life and have that also in mind because you will be meeting fabulous people that they will really become your family.

But it's and it's not by accident. You know, I mean, one of the things for editors and newsroom leaders who may be in the room. I think that there's an old fashioned view that the fellowship any fellowship like ours, that's an academic year long that you're asking as a staff member to come to is some sort of boondoggle and that you're having time off. Because we do things like archery and travel and why should you get time off? And and actually it is the way our program works is by design. It is not time off. Either of them will tell you. It is probably one of the most busiest periods that you have had in your life. But that the way newsrooms run is we're always running adrenaline to adrenaline to adrenaline, what have you done for me lately? This solve this problem onto the next on to the next and that there's something about the structure of how our program works is that we're helping you focus. We're helping you a lot of times the people who apply have had something rolling around in their head for a few years, but you cannot get the time in your day job to actually even have an hour to think deeply about something that is nagging your news environment, and so being able to step back, and then being in a cohort of people who can help you workshop and then having a wide variety of stimulation. That it's intellectual stimulation of a wide ranging sort that gets everything firing. And that's how you problem solve. And that's how you sort of develop the confidence, the nimbleness to then go back into your newsroom and say, Actually, I think I know how we can tackle this. And we're not going to just roll it out for us, but we're going to make this available to other people. And I think you ended up with a result that if I had asked you at the beginning could you create this guide

I would have never in my life. Yeah. And I created it and a lot of the things that that I included. I was able to do it because I had the time to stop to read. Just to give you an idea. I remember that searching the word hurricane in the library system. I got 495,000 articles. So I contacted librarians and they helped me narrow that search. And I got about like 100 articles and then I you know, sort of like narrow that search again and they were the most amazing articles and they were so inspiring. And he gave me you know, made me think of solutions that I never thought I could think of and it's all included in the in the guidelines.

Yeah, I want him to do you want to make sure they know what the QR code gets them to Oh to my information. Yeah. So if you want to see the actual Guide or the side of what Maria ended up with, you can use that. And it's interesting to have Maria and Jared here because Maria as we started with would never have thought she would end up in the College of Engineering, working with a climate and space sciences on something for newsrooms. Jared, who I can now solidly introduce you to as an entrepreneur would have said before coming into the fellowship, that he knew nothing about business and was maybe a little bit afraid of the business school. And so I'll let you take it from there.

completely accurate. Good morning, or afternoon everyone almost afternoon. I enjoy my fellowship experience so much that I'm staying in Michigan I've done something not too many people have done expand of three months, which has changed from University of Michigan email address to a Michigan State email address, just between us, but I'll be there as artists and residents teaching in the school of journalism for the next year. I wrote a lot about my experience with the fellowship through a LinkedIn post that you can find online. I'll make sure I give you my information a little bit later but similar to Maria, my experience coming into the fellowship was that it was my second time applying. The first time I applied. I was worn out exhausted for like all the wrong reasons super stressed out in the newsroom. I really felt alone and so low and was doing a lot of work by myself. And so years past and in that time period of probably the best journalism of my life. I was covering the things I wanted to cover. I was winning awards and all these things that they asked you to do in newsrooms. But then the second time I applied I was exhausted for a completely different reason, which is like I need a break from trauma, right? Anything that you could think of and the last two years I have my camera in front of every single protest you could think of it was in DC, Maryland, Virginia. I was there, Danny way six police whistleblowing and retaliation projects. And I just got to the point where I was like, I need to photograph some kittens for a little bit. Because this is just too much. And everybody comes into the fellowship with a big question, right and a big problem that they want to solve my problem. My question was, who gets access to quality journalism education and specifically visual education. And so my background is in photo and video journalism. Where for USA Today for a very long time spent a decade in large newsrooms USA Today Detroit Free Press, doing photo and video storytelling and so when I came into the fellowship despite the urge to sign up for 50,000 classes, I decided that I would take a look at how do I solve this problem? And Lynette was very instrumental in introducing me to somebody who had changed my trajectory during the fellowship. And it was through this program called the Impact studio at the University of Michigan impacts studios to the business school to the Ross Business School and essentially what it is is an idea incubator. Anybody can sign up and apply and say, Hey, I have this big idea. How do I go about creating and facilitating the process to start a business or to create this idea? And so Lynette introduces me to Jerry Davis, Jerry Davis introduced me to the space I applied having not taken a business class ever in life, undergrad or grad. Okay. And I'm like, maybe they'll let me in there. They won't. We'll see. All I can do is try. They accepted your boy. So now I'm like cool. I'm in a cohort of people who are creating things and my big idea was pop up dock. So pop up docks, is a nonprofit pop up style documentary storytelling workshop that aims to bring in aspiring filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds to create nonfiction storytelling. So my thought was it's a bookmobile nice, masterclass concept, right? brick and mortars are very expensive to attend. I'm working at one, right. So how do we find those people who have the interest in visual journalism, but don't necessarily have the access to the institution and resources that they need to create their portfolio, right, that cultural artifact that you need to get into the business? And so that's where pop up docks comes from. The beautiful thing is that during the process of building this thing, you go through the bumps and bruises of trying to understand like is this is your idea strong enough? Right? And you go through that whole creative cycle of how am I going to make this work? Am I going to find the right resources? And as somebody who was used to working alone a lot going to a university as an adult, is it cheat code? Because we have all these subject matter experts, you have people who have spent their entire lives thinking about one problem, and being able to tap into those people was an extraordinary experience. And so in addition to navigating the university system to the business school and through some of the other college programs, I ended up going to robotics. I ended up going to the design school. There was a one of those serendipitous moments we went to go see a voter registration installation on north campus and the woman who was creating it Hannah straw I'm gonna smell Trish was telling us about this installation, super beautiful and I kind of pitched her the idea I was working on she says, you know, you really should talk to somebody in the design school. There was a whole class dedicated to designing of logos, branding guides, things of this nature, you know, color, you know, palettes and just like how you had literally put together like a marketing portfolio and a brand guide. And so I pitched the idea of like, Hey, can I come in to serve as your fake client? Right, I'm gonna come in, I did a presentation for the students. I said, this is my idea. Here's some of my, you know, iconography and logos and my color palette and things I like, but y'all do whatever y'all want with it. At the end of the semester, you know, those 20 students are handing me 20 different ideas of what pop up dots could look like. And never I would have to pay 1000s of dollars for this. But I was able to use it as an educational opportunity for myself and also for the students to give them access to me as a subject matter expert. I help understand how to work with the client, but then also for me to understand from them how they think because this is my target demographic, right? These are the students that I'm trying to get to come into this program. So it was beautiful. That whole experience culminated with a two day workshop. That I partner with the organization in southwest Detroit called capturing belief. They're a nonprofit organization is dedicated to teaching people storytelling through photography. So I said, Hey, let's come in and do a video component for a couple of days. I'll never do a two day workshop again, I'll do three days or more. Because it was just a lot to pack in. But the result was 10 high school students from around Metro Detroit got a chance to create their own stories, about a minute and a half each about their local barbershop or bakery. Right and that was like a really cool experience. And so I went from this person who did my best thinking alone in the dark. In the glow of my monitor editing video, to being a collaborative, you know, person that thrived in brightly lit rooms and been able to work with people in robotics and the business school and the Deuter spot center wacky get lost in like 3d mapping and all these types of things and I had the fellowship to thank for that.

And I think, you know, we call this that's their class. Look at those peoples. Jared took that picture. It's like one of my favorites. It's and of course anything with jazz hands is good. You know, we titled this how to think like a change agent. And for for a reason, because what was compelling I think for those of us who are who are looking at applications, is that both Maria and Jared, were applying because they had been encountering a problem that they had a kernel of an idea about. I mean, here's what I think we could do. But there was something about their application that indicated look, I'm going to go back if you help me, I'm going to go back and I'm going to pay it forward, and I'm going to help other people. We're going to transmit to this to other places. And Jared in my first meeting with Jared, he was coming from USA Today, and any of us who have worked in big big newsrooms or any size newsroom really over the past couple of years, you know that you've sat in some sort of meeting or somebody's talking about a pipeline problem. And you just get to a point where you cannot sit in these meetings anymore. And Jared said there is not a pipeline problem. The whole system is broken. Young people with talent don't even know where the ramps are. They wouldn't know how to find a ramp into this business. If you put it on a billboard, we have to figure out some different ways to get to people. And when he said that, I was like, okay, come on. Let's talk. And that sort of at the time he said that I don't even think that you necessarily knew you were setting yourself up to be a change agent. You just had a point of frustration. And rather than wallowing in your frustration, you you had enough sense of agitation that you wanted to do something about it. And so we're channeling that agitation, and trying to help you redirect it and find people to talk to so you can figure out how you turn that frustration into actionable change. And so it's been a pleasure working with them. Over the past year, and to see them both at the stage now, where they're seeing their first iteration of what they might do with their work. And we always talk about, you know, because it's an academic year program, and journalists are very deliverable focused and the industry makes us deliverable focused. People start the academic year saying what do I have to have done at the end? Like if that's what you're thinking about, it's not the right way to think about the program. The end of the fellowship is the beginning. And you may you may actually get to the end of the fellowship, and, and kind of think you actually didn't even accomplish what you came to do. And you ever you know, you feel a little bit insecure, you're not you don't know where it's going. But it's the beginning of your road. And I think that oftentimes, the impact of what you do with a fellowship year you don't even start to fully see it for 18 months or more after you've left the program, but they're both in this beginning stage. Maria, do you want to tell everybody where you are now?

Yes, two weeks after I finished my fellowship, I started to work for Global Press. It's a nonprofit news organization with 17 years of experience. We only employ local female journalists in the field and we have four bureaus around the world. I returned to Puerto Rico where I had been living for the last almost seven years and we are launching three new worlds there and use desk with three new reporters. And I I never thought that I would be in a place that it's a change agent itself. You can think of a newsroom with just women. If you think of that. And the good thing is that I can also apply you know what I'm creating. For for where I'm creating after the fellowship to all those newsrooms, because unfortunately, as we are in the least covered covered places in the world, these are places where are also prone to natural disasters, like Puerto Rico, Haiti, for example. So we will be able to sort of like actually prove everything that I that I'm finishing resigning, because as Lynette said, at the at the end of the fellowship, I didn't have anything of this. I just had like tons of books and notes and interviews with experts, because the whole university is at your disposal. I interview professors I interview even the VP of communication of the university who helped me and gave me the whole communication plan of the university during Yeah, so do crisis calm. Exactly. And it was amazing. I was able to sort of like, you know, replicate a lot of the you know, the the communication planning, sort of, like in this guide apply to news to a newsroom because, you know, it's different from University. And I never thought that I was going to be able to do that. I had no idea at the beginning was what was going to be the deliverable and it's a website and you might think, okay, but what if the internet is down you can download the guides in advance. So you will, you will have access to all the content if you lose power and internet,

but when I think about where you are now, and you you think I don't even know if if you have processed this yet, but so you are now in a leadership position in a growing organization covering Latin America, and you're coming at it now with a perspective where you've got editorial crisis plans, mixed with operational crisis planning, so just having a leader who thinks about both of those things as linked and with some competency around both of those things, and then you add on to it. The work you've done about inclusion and how you think from the ground up about how your work is impacting the community you're working in. And you're working with Global Press that is trying to sort of think about how you use local reporters to take away the parachute aspect of international coverage. And so if you take somebody like Maria and you put her back into the system, the number of people she's going to influence because of the mindset that she's now taking into her leadership. I think about the ripple effects of that, and it's quite incredible. Similarly with Jared, do you want to talk about where you are now?

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier artists and residents at Michigan State University, part of my appointment there will be thinking about who gets access to visual journalism education, and then also training the trainer's model. So using the resources of the university to help educate students, but also train graduate students to go into communities to help people tell stories. And so thinking about the ideas of like co creation and documentary filmmaking, exploring those ideas a little bit more, but then also offering an opportunity for skills building workshops in those communities to help people add a skill set. If I can teach you how to video edit, I can teach you how to put food on your family's table for the next 10 years.

And I would like to add that especially for Global Press, the length that I can, the connection that I can do between my program and them is very important because one of the pillars of Global Press is program that it's called duty of care, you know, our reporters can be extracted, if there's an emergency, they live there, their houses are there. So, being able to take care of them, you know, this program has four pillars, which which are, you know, physical, emotional, legal and digital security. So, being able to connect those, those elements of their program with my project is extremely useful and beneficial for the whole organization.

So, for those who came in late, we started by saying we know that there's been this added session today with Nicole Hannah Jones. And so, we're gonna go to questions now. We're going to end a little bit early for people who want to go but we'll be back in this room tomorrow at one o'clock. I think that is our time tomorrow, so that we can continue the conversation and maybe you'll bring some friends. And I think the point that that we want to make is that you know, it's very easy to sit within journalism, either within your organization or just within the industry and look around and say oh, journalism is such a mess, they should do this. They somebody, somebody should do this, but what if the somebody is you and that change can come from anywhere in an organization and it's about figuring out how to structure your thoughts and be able to present them so that someone listens, and then to have a thought about how you can implement and test and grow something. And, I mean, we've been doing this enough years to know that change can come from anywhere in an organization and that you can walk into a fellowship, never having stepped into a business class and come out with the capabilities of a great entrepreneur and leader that you can come in not thinking necessarily that you are an operational expert or that you can help integrate wellness into your newsrooms long term plan and come out of the fellowship able to do that, not just for your newsroom, but really changing in your sense. I think it will be not just the people you're working with directly, but culture change in a region. About how we approach these issues. And so that's our story. What questions do you all have? I can tell you I mentioned before that it's hard for us to see the room because of the lights. And so if you have your hand raised and we can't see you somebody Melissa can if you can help us out. There are microphones here. Yes. Because we're streaming okay.

Hi, first of all, congrats. It was so inspiring. I'm professor of journalism in Spain. And I love that sentence that you said, like something like, We will live in serendipity. And in this sense, I would like to know if you could tell us a little bit more about the profiles, the different profiles of the cohort of all their fellowships. Yes. I mean, all journalists all intrapreneurs a mix of everything.

That's a great question. So the question is about if we believe in serendipity, what do our cohorts look like? Is there something that we're going after? So I do tell all the fellows who come into the program Yes, we have selected you Maria Arcee Jared Henderson, but when we're down to we get hundreds of applications a year and at the very final stage, we're trying to put together a class of people. Everybody is a journalist. But especially when I'm talking to international fellows, sometimes I'll do I did a workshop recently. And someone said, Well, I'm not a journalist. I'm a photographer. I said, but are you a photographer in a newsroom? Yes. You are a journalist. Yeah. Right. And so anybody who's working in a newsroom, or in a news organization to create an editorial project, a product that's going to an audience if you're working in the production, craft support of journalism, you can apply to our programs so that reporters, editors, data people engagement people, visual journalists, audio journalist, producers, the whole the whole spectrum of what it takes to to create journalistic product when we're looking at a class, it we're it's we're trying to get a robust mix of people from different parts of the country in the world. People who practice different kinds of journalism, people with different backgrounds and different roads into journalism. And and people who their vision for what they want to do is different so sometimes people who are applying are coming to build a skill of their own. So we had a journalist this year, who had been in East Asia journalist at Reuters for a long time, and was about to make a pivot to covering China. And he spent his fellowship year preparing himself for that. Pivot. To learn more about China and to work on language. So a more personal pursuit pursuit, sometimes the projects are more entrepreneurial, like Jared and Maria. The one thing that I tell people can because when we get hundreds of applicants a year in our classes are never more than 1820 would be the maximum, but really sort of 15 to 18 people. There's a chance that you apply and you don't get in, but if you've made it to the finalist round, people will say what did I do wrong? Almost never something that you did wrong. But we would never have a class where there are six education reporters from the United States, or five people who cover presidential politics, because that doesn't put enough of a mix. Into the class. And so their class had you know, Maria's from Argentina, but had been based in Puerto Rico had been a digital journalist. We had long form magazine writers in the class. We had people who were coming from from international backgrounds where they were under periods of stress. So this year, we'll have our our third journalist coming from Afghanistan who has been displaced. We have a journalist this year, who's coming from Haiti who suffered survived an assassination attempt. Their class had a journalist from Kashmir who's fleeing a prison sentence. So it's, there's not an exact formula but what we're looking for is a mix that when we get to the end, the end of the year, any fellow will be able to say that they learned as much from other people in their class as they learned from the university. And there are other fellows in the room and hopefully they would say that that was that that was true for their experience as well

come out at a quick note. So I think that's also part of the magic of this process, especially like, if somebody and I I'm just speaking from my perspective as a black man in a newsroom and a large institution, where you feel like you have to have all the answers and things of that nature. These this class of fellows. I've built more strong relationships with than people who had worked with for years prior. And I don't think that's a mistake. I think that's a matter of us. Being vulnerable with each other being able to have these conversations in the seminars, but then also just like, learning to get to know each other as people there's a point at the first semester where everybody does a presentation on why you do what you do or what you love. And that's those are those like off the cuff moments that you really get to know your cohort and like, you know, find things that are amazing because as much as stress and pain and turmoil I've gone through to try to do what I do. I've never had my life threatened as a journalist, right? I've never had people you know, threaten me or spark me online as a journalist. Right. And I think that those perspectives help you make your classes in your cohort closer,

and one of the members of their class who I just saw. This week, we're having orientation for this year's cohort of fellows. And we have an ice cream social at the beginning of the year. And so I saw Assad this week. So they had a fellow classmate from Afghanistan. And he had worked for the New York Times and he was from western Afghanistan. And when he did his presentation, I mean, I will never forget this. He talked about the he grew up in a very, very rural village family compound in western Afghanistan near Iran, and in a very conservative family, and his father would not let him go to school. And his uncle would have to sneak him out of the house to go to school, but his father listened to the radio. He had a small transistor radio, and his father would listen to news but he wouldn't didn't want his children. He was very religious, didn't want his children being contaminated by getting an education. And so literally just to go to school, he fought but he got this kernel of an idea of wanting to do what he was hearing on the radio, and an uncle helped him go to school, got through school, and he became a journalist, and ended up working for The New York Times. And when he did his story, we're all just sitting there. wasn't a dry eye. And, and then, of course, he had been forced to leave his country. And here we are all sitting in the room at Wallace house. And you hear somebody like that talk and you're like, maybe I shouldn't complain about going back to the office four days a week. You know, like it's just, I think those those moments and where we are, if we're doing it, right, which I hope we are making it a very, I think the word safe space gets has gets thrown around a lot but making it a very safe place to like, share the things that you know, and share the things that you don't know, share the things that you'd like to know, share the things that you are scared about. Talk about being on the verge of leaving journalism, because it's I mean, just this week, right, where we were coming to this conference reading about layoffs at places that we thought were really stable and and so I think we talk about all of those things. And we cover a lot of ground. You know, again, as I said, anybody who thinks it's eight months off, it says sort of the wrong read of the program, but but but I think that's what we're going for with this with serendipity of all sorts.

And I would like to add that and I don't think this is just coincidence. We all have something in common. I'm from Argentina, one of the fellows. Stay there for six months studying Spanish in Argentina, we all have some kind of connection. And even those little connections helped us like you know, to grade these really deep bond and the way they helped me, we all help each other during the academic year was amazing. I think that was really, really important for us to have that you know, connection because all of us are connected in a way, maybe some way or weights, but we are all connected. Yeah.

So I think that we should respect time we said we were going to try to end by 1220. And we should do that for those of you who are on the stream. We will be back tomorrow. We'll also work with RNA to do a webinar, which we did last year, and we have brochures about the fellowship up on the table. I have my business cards here. I want to just advance the Slide The slides are uploaded into Canva you can reach any of us at our emails here. The QR code will take you to the Wallace house. website. These slides if you have the conference app, the slides are uploaded and so you can find this slide within the app. And then if you'd like to sign up and just learn more about all the things we do at Wallace house. This will sign you up for our newsletter. And you can hear about our programs. And if you're doing excellent work I always like we're talking about the fellowship right now. The Livingston awards for any of you who haven't heard of the Livingston awards major journalism prize for journalist under the age of 35. Fellowship applications are due every year on Feb. February 1. Livingston award applications are also due on February 1. We give the Livingston awards each year to ceremony in New York in June. So we hope you look at all of our programs our mission is to we say support. We are called the Wallace House Center for journalists by intention. There are a lot of places that have are for journalism. And of course we support journalism, but we know that as journalism is being supported work, the work of journalists being a journalist has gotten harder and harder and harder. The jobs are harder, the work pays less. There are more stresses and so our programs are here to support journalists, and to ultimately keep you going to help you go the extra mile to get you to the next idea the next inspiration and to help you do your best work. So thank you for coming. And we'll see you over in the other room. Okay. Thank you

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