Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached more than 46,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Campus Voices: The Future of Reporting with TFAS Journalism Students
Journalism requires courage and a commitment to pursuing the truth, even in
challenging environments. Thomas McKenna and Jonas Du, two talented students participating in the TFAS Student Journalism Association, understand this. Through the Student Journalism Association, TFAS supports young independent journalists who approach journalism through a lens of sound objective reporting and a desire to find the truth. In their chat with host Roger Ream, McKenna and Du discuss their TFAS experience, how real-world experience in journalism is often more valuable than classroom learning, the importance of diverse viewpoints, and why it's imperative to support young journalists.
Thomas McKenna is a junior at Hillsdale College studying political economy and journalism, is the city news editor of The Collegian (Hillsdale’s student newspaper) and interned this past summer with National Review.
Jonas Du is a senior at Columbia University studying political science and economics, is the founder/editor-in-chief of Sundial, a monthly magazine of political and cultural discourse at Columbia, and interned this past summer at The Free Press.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact. Today I'm your host, roger Ream. Today I'm very excited to be joined by two talented students from the TFAS Student Journalism Association. The TFAS Student Journalism Association supports young, independent journalists who approach journalism through a lens of sound, objective reporting and a desire to find the truth. Tfas enables these young journalists to have a platform to develop their skills, voice and network. My first guest is Thomas McKenna, a junior at Hillsdale College studying political economy and journalism. Thomas is the city news editor of the Collegian Hillsdale's student newspaper. This summer, thomas attended our TFAS summer program in Washington, where he interned with National Review. In that role, he covered such stories as the anti-Israel protests in Washington DC, the reaction on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the June presidential debate and the expansion of assisted suicide in Canada. In addition to his reporting, he has collaborated on speeches and op-eds for both members of Congress and corporate executives. Thomas, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm also joined by Jonas Du, senior at Columbia University, who is studying political science and economics and is the editor-in-chief and founder of Sundial, a monthly magazine of political and cultural discourse at Columbia. A contributor for Young Voices, he regularly writes about higher education and free speech issues, and his work has been featured in USA Today, National Review and Reason. In fact, jonas was an editorial intern at Reason in the summer of 2023, and this past summer joined the Free Press. Jonas, so good to have you with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me, Roger.
Speaker 1:We have much to discuss over the next 30 minutes. Let's begin with me posing a question to each of you about things on your campus. I know you come from very different campus environments. I know you come from very different campus environments Columbia and Hillsdale so let me begin with you, Jonas, and the campus of Columbia, which was, in a sense, ground zero for anti-Israel protests. What was it like to cover events there this past year?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll say that it was a surreal experience, to say the least.
Speaker 3:Campus did not feel like a college campus for all of April and all of May at Columbia, and to cover it and to be on the ground as they were setting up the encampment, as they were occupying Hamilton Hall, it was a surreal moment that I knew was going to be national news but at the same time knew was an incredible opportunity to develop as a student journalist and to witness firsthand and have sort of unprecedented access when they were occupying Hamilton Hall.
Speaker 3:I was just stepping out of Butler Library our main library getting ready to study for finals, and it was around midnight and I see the mob of protesters in the encampment and from all around campus coming towards Hamilton Hall and everyone's around me saying, oh, they're planning to occupy it. So I immediately rushed to the doorstep of Hamilton Hall as they were arriving there. I got there sort of before most of the mob and sort of I was right by the door taking pictures, posting on Twitter what I was seeing, and gradually I was surrounded by all of these people that were trying to form a human chain, and to have an experience like that as a junior in college is not anything you would expect as a college student, but especially as a student journalist. It's been a crazy environment, but it's also been very fulfilling to be able to tell the story from an independent perspective.
Speaker 1:By being there when it was taking place. That generated opportunities for you to be on national news to talk about it. Right, that must have been an interesting experience.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I get accused by the people on the left at campus for capitalizing on the opportunity to you know, go on national news and develop my career. And my response to that is always look, there needs to be people who are willing to tell the truth, are willing to call out antisemitism when there is antisemitism, are willing to say there are people that support terrorism and there are people that are pro-Humas on campus and this is what I'm seeing and to be able to share that story and tell people that that's what's happening, that's much more fulfilling than sort of any sort of personal gain that I might be getting from this.
Speaker 1:One other question about that. And then I have a question for Thomas. But at the time you were there and that was taking place, did you feel personally threatened at all, or was it a safe environment for you to be in right in the midst of it all?
Speaker 3:Well, what I'll say is that there were a lot of concerns from the Jewish community about student safety. Personally, I'm not Jewish. I felt that I was physically going to be safe, but on social media you could see that I was among the reporters that was by the doors of Hamilton Hawn. They were texting me like please get out of there, what are you doing? And so it did get a little bit tricky at times and I was recognized because of what I did on national media, what I said, telling the truth, and people recognized me and stopped me and said nasty things. But that's just part of the job and that's something that I've learned to accept.
Speaker 1:Well, thomas Hillsdale College, of course, has a different type of campus environment, I would assume, than Columbia. It's got a reputation as a conservative university and probably leads some people to think that everyone's of one mind and the public square isn't a place for debate and discussion. But what is it really like at Hillsdale and what's it like to practice journalism there?
Speaker 2:Well, hillsdale is more conservative than other schools, but that certainly doesn't mean that everyone there thinks the same thing. I've had some great conversations with my fellow students. A lot of the professors disagree and it's great to hear from different sides of the debate there, but I will say that it's much more civil. A week before, judge Kyle Duncan faced a lot of protests at Stanford Law School. He was at Hillsdale and of course, there were no protests for what he was saying.
Speaker 2:Covering journalism in Hillsdale. We don't have the same experience as some students at Columbia, for example, so I haven't had the opportunity to cover protests like that at Hillsdale, but at the same time, there's plenty of journalism to be done. There's always things going on in state politics in Michigan. When the state legislature repealed the right to work law there, when the state legislature repealed the right to work law there, when we saw a few weeks ago that the Michigan Supreme Court is going to allow a minimum wage increase to go through, that affects the local businesses around us, and so it gives the opportunity for a student like me to go out and talk to local businesses and say how is the minimum wage increase going to affect your business, and then we can cover that for students on our campus and also for people in town who read our student newspaper.
Speaker 1:How often does your paper come out?
Speaker 2:It's a weekly paper, we put it up online and we also do a print version.
Speaker 1:You have a pretty big staff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got probably 20 or 25 staffers. We've got editors for each of our six or seven sections. We've got assistants for those sections. So it's a great place to develop as a student journalist because you're getting feedback from, you know, senior students as well as professors there in the journalism department now, jonas, you're involved in starting a publication at columbia, the sundial.
Speaker 1:What has that experience been like? As I understand, it's a monthly that correct.
Speaker 3:It's a monthly print publication and we publish online regularly as well, and so my experience starting the Sundial has been extremely fulfilling, and I spent a year as an editor on the Columbia Daily Spectator's opinion section. That's the main newspaper of our campus and I learned a lot there. I developed basic writing and journalism skills for journalistic writing, but I also experienced firsthand what the culture in the legacy media today is, which is that people, especially in editorial journalism, are very much willing to suppress, ignore or hide certain viewpoints out of political convenience, and that got increasingly more of a problem as I developed at the Spectator. What is going to be most fulfilling for me in my remaining years of college? Is it going to be trying to change this behemoth of an organization that has over 300 staffers from the inside, or is it going to be to try to shake things up and start a publication that's actually going to get people talking again, that's going to share viewpoint diversity, that's going to even pursue investigative journalism?
Speaker 3:And ultimately, I think I made the right decision and the reception for the Sundial has been amazing, especially given what's going on at Columbia. This past semester We've had a lot of people come out and say, hey, we really like what you're doing. I'm not seeing this kind of content anywhere else and I can't wait to see where you guys go in the fall, so that's been very fulfilling. At the same time, there are people that think that free speech is a conservative cause, that think that viewpoint diversity is a conservative cause, and those people will always be there. But I think it's a very positive start.
Speaker 1:Now TFAS started the Student Journalism Association a little over a year ago with our aim to promote a more vibrant news media, more vibrant environment on campus for journalists and to develop talent at the collegiate level for careers in journalism. Thomas, has the Student Journalism Association, your participation, been helpful to you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. As a member of the Student Journalism Association, I had the opportunity to go to one of their conferences in Chicago, and there were two great things that I got to experience there. One was getting to meet other students from other schools and learn about their publications, because those schools are very different from Hillsdale they're either bigger or they're much less conservative, and so that leads to a different environment for student journalists there. But I also got to hear from some of the pros. We heard from Christine Rosen, who's on the Commentary podcast and a fellow at AEI, and getting to hear about her experience as a commentator and what her day looks like and what she reads. Those are all things that help to inform your development as a student journalist, and so having both of those opportunities in Chicago, that was a great experience.
Speaker 1:And Jonas, what was kind of your expectation in getting involved in our Student Journalism Association and how has that been so far?
Speaker 3:So, going into the SJA, I expected to meet people from different schools who had done similar things, sort of a network of support, professional support, especially institutional support, as well as potential connections with future opportunities in the media and in journalism, and I would say the SJA absolutely has fulfilled all my expectations and more say that SGA absolutely has fulfilled all my expectations and more.
Speaker 3:I had the opportunity to spend two days at the New York City Conference, the Northeast Regional Conference, and there I met lots of very, very interesting journalists who were also interested in spreading viewpoint diversity in doing investigative journalism that their mainstream papers on their campuses weren't doing, and so to connect with them was an incredibly valuable experience, and even this summer I'm running into them across the Northeast. I was at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They had a summer conference and I met SJA people there and we had a great time catching up and just bringing people together like that. I think it's a huge part of SJA and beyond that, I'm really excited to see how this association grows and I can't wait to meet more and more people. And at the New York City Conference I would say a highlight was getting to hear from Tim Carty, whose work I really respect and he really emphasized the importance of going on the ground and talking to people and reporting, which I think is absolutely important.
Speaker 1:Now, thomas, you participated in our summer journalism program in Washington DC and interned at the National Review. Could you talk a little bit about that program that you attended and as well as your internship?
Speaker 2:The SJA program this summer was fantastic. I got to meet other students from other schools and got to know them over a few weeks living in the same dorm and then going to the same classes and hearing the same guest lectures. Having conversations with them was a great way to develop a wider perspective and learn from them, learn from my peers. We got to hear from some of the professional journalists in DC. One talk that stood out to me was from an NPR reporter who had been reporting on Capitol Hill for a while and she was able to tell us the inside scoop about how to develop a beat and develop sources. And I ended up running into her while I was covering Capitol Hill for National Review a bit this summer and just saw her in the hallway and got to talk to her there and just being able to see a familiar face in that setting. That's something that the program gave me.
Speaker 2:As for my internship, a huge part of my internship was getting to take a Capitol Hill press pass, go up to the halls of Congress and ask members of Congress questions. One of the best experiences this summer was right after the presidential debate that kind of blew up the presidential race. Congress was back in session after the July 4th recess and this was the first opportunity to put members of Congress on the record about what they thought about the president's reelection bid. So I went up there with some national review reporters who showed me the ropes, who showed me how to go up to a congressman and say I'm Thomas McKenna with National Review. Do you think the president should drop out? And just being able to put members of Congress on the record as somebody who's a rising junior in college, that was a fantastic experience.
Speaker 1:Was not a dull summer for covering the news, and that's great. You had that opportunity. Now, jonas, I don't know whether we had a role in your internship placement, but you had an internship at the Free Press. Could you talk a little bit about that internship and the kinds of things you did there?
Speaker 3:for so far it's been about 10 weeks.
Speaker 3:I've got one week left and I would say that at the Free Press I've had the opportunity to take on assignments and to pursue projects that I would never have the opportunity to do in the legacy media.
Speaker 3:And the Free Press is very exciting because it is a startup and it is disrupting the journalism industry, especially mainstream legacy media, and to be a part of a very scrappy culture, a very on-the-ground reporting culture, especially when it comes to things going on in New York City, that's been very valuable, and so I've had the opportunity to write personal essays based on my experiences at Columbia, as well as my other thoughts on social media and other topics.
Speaker 3:But I've also had the opportunity to go out and report. I covered the court hearings for the Columbia protesters that occupied Hamilton Hall, so I sat in the courtroom for a day and I watched as each of their charges got dismissed by the Manhattan DA, and I co-wrote a report with Francesca Block, one of the reporters at the Free Press. Her and I have actually been collaborating on a couple other investigations as well, and I'm hoping to continue into the fall. So I've just gotten very, very valuable experience with print journalism, but also with video. They're quickly growing their video team, and so I had the opportunity to help build out their New York City studio to sort of learn the ropes of how that side of the editorial board works, and so it's been a very diverse experience and it's been a very fun experience this summer.
Speaker 1:So far, Could you comment on whether you know the kinds of real world experience you're getting through your internships is probably much superior than if you were taking courses in journalism and learning it in the classroom. Would you agree with that, thomas?
Speaker 2:is by doing journalism. That's John Miller who heads our journalism program there, and I think that's absolutely true. And one of the best ways to do that is through an internship at a place like National Review, where you've got veteran reporters who are showing you how to do the job just the hard skills. But at the same time, combining that with classes and other subjects is going to give you a better sense of the field of economics. When you go to do reporting on economics, your understanding of supply and demand and how price floors cause shortages is going to influence your reporting on something like the minimum wage or a right to work law. So, absolutely, it's important to learn journalism outside of the classroom, but at Hillsdale I've been able to combine that with classes in journalism as well.
Speaker 1:And now Thomas, this summer, while you were in our program, you also took a course in economics. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, I took a course called Economies in Transition with Professor Rosalino Candela at George Mason and the course started with a basic understanding of property rights and prices and the importance of understanding scarcity in economics. But by the end of it we had gone through case studies of the Soviet Union and China and Venezuela and Poland and going through those case studies and looking through the lens of market economics. That was a great experience. That's going to inform my reporting going forward, whether it be on economic policy or on entrepreneurship. That understanding of economics helps your journalism move forward question I wanted to ask you, thomas.
Speaker 1:I've been told that you had the opportunity to interview Mark Simon, who was a colleague of Jimmy Lai's at Apple Daily in Hong Kong In 2022,. We had the opportunity to honor Jimmy Lai at our annual journalism dinner. We gave him our Kenneth Tomlinson Award for Courage in Journalism. Unfortunately, he's been in prison, in solitary confinement in Hong Kong now for several years, while they attempt to put on a long show trial of him. But could you talk a little bit about that story you wrote Because I have such great admiration for Jimmy Lai's courage in his defense of a free press and democracy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mr Simon came to Hillsdale's campus a few months ago and it was one of the best experiences I've had as a student journalist getting to interview him and write a story about him. I mean, what an example of courage right From somebody who was working for a dissident newspaper was one of Mr Lai's senior advisors. He was in danger, too, of the same crackdown that came down on Mr Lai. He was in danger too, of the same crackdown that came down on Mr Lai. So getting to hear from him about not only Mr Lai's courage but his courage, and hear that example from somebody in journalism, that's really inspiring to someone who is in a country with a free press. But you always have to be on guard and grateful for those freedoms that we have in America.
Speaker 1:Now, jonas, you've started a paper, a publication, at Columbia. You're going into your senior year. You had a great experience this summer at the Free Press. How do you see the year unfolding? Are you going to be trying to recruit more students to write for the paper? Are you hoping that when you finish your senior year to go into a career in journalism finish?
Speaker 3:your senior year to go into a career in journalism. We're definitely hoping to recruit lots of freshmen, lots of young talent at Columbia for the Sundial, because I think that people are really hungry for something different, for something new and exciting, for something that repairs sort of the damage that's been done over the past year. Now do I think that the protests are going to get worse? Absolutely. One of the organizers of the encampments just came out and said that encampments are a new baseline, so it's not going to be an uneventful year for sure. So we'll have a lot to cover, but absolutely we're trying to recruit heterodox writers, people from the left and the right, to come on and join in our mission to support free speech and viewpoint diversity.
Speaker 3:As for my future after my senior year, I do think that I want to pursue a career in media and in journalism. I'm hesitant to go work for the legacy media, of course, based on my experiences at the Free Press and at Columbia with the sundial and the Daily Spectator. So I would love to be part of something new and different, such as the free press, and I really think it's an exciting time to be in journalism. There's a lot of changes going on in the industry and I think that the work of TFAS and supporting the SJ has been absolutely crucial in supporting the next generation in that industry.
Speaker 1:Now, thomas, from what you've said, you've done some, I guess, speech writing or work in that industry. Now, thomas, from what you've said, you've done some, I guess, speech writing or work in that field. But you've also now got some great experience you're developing in journalism. You've got some time to make a decision on a career, but has the work you've done in journalism really lit a passion in you for that as a career objective?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I just think back to one of the first journalism internships I did in high school, where my town, during the Stanley Cup finals, renamed itself Capitalsville for the Washington Capitals, and Thomas in high school got to go out and cover that story and get a sense of the adrenaline rush of chasing down a story and finding more information and turning that around quickly and giving that to the public. So, as much as I love speech writing and ghost writing and that might be something I want to do in the future right now I'm just super passionate about journalism in the same way I was in that first internship, and so it's something I want to continue. I definitely want to continue reporting. Where that takes me, we'll see, but I definitely got a passion for reporting right now.
Speaker 1:Well, our Center on Excellence in Journalism and our Student Journalism Association that's part of it, were established just over a year ago because we saw just a tremendous need to support conservative young people on campus, independent-minded people and people in the center who felt like they didn't have an opportunity or a voice. What would you say to the supporters of our Student Journalism Association as to its importance to you as journalists on campus?
Speaker 3:I think that the first thing I will say is that it's incredibly important, at least for me, to see that there are other people who want to pursue the same things as me but also share the same values. That's the important part. There's a lot of people who want to go into journalism for the wrong reasons, but there's also people that want to go into it because they want to correct the narrative that's out there. They want to go out and investigate the stories that aren't being told, and I think that TFAS and the SJA are absolutely about that. And it starts on college campuses, as people are pursuing collegiate level journalism. Then they bring those skills and those networks and connections they developed to their internships and then on to their professional careers. So, absolutely, I think that the network and the community that these kinds of programs provide is so important.
Speaker 1:And Thomas, you've got John Miller and a great program at Hillsdale great newspaper there. But you know you've expressed your opinion about the value of the Student Journalism Association, but perhaps you'd have a message for the people that support it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say you know, when I went to the SJA conference in Chicago and when I was working with and learning with other SJA fellows this summer, I saw the hunger for programs like SJA on American college campuses, and that's something that needs support. The demand is there, but people who want programs like SJA, who want to write for its publications, they need the support of people who are friends of the program to help them accomplish that goal. And so, as I go forward and try to develop a journalism career, I'm going to be looking to SJA for support as I try to navigate DC and navigate a field that isn't always friendly to people who share my values, and so it's so important to have programs like SJA to help to meet students and bring them together when they want to pursue journalism but are facing a field that doesn't share their values.
Speaker 3:And, if I could add something, supporters of SJA are not just supporting student journalists like Thomas and I who want to go out and start papers, work on existing papers and pursue internships. They're also supporting a broader culture shift at colleges like Columbia, where there is a need for more diversity of opinion, where there is a need for a space where people who are more moderate or more open to free speech even can come together and discuss and write about things and have nuanced conversations. And if you start there on college campuses, that's going to impact the next generation of people that are in public life in the future, and so I think that's also a very valuable impact.
Speaker 1:Well, you can count on us to be supportive of you as you finish your college careers and go into journalism.
Speaker 1:We want to be part of the process of helping you advance and supporting you when you are in newsrooms, and I agree I mean.
Speaker 1:Our objective in starting the Student Journalism Association was to try to produce more young journalists who are independent-minded, who are going to go into the profession. You are two of a larger number of young people college students who we're working with on campus papers. We helped establish some new ones this year and we're supporting some pre-existing ones. We've got great plans this academic year to develop some more papers at other schools that don't have them now, because it's important to have an independent voice on campus that's reporting on stories and getting information out to students and recruiting young people to work for those papers who could be developed into talented journalists in the future. So we're really excited about what the two of you have been doing and your work to get others involved in this, so we hope you'll stay active in the network in the coming year. What would you say, jonas, to young people you want to recruit to work for the Sundial? How do you encourage them to come right for you?
Speaker 3:Well, I think my message for them would be that truth matters, but the truth is hard to pursue, and do you want to be a part of an organization that's going to actively pursue the truth and actively contribute and improve the campus discourse environment? That's one thing that I've learned in journalism is that the facts are actually very hard to get right sometimes, and you really have to invest yourself and dig deep into a story. Even when you're writing opinion journalism, you've got to dig deep and make sure that your research is in order, that your evidence is in order and that your writing sounds good. And so, while a lot of people, especially coming into college, might dismiss journalism in favor of sort of more lucrative careers or more sort of traditional finance clubs and things like that, I would actually highly encourage them to take a hard look at journalism and writing, especially if they're interested in politics and culture. That's absolutely important that we had smart, bright people coming in to help tell the truth.
Speaker 1:Well, very well said, thomas, anything you want to add?
Speaker 2:I'll just say that the opportunities that I've gotten through the Student Journalism Association are going to propel me, hopefully, into a career in political journalism, and I'd encourage anyone who's interested in journalism to get involved. Again, the best way to learn journalism is by doing journalism and learning from the best, and that's something that I've gotten to do through the TFAS program.
Speaker 1:I applaud you both for the work you're doing on campus. When I was a student at Vanderbilt University, I was a student at Vanderbilt University. I was a political activist on campus, but we also started a monthly publication and there were times where it was stressful. We were regularly attacked by the mainstream campus paper, which loved to engage more in name-calling than civil discourse. So there were some stressful moments but it was all well worth it and, as you both stressed in your remarks today, the importance of that work you do as a journalist and trying to get the story out, trying to report the truth on what's happening on campus, is so vital. So I applaud you both. I appreciate you being with me today as a guest on the Liberty and Leadership podcast. So thanks very much and we'll look forward to working with you in the coming years.
Speaker 3:Looking forward to it. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
