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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hello and welcome back to the conversations with COJO podcast.
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I'm your student host, Ryann Davis. Joining me today is Wren Murphy, who is an Sdsu alum from the School of Communication and Journalism.
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Wren currently works as a reporter at the Madison Daily Leader in Madison, South Dakota.
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Welcome, Wren. Hi, Ryan. Nice to join you today.
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Thank you. So I'd like to start off by looking back on your time here at Sdsu.
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Um, you graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 2021.
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Is that correct? Yep. In 2021. Um, so is this what you always planned on graduating with?
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Um, no. Actually, from probably about middle school, up until midway through my senior year of high school,
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I was actually planning on going into the medical field, uh, specifically nursing.
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And then it was sort of at the last minute when I was talking to my father and he we were talking about future careers,
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and he mentioned journalism as a way that I could write and help people in the way that I wanted to.
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And it sort of felt like it immediately, immediately fit.
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So shot off applications to South Dakota State, a couple other universities with uh, accredited journalism programs, and then found my way over here.
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That's awesome. Um, so what are some of the things you did here at CSU and during your time in college in general,
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that you feel like really helped prep you for your job now?
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I think that one of the most important things other than, uh, participating in my classes and writing for the Collegian for a while,
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was honestly being involved in a lot of clubs on campus, even if they weren't major related.
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I got involved in some leadership teams. I was the president of one of the clubs on campus for a while, and those leadership skills that I gained,
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my ability to talk to people, it made me a lot more comfortable stepping out into the field,
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uh, talking to people I didn't know before who might have been slightly intimidating,
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and overall, it just set me up and put me in a good position to have confidence.
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When I went out and interviewed for jobs and when I went out and interviewed, um sources and people in the communities I would end up working in.
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Absolutely. I never thought about how joining a club could give you leadership skills like that.
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That's awesome. Mhm. Um, what did you do for the collegiate and did you just freelance writer.
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Um, so I freelance wrote for a while, but then eventually they started trying out a bit of a beat reporter system.
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And so I was there, I think, I don't remember what the title was specifically, but I focused mostly on diversity related events.
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So I went to a lot of events from different international, um, student organizations,
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a bunch of different minority groups on campus to talk about what they were doing and what their experiences was like at Sdsu.
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That's awesome. Was it right after college or during college that you did an internship through the Mortgage Tribune?
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Yes. So, uh, my first internship in university was my sophomore year, and that was at the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota with form communications.
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And then after I graduated college, I did an internship in the Mobridge Tribune.
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Um, I worked there with the editor, Katie ZR, for that summer, uh, focused a lot on their rodeo coverage.
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So that's what I spent a lot of my time doing. And then once the rodeo was over, things calmed down a little bit.
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Um, they basically used me as the fill in editor for a couple weeks, which is one of those key parts of being at the Mobridge Tribune internship.
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You spend the, you know, you spend your whole time there doing interviews, talking to people.
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You design your own special section, you design your own, um, program for the rodeo.
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At least when I was there. And that gave me a lot of, um, a lot of broad experience in both the design sphere.
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So even though I don't do design now, I still understand what the process is like, and I feel I can work with the designers better.
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And then working as the basically managing editor for two weeks, I got a lot of experience on the back end of stuff, making sure legal notices got in,
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making sure that the pages were all designed properly, and making sure I had the type of content that I needed to fill those pages.
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So it was a stressful couple of weeks, but ultimately, I think it really set me up well for, um, where I am now in my, um,
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and at the Madison Daily Leader, because I was actually just this week, uh, semi promoted to be the news lead for Madison.
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Congratulations. Thank you. So I will be, um, taking on more of a leadership role in Madison and without my time at the Mobridge Tribune,
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I do not know if I would be at that point. That is amazing.
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So then, after the Mobridge Tribune, where did you go after that?
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So I spent a little time, um, after I worked at the Mobridge Tribune,
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the company that owns that paper hired me on for some of their North Dakota papers.
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Unfortunately, that wasn't really a great fit for me. I met some really cool people, but the community just wasn't right for me.
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And eventually I found my way to the Madison Daily Leader.
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Um, at that time, it was owned by an Arizona based company called Wick Communications.
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I initially interviewed for a position out in Pir, um,
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and I always like joking that they told me the day after that they had already hired the position,
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but they liked my resume, so they decided to interview me. And then they sent me over to the Madison paper to interview.
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I got that job pretty quickly, moved to Madison, and I have been there ever since.
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I love it there. Wow. So what year was it that you started in Madison?
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I started in Madison like on January 6th, 2023.
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Okay. Also, um, you just said you got a little promotion, and I know that you, uh,
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I think it was in 2024, you won the News Media Association Outstanding young Journalist award.
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Yep. So, um, I was named the outstanding young journalist at the South Dakota News Media Association's 2025 conference, which covers for 2024 year.
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So. Okay. Um, and yeah, so it's been a really great journey for me.
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I've had a lot of editors, uh, my time from Katie's or my time at them at Mobridge to, um,
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you know, my current former editor, uh, Heather captured with the Fergus Falls journals.
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I've had a lot of people who have provided a lot of mentorship for me, and they saw that I wanted to go further,
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and so they allowed me to take on some extra roles that reporters don't normally need to take.
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So I did a lot of page proofing, page designing. Um, and I also did a little bit more management in the newsroom.
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And I've been working on community outreach in the past couple weeks as well.
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So it has been, um, you know,
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so I think that some of that stuff is made me really thankful both to have those mentors
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who believed in me enough to help me get that outstanding Young Journalist award.
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And now to sort of take on more of a leadership position at the Madison Daily Leader, for sure.
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Did you grow up in a small town then?
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Yes, I um, so I moved around a lot when I was really young and but in eighth grade, we ended up in a small town called Frederick, South Dakota.
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It's just a couple hundred people. It is about 30 minutes north of Aberdeen on Highway 281.
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I, um, went to school there. I graduated top of my class of a class of 18.
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So, you know, um, pretty small class and then moved to Brookings for Sdsu after that.
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Okay. So do you feel like growing up and living in a small town like that helped you with covering local journalism?
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I think it did. I think that if I hadn't spent that time in a small town, it would have been a little bit harder to adjust.
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But I feel the important thing about getting into community journalism or small town journalism isn't necessarily your experience in small towns.
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It's your mindset and how willing you are to learn and meet people.
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Every small town has a bit of a different personality.
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Some are a bit more closed off, some are a little bit more open, and the social circles are all very different.
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So I feel like what helps me most was especially moving around a lot as a kid and
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being put into situations that were a little uncomfortable or very new to me,
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and it forced me to be more willing to get out there, meet people and not be as, uh,
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not be as scared about it as I would have been otherwise if I had just stayed within my comfort zone and never left it.
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Yeah, that's a great insight.
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Do you feel like your job, uh, the leader and previously have fulfilled your expectations, or is there have been some things that surprised you?
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I think it's been a mix.
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I think that a lot of the job is what I expected, but there are always things that come by in journalism that will surprise you no matter what.
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Um, I always this is one of my favorite stories to tell.
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And it's it was a little bit of an awkward situation.
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So at my first internship at the Grand Forks Herald, we had someone reach out because, um, his father,
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who had been a long time legislator, had passed away, and he wanted us to do a story on him and his life and his legacy.
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I was the only one who had time that day. So I got that assignment. I, um, you know, spoke to, spoke to his son, spoke to his family members.
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And then I was told about some of his friends that he'd had while working at the legislator.
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One of them was the then North Dakota state attorney general.
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And I called him and he did not know that this friend of his had passed away.
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Uh, his to be clear, he had been he had passed away like a week ago, but the news hadn't gotten to him.
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So I, um, I was a fresh faced reporter, 19 years old, and I my first time ever talking to a statewide official.
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And the first thing that I did was accidentally tell him that his friend had passed away.
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Oh my gosh. And so I feel like that is an example, that journalism will always surprise you.
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There will always be situations that you'll have to adapt to and that adaptability.
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I think is what you need to take with you when you go into journalism.
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You can't just go in with your expectations and not expect them to change.
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You can't go in and know what's exactly the type of story you're going to write.
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Sometimes things will change. Sometimes you go into a city commission meeting, and it seems like there will be something really cool in the agenda.
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Then it's canceled.
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And, um, then you get something that's very unexpected, something that doesn't seem exciting, like a patio project at a local nursing home.
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And instead that ends up you seeing you end up seeing the passion of the residents,
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and you end up learning about them and their stories and what they're doing and why they want this project to be done.
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So you have to learn how to pivot and adapt and not get too attached to your idea of a story.
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You have to learn how to fall in love a little bit with all of the work that you're doing,
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and not just go in on a railroad knowing what you want to do.
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You have to be adaptable. You have to be able to figure that out, and you have to learn how to have fun, even in awkward or uncomfortable situations.
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Do you think that it took you a long time to adjust to the culture and, you know, social aspects of the Madison community?
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I think that I adapted to Madison pretty quickly. Uh, one thing is it was quite close to Brookings, so I did have some friends,
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and I had some connections in Brookings already, and some of those transferred over to Madison.
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There was also Dakota State University, which is within the same, uh, system as Sdsu.
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So there were similarities there I could latch on to.
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Um, but ultimately, I think why I connected to the community really quickly is because of my coworkers.
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I really love my coworkers at the Madison Daily Leader.
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Um, my co reporters, the advertising manager, Rita first, the, um, you know, uh,
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former office manager, she got a little bit of a promotion to, uh, Carrie Crosby.
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They all were super welcoming to me when I came to the community, and through them, I was able to learn a lot and make connections a lot faster.
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So I think that what's important is that you do your best to learn, not be scared when things don't make sense,
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because there will be there will be stories that have been going on in the community for 20 years that you need to catch up on.
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And what's important there is just being willing to learn and talk to people and also admit, say, hey,
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I don't really know much about this storm that ripped through your community a couple of years ago.
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Could you tell me about that so I could be filled in and understand a little bit more?
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And generally, people are very happy to share stories about their community.
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Um, I have met very few people who are willing to, um, who weren't willing to share stories about their community and tell you,
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oh, there was this blizzard that happened in the 90s and, oh, in the 2000, there was this really controversial zoning ordinance.
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There's a lot of stuff that goes on, and people are a lot more open to sharing sometimes than anxiety or shyness would lead you to believe.
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Yeah, I, I've definitely learned that even as a student already.
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So did you always think you would go into covering smaller communities and sticking to newspaper,
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or did you think you would go down any other paths in journalism?
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I knew that I wanted to work in primarily print and digital media.
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I had a little bit of an interest in broadcast, and I really respect broadcast journalism, but it was never what I really wanted to do.
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I, I do love video editing. To be clear, that's one of my favorite.
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If I had a better computer, I would probably do it as a hobby.
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But I really love writing.
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I like putting, um, you know, pencil to paper or, you know, as is more common now,
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I like putting, uh, you know, putting keys to Microsoft Word document.
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Um, and I like just writing out stories and trying to share people's experiences that way.
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I didn't necessarily know if it would be small town or big city.
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I was sort of mixed on it. It was sort of where I could find work, and it ended up.
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Madison ended up being a place that worked out,
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and I don't really know if I want to go necessarily into national or international journalism working for something.
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You know, there's obviously a lot of prestige in those outlets do so much good work.
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But I mean, when I think about, you know, the rise of artificial intelligence and the rise of misinformation and disinformation on social media,
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what I really like doing is I like going into local communities and telling those local stories because no one else is doing it.
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Um, artificial intelligence won't be able to tell you all about the, you know,
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the museum's new exhibit that they collaborated with a student on to tell the history of gaming as it relates to, um, the rise of technology.
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If the museum doesn't post that information in full on their website, you have to go out there in person.
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You have to go talk to people. You have to learn what? People care about.
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And that's something that, you know, artificial intelligence or like remote reporting can't really get you.
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And being out there in person, I've learned, is incredibly important to me.
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Even though I'm going to be taking on more leadership responsibilities,
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I am still going to make a very conscious effort to even if I'm not interviewing somebody every day,
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I am getting out into the community, and I'm talking to people to learn what the people of Madison and the people of Lake County care about.
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And, um, I really hope that I can live, continue, or I hope that I can live up to this ideal in the future, and I hope I'm meeting it now.
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I, I've read some of your stuff on the website, and it looks like you're doing a great job so far.
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Thank you I appreciate that. Yeah. Have you or has the Daily Leader implemented an AI policy at their paper?
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So, um, our company, uh, well, Madison Daily Leader was part of what?
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Communications. And we were recently purchased by Forum Communications.
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And so right now, some of our AI policies, I am not familiar with forums, um, on a personal on a like a personal and newsroom level.
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Um, it was me and Zuko.
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We were acting as reporters, and we have a lot of hesitance about using artificial intelligence.
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We find that every time we've tried to use it, we spend more time fact checking it and correcting it than we would if we just wrote it ourselves.
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Even first things that would seem relatively simple.
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And so our sort of informal policy has been use AI if we want a funny headline and can't think of a and Zach can't give us a good pun that day.
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Um, and even then, usually the really bad responses from the AI inspire him to come up with a much better pun.
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So I would say generally our AI policy has been we're allowed to use it if we want to, um, as long as we rigorously fact check it.
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But the rigorous fact checking takes more time than if we would just write it ourselves and do the reporting ourselves.
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So that's sort of been our informal policy at the Madison Daily Leader is avoided basically all the time because we haven't,
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at this point found a lot of use for it when so many of our stories are things that you can't find any local information on.
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Heck, the, um, AI summaries that you get for people in Madison, if you Google certain people's names in Madison,
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you just get information that they're ripping from the Madison Daily Leader.
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Oh, yeah. So, um, yeah. So I was always funny.
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We were looking up the I was looking up the name of a principal just to make sure I had his name spelling.
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And it brought up the AI overview, and I was like, oh, I wrote that's all information I reported on.
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Uh, that's my information that you regurgitate. I thank you for, uh, taking that and not sending someone to our website.
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Um, thank you for helping me fact check with myself.
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Yep. Exactly. Um, so I think that in a larger city it might be a little helpful sometimes if there's more information public and online,
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to at least get a general sense of it.
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But since Madison is so small, all of the decent AI summaries either come from the Madison Daily Leader or come from the universe.
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The Dakota State University's landing page, which is information we already know.
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Yes. Yeah. Um, like I said, I have looked at the Madison Daily Leader website and looked at your stories and stuff.
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Um, I noticed meeting coverage. And then I did notice that you cover some sports as well.
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Is that something that you had experience with at all before?
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That's one of the surprises that you have to adapt to.
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I knew I would have to do a little bit of sports coverage at Mobridge Tribune, because that is one of your responsibilities.
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Um, I did get taught the basics of some of it, but, um, when I moved to North Dakota,
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it became very clear to me that I was going to become the sports reporter, whether I wanted to or not.
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I called some, uh, other sports reporters that I knew, including, um, one of my mentors, uh, Jay at the Mobridge Tribune,
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to get advice on if I don't know very much about the sport, what is the most important thing I know about sports coverage?
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And it was learn the team and learn the team's story.
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What is the team working towards? What is the team's focus?
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What is the team's sort of personality?
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And once you get that you as a journalist, you can form basically as a journalist, you have to remain objective in many senses,
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but you form attachments to some things that you cover, whether you like it to or not.
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And as a sports reporter, you have to care about the teams that you're covering.
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And that's the most important thing I learned. So I learned about the coaches.
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I learned about the players. You know, this is the student that is really gifted in track and field.
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But more than anything, she wants to go and play. Um, you know, university volleyball, you know, you learn about all of these students,
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what their aims are, and that is how I was able to take, um, you know, make stories out of it.
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As I was learning the ins and outs in the game and now, um, the Madison Daily Leader, I do, uh,
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intermittent sports coverage when I can, um, timeline wise, it has been a bit tight recently,
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but we really want to continue ramping up our sports coverage once we get into
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the spring season and things cool down a little bit with the acquisition,
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since that's obviously taken a lot of our time. Yeah, absolutely.
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Uh, is there a way that you prioritize sports coverage as far as having, um, Dakota State in Madison and the high school sports?
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So we prioritize the high school sports over Dakota State University for one simple reason,
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and that's Dakota State University has a really excellent sports information.
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Director Nic Hunter with Dakota State writes up full game recaps with so much information and so much knowledge of the team,
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and it's available for free on the Dakota State University athletics website.
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Great. And, um, with that available, people can get that DSU coverage if they want it.
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Um, but oftentimes, if they want to know how like Chester Chester basketball is doing or how old time Ramona Rutland football is doing,
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they don't have very many other options. So we usually try to focus on the small schools, um, in our area.
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So, uh, Madison, Chester, all time, Ramona, Rutland, a little bit of Howard, a little bit of Coleman, Eagan.
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And by focusing on that, we're giving a little bit of coverage to schools that do not have, um, a lot of attention on them.
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Dakota State University has a lot of attention, and they deserve it.
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Um, but we want to fill in some of those gaps. So that's sort of the role and the the sort of focus we have when we do sports coverage.
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Absolutely. Staying consistent with that community type feel.
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Exactly. Um, my final question for you today was if you could give the students here at Sdsu one piece of advice.
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If they're going into the journalism field, what would you say? I would say the biggest thing is have fun learning.
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Um, have fun learning at university. Have fun learning when you're on the job.
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Have fun learning during the internship. Have fun learning about the people that you interview.
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Um, journalism can be a really rough job sometimes.
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Sometimes there are late nights when you have to cover a meeting that starts at 730 and goes until 11.
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That's something that's going to happen. But the most important thing is that you are there in your community to help people tell their stories.
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You are there to tell stories and, you know, humanity.
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We've been storytellers for as long as we've existed. And so what's important is.
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Having fun with it. And, um, knowing that what you do sort of forums.
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You know, it's history. It's the stuff that you write in the newspaper, you know, like it or not, that is something that is stored in museums.
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It's stored in libraries. It is how people find out the history of their families.
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And I think that that's an incredibly rewarding and fun thing to think about.
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So that would ultimately be, you know, that would also ultimately be my recommendation.
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Um, enjoy storytelling and enjoy learning.
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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hello and welcome back to the conversations with COJO podcast.
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I'm your student host, Ryann Davis. Joining me today is Wren Murphy, who is an Sdsu alum from the School of Communication and Journalism.
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Wren currently works as a reporter at the Madison Daily Leader in Madison, South Dakota.
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Welcome, Wren. Hi, Ryan. Nice to join you today.
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Thank you. So I'd like to start off by looking back on your time here at Sdsu.
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Um, you graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 2021.
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Is that correct? Yep. In 2021. Um, so is this what you always planned on graduating with?
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Um, no. Actually, from probably about middle school, up until midway through my senior year of high school,
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I was actually planning on going into the medical field, uh, specifically nursing.
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And then it was sort of at the last minute when I was talking to my father and he we were talking about future careers,
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and he mentioned journalism as a way that I could write and help people in the way that I wanted to.
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And it sort of felt like it immediately, immediately fit.
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So shot off applications to South Dakota State, a couple other universities with uh, accredited journalism programs, and then found my way over here.
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That's awesome. Um, so what are some of the things you did here at CSU and during your time in college in general,
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that you feel like really helped prep you for your job now?
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I think that one of the most important things other than, uh, participating in my classes and writing for the Collegian for a while,
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was honestly being involved in a lot of clubs on campus, even if they weren't major related.
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I got involved in some leadership teams. I was the president of one of the clubs on campus for a while, and those leadership skills that I gained,
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my ability to talk to people, it made me a lot more comfortable stepping out into the field,
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uh, talking to people I didn't know before who might have been slightly intimidating,
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and overall, it just set me up and put me in a good position to have confidence.
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When I went out and interviewed for jobs and when I went out and interviewed, um sources and people in the communities I would end up working in.
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Absolutely. I never thought about how joining a club could give you leadership skills like that.
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That's awesome. Mhm. Um, what did you do for the collegiate and did you just freelance writer.
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Um, so I freelance wrote for a while, but then eventually they started trying out a bit of a beat reporter system.
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And so I was there, I think, I don't remember what the title was specifically, but I focused mostly on diversity related events.
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So I went to a lot of events from different international, um, student organizations,
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a bunch of different minority groups on campus to talk about what they were doing and what their experiences was like at Sdsu.
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That's awesome. Was it right after college or during college that you did an internship through the Mortgage Tribune?
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Yes. So, uh, my first internship in university was my sophomore year, and that was at the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota with form communications.
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And then after I graduated college, I did an internship in the Mobridge Tribune.
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Um, I worked there with the editor, Katie ZR, for that summer, uh, focused a lot on their rodeo coverage.
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So that's what I spent a lot of my time doing. And then once the rodeo was over, things calmed down a little bit.
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Um, they basically used me as the fill in editor for a couple weeks, which is one of those key parts of being at the Mobridge Tribune internship.
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You spend the, you know, you spend your whole time there doing interviews, talking to people.
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You design your own special section, you design your own, um, program for the rodeo.
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At least when I was there. And that gave me a lot of, um, a lot of broad experience in both the design sphere.
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So even though I don't do design now, I still understand what the process is like, and I feel I can work with the designers better.
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And then working as the basically managing editor for two weeks, I got a lot of experience on the back end of stuff, making sure legal notices got in,
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making sure that the pages were all designed properly, and making sure I had the type of content that I needed to fill those pages.
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So it was a stressful couple of weeks, but ultimately, I think it really set me up well for, um, where I am now in my, um,
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and at the Madison Daily Leader, because I was actually just this week, uh, semi promoted to be the news lead for Madison.
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Congratulations. Thank you. So I will be, um, taking on more of a leadership role in Madison and without my time at the Mobridge Tribune,
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I do not know if I would be at that point. That is amazing.
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So then, after the Mobridge Tribune, where did you go after that?
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So I spent a little time, um, after I worked at the Mobridge Tribune,
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the company that owns that paper hired me on for some of their North Dakota papers.
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Unfortunately, that wasn't really a great fit for me. I met some really cool people, but the community just wasn't right for me.
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And eventually I found my way to the Madison Daily Leader.
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Um, at that time, it was owned by an Arizona based company called Wick Communications.
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I initially interviewed for a position out in Pir, um,
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and I always like joking that they told me the day after that they had already hired the position,
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but they liked my resume, so they decided to interview me. And then they sent me over to the Madison paper to interview.
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I got that job pretty quickly, moved to Madison, and I have been there ever since.
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I love it there. Wow. So what year was it that you started in Madison?
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I started in Madison like on January 6th, 2023.
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Okay. Also, um, you just said you got a little promotion, and I know that you, uh,
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I think it was in 2024, you won the News Media Association Outstanding young Journalist award.
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Yep. So, um, I was named the outstanding young journalist at the South Dakota News Media Association's 2025 conference, which covers for 2024 year.
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So. Okay. Um, and yeah, so it's been a really great journey for me.
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I've had a lot of editors, uh, my time from Katie's or my time at them at Mobridge to, um,
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you know, my current former editor, uh, Heather captured with the Fergus Falls journals.
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I've had a lot of people who have provided a lot of mentorship for me, and they saw that I wanted to go further,
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and so they allowed me to take on some extra roles that reporters don't normally need to take.
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So I did a lot of page proofing, page designing. Um, and I also did a little bit more management in the newsroom.
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And I've been working on community outreach in the past couple weeks as well.
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So it has been, um, you know,
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so I think that some of that stuff is made me really thankful both to have those mentors
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who believed in me enough to help me get that outstanding Young Journalist award.
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And now to sort of take on more of a leadership position at the Madison Daily Leader, for sure.
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Did you grow up in a small town then?
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Yes, I um, so I moved around a lot when I was really young and but in eighth grade, we ended up in a small town called Frederick, South Dakota.
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It's just a couple hundred people. It is about 30 minutes north of Aberdeen on Highway 281.
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I, um, went to school there. I graduated top of my class of a class of 18.
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So, you know, um, pretty small class and then moved to Brookings for Sdsu after that.
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Okay. So do you feel like growing up and living in a small town like that helped you with covering local journalism?
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I think it did. I think that if I hadn't spent that time in a small town, it would have been a little bit harder to adjust.
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But I feel the important thing about getting into community journalism or small town journalism isn't necessarily your experience in small towns.
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It's your mindset and how willing you are to learn and meet people.
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Every small town has a bit of a different personality.
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Some are a bit more closed off, some are a little bit more open, and the social circles are all very different.
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So I feel like what helps me most was especially moving around a lot as a kid and
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being put into situations that were a little uncomfortable or very new to me,
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and it forced me to be more willing to get out there, meet people and not be as, uh,
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not be as scared about it as I would have been otherwise if I had just stayed within my comfort zone and never left it.
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Yeah, that's a great insight.
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Do you feel like your job, uh, the leader and previously have fulfilled your expectations, or is there have been some things that surprised you?
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I think it's been a mix.
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I think that a lot of the job is what I expected, but there are always things that come by in journalism that will surprise you no matter what.
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Um, I always this is one of my favorite stories to tell.
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And it's it was a little bit of an awkward situation.
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So at my first internship at the Grand Forks Herald, we had someone reach out because, um, his father,
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who had been a long time legislator, had passed away, and he wanted us to do a story on him and his life and his legacy.
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I was the only one who had time that day. So I got that assignment. I, um, you know, spoke to, spoke to his son, spoke to his family members.
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And then I was told about some of his friends that he'd had while working at the legislator.
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One of them was the then North Dakota state attorney general.
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And I called him and he did not know that this friend of his had passed away.
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Uh, his to be clear, he had been he had passed away like a week ago, but the news hadn't gotten to him.
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So I, um, I was a fresh faced reporter, 19 years old, and I my first time ever talking to a statewide official.
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And the first thing that I did was accidentally tell him that his friend had passed away.
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Oh my gosh. And so I feel like that is an example, that journalism will always surprise you.
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There will always be situations that you'll have to adapt to and that adaptability.
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I think is what you need to take with you when you go into journalism.
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You can't just go in with your expectations and not expect them to change.
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You can't go in and know what's exactly the type of story you're going to write.
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Sometimes things will change. Sometimes you go into a city commission meeting, and it seems like there will be something really cool in the agenda.
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Then it's canceled.
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And, um, then you get something that's very unexpected, something that doesn't seem exciting, like a patio project at a local nursing home.
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And instead that ends up you seeing you end up seeing the passion of the residents,
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and you end up learning about them and their stories and what they're doing and why they want this project to be done.
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So you have to learn how to pivot and adapt and not get too attached to your idea of a story.
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You have to learn how to fall in love a little bit with all of the work that you're doing,
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and not just go in on a railroad knowing what you want to do.
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You have to be adaptable. You have to be able to figure that out, and you have to learn how to have fun, even in awkward or uncomfortable situations.
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Do you think that it took you a long time to adjust to the culture and, you know, social aspects of the Madison community?
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I think that I adapted to Madison pretty quickly. Uh, one thing is it was quite close to Brookings, so I did have some friends,
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and I had some connections in Brookings already, and some of those transferred over to Madison.
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There was also Dakota State University, which is within the same, uh, system as Sdsu.
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So there were similarities there I could latch on to.
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Um, but ultimately, I think why I connected to the community really quickly is because of my coworkers.
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I really love my coworkers at the Madison Daily Leader.
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Um, my co reporters, the advertising manager, Rita first, the, um, you know, uh,
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former office manager, she got a little bit of a promotion to, uh, Carrie Crosby.
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They all were super welcoming to me when I came to the community, and through them, I was able to learn a lot and make connections a lot faster.
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So I think that what's important is that you do your best to learn, not be scared when things don't make sense,
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because there will be there will be stories that have been going on in the community for 20 years that you need to catch up on.
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And what's important there is just being willing to learn and talk to people and also admit, say, hey,
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I don't really know much about this storm that ripped through your community a couple of years ago.
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Could you tell me about that so I could be filled in and understand a little bit more?
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And generally, people are very happy to share stories about their community.
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Um, I have met very few people who are willing to, um, who weren't willing to share stories about their community and tell you,
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oh, there was this blizzard that happened in the 90s and, oh, in the 2000, there was this really controversial zoning ordinance.
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There's a lot of stuff that goes on, and people are a lot more open to sharing sometimes than anxiety or shyness would lead you to believe.
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Yeah, I, I've definitely learned that even as a student already.
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So did you always think you would go into covering smaller communities and sticking to newspaper,
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or did you think you would go down any other paths in journalism?
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I knew that I wanted to work in primarily print and digital media.
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I had a little bit of an interest in broadcast, and I really respect broadcast journalism, but it was never what I really wanted to do.
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I, I do love video editing. To be clear, that's one of my favorite.
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If I had a better computer, I would probably do it as a hobby.
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But I really love writing.
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I like putting, um, you know, pencil to paper or, you know, as is more common now,
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I like putting, uh, you know, putting keys to Microsoft Word document.
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Um, and I like just writing out stories and trying to share people's experiences that way.
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I didn't necessarily know if it would be small town or big city.
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I was sort of mixed on it. It was sort of where I could find work, and it ended up.
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Madison ended up being a place that worked out,
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and I don't really know if I want to go necessarily into national or international journalism working for something.
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You know, there's obviously a lot of prestige in those outlets do so much good work.
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But I mean, when I think about, you know, the rise of artificial intelligence and the rise of misinformation and disinformation on social media,
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what I really like doing is I like going into local communities and telling those local stories because no one else is doing it.
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Um, artificial intelligence won't be able to tell you all about the, you know,
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the museum's new exhibit that they collaborated with a student on to tell the history of gaming as it relates to, um, the rise of technology.
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If the museum doesn't post that information in full on their website, you have to go out there in person.
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You have to go talk to people. You have to learn what? People care about.
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And that's something that, you know, artificial intelligence or like remote reporting can't really get you.
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And being out there in person, I've learned, is incredibly important to me.
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Even though I'm going to be taking on more leadership responsibilities,
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I am still going to make a very conscious effort to even if I'm not interviewing somebody every day,
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I am getting out into the community, and I'm talking to people to learn what the people of Madison and the people of Lake County care about.
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And, um, I really hope that I can live, continue, or I hope that I can live up to this ideal in the future, and I hope I'm meeting it now.
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I, I've read some of your stuff on the website, and it looks like you're doing a great job so far.
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Thank you I appreciate that. Yeah. Have you or has the Daily Leader implemented an AI policy at their paper?
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So, um, our company, uh, well, Madison Daily Leader was part of what?
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Communications. And we were recently purchased by Forum Communications.
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And so right now, some of our AI policies, I am not familiar with forums, um, on a personal on a like a personal and newsroom level.
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Um, it was me and Zuko.
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We were acting as reporters, and we have a lot of hesitance about using artificial intelligence.
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We find that every time we've tried to use it, we spend more time fact checking it and correcting it than we would if we just wrote it ourselves.
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Even first things that would seem relatively simple.
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And so our sort of informal policy has been use AI if we want a funny headline and can't think of a and Zach can't give us a good pun that day.
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Um, and even then, usually the really bad responses from the AI inspire him to come up with a much better pun.
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So I would say generally our AI policy has been we're allowed to use it if we want to, um, as long as we rigorously fact check it.
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But the rigorous fact checking takes more time than if we would just write it ourselves and do the reporting ourselves.
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So that's sort of been our informal policy at the Madison Daily Leader is avoided basically all the time because we haven't,
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at this point found a lot of use for it when so many of our stories are things that you can't find any local information on.
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Heck, the, um, AI summaries that you get for people in Madison, if you Google certain people's names in Madison,
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you just get information that they're ripping from the Madison Daily Leader.
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Oh, yeah. So, um, yeah. So I was always funny.
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We were looking up the I was looking up the name of a principal just to make sure I had his name spelling.
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And it brought up the AI overview, and I was like, oh, I wrote that's all information I reported on.
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Uh, that's my information that you regurgitate. I thank you for, uh, taking that and not sending someone to our website.
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Um, thank you for helping me fact check with myself.
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Yep. Exactly. Um, so I think that in a larger city it might be a little helpful sometimes if there's more information public and online,
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to at least get a general sense of it.
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But since Madison is so small, all of the decent AI summaries either come from the Madison Daily Leader or come from the universe.
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The Dakota State University's landing page, which is information we already know.
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Yes. Yeah. Um, like I said, I have looked at the Madison Daily Leader website and looked at your stories and stuff.
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Um, I noticed meeting coverage. And then I did notice that you cover some sports as well.
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Is that something that you had experience with at all before?
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That's one of the surprises that you have to adapt to.
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I knew I would have to do a little bit of sports coverage at Mobridge Tribune, because that is one of your responsibilities.
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Um, I did get taught the basics of some of it, but, um, when I moved to North Dakota,
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it became very clear to me that I was going to become the sports reporter, whether I wanted to or not.
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I called some, uh, other sports reporters that I knew, including, um, one of my mentors, uh, Jay at the Mobridge Tribune,
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to get advice on if I don't know very much about the sport, what is the most important thing I know about sports coverage?
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And it was learn the team and learn the team's story.
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What is the team working towards? What is the team's focus?
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What is the team's sort of personality?
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And once you get that you as a journalist, you can form basically as a journalist, you have to remain objective in many senses,
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but you form attachments to some things that you cover, whether you like it to or not.
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And as a sports reporter, you have to care about the teams that you're covering.
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And that's the most important thing I learned. So I learned about the coaches.
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I learned about the players. You know, this is the student that is really gifted in track and field.
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But more than anything, she wants to go and play. Um, you know, university volleyball, you know, you learn about all of these students,
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what their aims are, and that is how I was able to take, um, you know, make stories out of it.
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As I was learning the ins and outs in the game and now, um, the Madison Daily Leader, I do, uh,
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intermittent sports coverage when I can, um, timeline wise, it has been a bit tight recently,
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but we really want to continue ramping up our sports coverage once we get into
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the spring season and things cool down a little bit with the acquisition,
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since that's obviously taken a lot of our time. Yeah, absolutely.
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Uh, is there a way that you prioritize sports coverage as far as having, um, Dakota State in Madison and the high school sports?
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So we prioritize the high school sports over Dakota State University for one simple reason,
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and that's Dakota State University has a really excellent sports information.
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Director Nic Hunter with Dakota State writes up full game recaps with so much information and so much knowledge of the team,
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and it's available for free on the Dakota State University athletics website.
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Great. And, um, with that available, people can get that DSU coverage if they want it.
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Um, but oftentimes, if they want to know how like Chester Chester basketball is doing or how old time Ramona Rutland football is doing,
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they don't have very many other options. So we usually try to focus on the small schools, um, in our area.
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So, uh, Madison, Chester, all time, Ramona, Rutland, a little bit of Howard, a little bit of Coleman, Eagan.
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And by focusing on that, we're giving a little bit of coverage to schools that do not have, um, a lot of attention on them.
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Dakota State University has a lot of attention, and they deserve it.
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Um, but we want to fill in some of those gaps. So that's sort of the role and the the sort of focus we have when we do sports coverage.
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Absolutely. Staying consistent with that community type feel.
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Exactly. Um, my final question for you today was if you could give the students here at Sdsu one piece of advice.
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If they're going into the journalism field, what would you say? I would say the biggest thing is have fun learning.
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Um, have fun learning at university. Have fun learning when you're on the job.
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Have fun learning during the internship. Have fun learning about the people that you interview.
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Um, journalism can be a really rough job sometimes.
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Sometimes there are late nights when you have to cover a meeting that starts at 730 and goes until 11.
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That's something that's going to happen. But the most important thing is that you are there in your community to help people tell their stories.
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You are there to tell stories and, you know, humanity.
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We've been storytellers for as long as we've existed. And so what's important is.
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Having fun with it. And, um, knowing that what you do sort of forums.
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You know, it's history. It's the stuff that you write in the newspaper, you know, like it or not, that is something that is stored in museums.
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It's stored in libraries. It is how people find out the history of their families.
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And I think that that's an incredibly rewarding and fun thing to think about.
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So that would ultimately be, you know, that would also ultimately be my recommendation.
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Um, enjoy storytelling and enjoy learning.
