Messmer interns get taste of journalism
Years ago, after I wrote a book about the first year of the combined Messmer-Shorewood football team, I was interviewed about it by the editor of Messmer High School’s student newspaper, The Foursquare.
I don’t remember the questions I answered, but I vividly remember the response to one I asked.
When I asked the interviewer what she wanted to study in college, she said she planned to be a pediatrician. I hope I concealed my disappointment. We need bright and talented pediatricians, of course, but we also need bright and talented journalists.
And we particularly need bright and talented young journalists from different races and backgrounds. If a newspaper is meant to be a reflection of the community it covers, it has to be the whole community, not just a portion of it.
According to the Pew Research Center’s latest State of the News Media report, the percentage of African-American journalists working for the nation’s newspapers has hovered just below 5% since 2009. On the plus side, that percentage hasn’t dropped much in the years since the Great Recession, even as overall employment in the industry has fallen sharply.
But shrinking staffing levels make it harder to break into the field — for anyone, really.
That brings me to some bylines you may have noticed over the summer: Lona Kujjo, Rodnesha Jones, Jon Staples and Shateria Wiley. The four made up our latest class of Messmer interns. A fifth Messmer student, Parreon Reid, worked at the Milwaukee Community Journal, a weekly newspaper focused on the African-American community.
Before the internship begins, students complete the Urban Journalism Workshop at Marquette University, a long-standing two-week boot camp of sorts that draws students from throughout the region. With training in writing, photography and online presentation, that program offers a quick first taste of the journalism world.
Our internship, which runs four weeks, puts the students to work. It is not about fetching coffee or a glorified job shadow. They are coached by mentors in each department, writing breaking news items, opinion pieces and short stories, and taking photos. Their work is published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and on JSOnline.com. The students are paid, thanks to funding through Messmer.
In all, 31 students have gone through the internship program in the eight summers since it began.
Many have wound up studying journalism or communication. One Messmer grad we worked with, Justine Shorter, became the first African-American general manager of Marquette Radio, a student-run operation. The one-on-one training in how to write clearly and accurately, and the experience of working in a professional environment, will help them succeed no matter what they pursue.
For some, it opens their eyes to a career in journalism.
That’s what happened with Shateria, who wrote a piece about how the city’s violent summer — she was a block away when a 13year-old was shot and killed after the July 3 fireworks — has affected her family and friends.
“I had never really thought about journalism before,” she said, at our closing luncheon. “Now I can see myself doing it. I really can.”
That’s why I pushed for our newsroom to get the program started.
And because, during that interview with the soon-tobe-pediatrician, I thought back to my own plans when I was a student at Messmer.
Back then, I only had a somewhat vague idea of wanting to be a journalist. I had been editor of the yearbook and the newspaper, so it seemed like a natural path. But I didn’t get a chance to explore it in a real-world setting for years.
My summer job before my senior year: Burger King.