UW-Milwaukee Hosts ‘Behind the Mic: Two Generations of Journalists in Conversation’

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee hosted National Public Radio co-host of “Fresh Air,” Tonya Mosley and the Eric Von Fellowship recipient Maria Peralta-Arellano at WUWM 89.7 FM – Milwaukee’s NPR to engage in an intimate conversation with journalism students on May 1 ahead of a larger event in the evening.

At 3 p.m., Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies (JAMS) program students gathered in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Student Union Room E280 for the pre-conversation and question-and-answer session to the event “Behind the Mic: Two Generations of Journalists in Conversation.”

The NPR media professionals engaged in a conversation centering on their journeys as journalists, and the current state of the field as students studying journalism and building their portfolios are planning on entering.

Sara Tomilin, WUWM’s major gifts officer, was also in attendance and involved in the discussion.

A major topic of conversation is the difficult transition in the field to the effort of delivering news on digital platforms.

Tonya Mosley contended that students planning on entering the field have a leg up when it comes to stories in the digital age.

“You are the experts in the room when you enter a newsroom,” said Mosley to the Generation Z students who are the savviest with devices. “You grew up in the digital age.”

When discussing the advent of artificial intelligence, students share the question of whether it should be used at all, or if it can be an efficiency tool in an beneficial way – but not in a way that will take tasks from human hands.

“It should still pass human eyes and human hands,” said Mosley.

Another topic that journalists must reckon with is the rise of news influencers.

The media professionals brought up the fact that these online figures do not have an editorial board, which brings into question the news principles they may hold themselves accountable to, if they do.

This can be an issue when it comes to misinformation, with news influencers potentially presenting news as accurate when it may not have gone under a process of fact-checking.

These influencers can directly connect with their audiences, which is a reason why they have become popular.

Online consumers can also directly send in footage from sites of breaking news and have it shared immediately without editorial eyes.

“There can be a value in collaborating with community members who are there with footage, photos and videos,” said Eric Von Fellow Maria Peralta-Arellano.

The reasons why digital users may flock to news influencers is because they may be presenting stories outside of the classic inverted pyramid structure, that places information in descending order of importance, and audiences may already have mistrust with larger public media and corporations.

Mistrust of larger public media has been building for decades, the media professionals echoed.

It makes sense that people would want to receive their news from a source that presents as more personal and familiar, directly from their mobile device.

Generation Z as Digital Experts

During the conversation, Tonya Mosley repeated the sentiment that this generation, and the students that are currently studying journalism, are going to be the most knowledgeable when it comes to the online world.

“You are the experts, and you will have applied knowledge when you come into a newsroom,” said Mosley.

The transition to digital and online news in the field of journalism has been a difficult one, and the shape of what a career journalist looks like has changed significantly.

Mosley and Peralta-Arellano both discussed how it is rarer for someone to be able to have that ‘40-year newspaper man career.’

However, this has led to an increase in variety in career and types of jobs in the career, whether they are more short-term or dynamic.

“There is something liberating about that,” said Peralta-Arellano.

Journalism students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee feel as though they need to be well-versed in an overwhelming amount of content creation skills to be able to recieve internships.

Mosley said that the more prepared a student is, and the more skills that they are able to gather, the better. “It’s important to be nimble like water,” she said. “It is just a reality that you need to know all of these skills.”