A conversation with student journalist Stella Mackler, Davidson College
She's covered student protests, traveled to Moldova to learn about her Jewish heritage, and researched the history of Sesame Street.
Hi everyone - Mark here. Decided to send this newsletter the day I posted the episode … prepping for my talk at the Journalism Education Association National Convention on November 8. One thing I did to get ready to interact with college students - create an Instagram specific to the podcast. Please follow me!
Stella Mackler grew up in Atlanta and is a junior at Davidson College. She is studying environmental science but aspires to be a journalist. She has garnered considerable experience in a brief time.
She’s been co-editor-in-chief of her college paper (in which she wrote a memorable piece about campus reaction to the war in Gaza). She also created her own podcast, traveling to Moldova to learn about where her great-grandfather grew up and how the Jewish population there has declined post-Holocaust. She’s also worked as a researcher on a book about Sesame Street and is currently studying abroad in Cambodia. That’s a lot!
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity, with some written answers representing a portion of what was said.
Stella gave thoughtful answers to all of my questions and continued the theme of young journalists leaving me feeling hopeful about the future of the profession. . I hope you’ll listen to the full interview.
You wrote a lengthy piece, Davidson Grapples with Conflict in Israel and Gaza. You didn't just talk to people at Davidson, you spoke to an Israeli student in Atlanta, you spoke to a Gazan immigrant in Colorado.
This story clearly took a lot of time to write, how did it come together, and how did you decide who you talk to for it?
I'm Jewish, and before I even started working on that story, I kind of had a moment of okay, is it even okay for me to write about this? Or is it an immediate conflict of interest? Even if it wasn’t a conflict of interest, would I be okay writing it?
Finally, I just thought that this is really important, and I don’t know if there’s anyone else that I trust to do the story justice in the way I think it needs to be done. And part of that is because I am Jewish, and because I felt that emotional connection to it.
This shouldn't be just a breaking news story. There's a lot more we can do with it. And so, we had set the time limit for about a week and a half for the following week's issue. And then once we had that, I just reached out to as many people as possible that I thought would have a stake in the issue.
I started at Davidson. I reached out to the presidents of the Jewish Student Union, the members of the Middle East and North African Student Associations, professors, and then I talked to the Israeli in Atlanta. and the Palestinian in Colorado. I thought the Israeli perspective was really valuable and something that was missing that I didn't realize that we had within the student body, so that's why I reached out.
And then a man that we talked to that we found through a nonprofit in Colorado, which is where my co-editor-in-chief was from. He had gotten stuck in the U.S. basically and had lived in Palestine. We didn't have any students at Davidson that had been living in Palestine prior to Oct. 7. And so that's how I decided to reach out to those two people because I thought those perspectives were just as valuable and added a necessary layer of context that maybe the student perspectives didn't have. I think I did, maybe eight or nine interviews over the span of that week and a half.
I stayed up till 3 a.m. two nights in a row working on it. I had several people read it. I had several conversations with two of my professors who were journalists. I didn't know what the lede should look or just even how to frame the story, what the title should be.
I just relied a lot on these people with a lot more expertise covering issues like this. And that was really helpful and made me feel a lot more confident in the reporting.
You co-ran an event about the war in Gaza at which 300 people attended, you were co-editor in chief of the school paper. Those are big roles. What inspires you to be someone who steps up and leads?
Well, I think for that event, it was mostly because Oct. 7 happened and then nothing was going on at Davidson. There was a vigil and then after that, there was no kind of education going on about it. There was no wider community event. There were e-mails and the chaplain’s office said you can come in and talk to us if you need to, but there was not anything going on to support students or educate students.
I thought: I know the school president, I know administrators. And then I got in touch with the student that I planned the event with. He was the co-president of the Middle East North African Students Association. And we were both kind of feeling that this horrible, giant thing is going on and no one in the position of leadership on campus is really doing anything about it. And we both feel it’s deeply personal and really important.
That’s how that happened. We (saw) no one was doing anything, so we’re going to.
For The Davidsonian, I think it really is just because I love journalism. I love all the people it has connected me with, and the position and sense of place and community it has given me. I’ve stuck with it long enough and worked hard enough that it was recognized by people above me. And No. 2, I want to teach other people how to do this. If my legacy at Davidson is that I leave behind a self-sustaining paper, that is what I want to do.
I think it is so important for a liberal arts school, but really any college environment to have a flourishing, well-done college paper. I like working with people. I like interviewing people, but I also like working with people and working on a team and managing this and kind of having this controlled, chaotic environment.
What story from your trip to Moldova left the biggest impact on you?
I had a couple of conversations with some Moldovan Jewish teenagers, and one of them is the focus of one of the episodes. Her name is Katie. A lot of them explained to me how they found out that they were Jewish at age 10, 11, 12. It is not something that they were born with or raised with. A lot of them would be like, oh, why is my hair curly? And ask their parents, why is everyone in my class Jewish? Or, oh, I heard about this holiday today.
And the parents would say, oh yeah, we have Jewish roots. Your great grandmother was Jewish, but that wasn't passed down because a lot of the grandparents were scared that if they passed down their knowledge that their children and then grandchildren would be persecuted in the same way they were.
But now that is much less of a reality. And so that's why there's this whole kind of cultural rebirth. But all the people that are my age have only found out that they were Jewish once they had already lived 10 years of their lives, and they were fully formed children.
I was just like, wow what does it mean to be able to decide what this looks like for you rather than just have it be something that you grow up with?
That was just something that was so strikingly different from my experience growing up Jewish in America. And I thought that Katie's relationship to Judaism was really interesting, and she talked about how coming to the JCC and joining the youth program there was one of the first times that she really felt at home and felt she had a community around her.
And so that is definitely a conversation that has stuck with me.
What kind of journalist do you want to be?
I'm very interested in environmental journalism and that is what I want to pursue eventually, but a kind of environmental journalism that is not limited to stories about faraway places.
My career aspiration is to do a form of environmental journalism where it's very much integrated into all regular beats like housing, education, politics, crime, metro.
Realistically, the environment and issues having to do with the environment, environmental health, environmental justice, all of this stuff are connected to education, where we live, crime, and why people commit crimes.
It's also a way to make the climate crisis more real and tangible in people's lives. They'll understand better why these things are occurring. And it will increase a sense of urgency, but also just a cohesion in why things are happening in the world, why people act the way that they do, why problems are located here, there, or somewhere else.
It's not just because of money or political decisions or anything else. All of this can be tied back to, okay, it's getting warmer. What does that mean? There are more natural disasters. How does that impact our schools or where people live? My dream reporting is one where environment is the core, but it's not about faraway places or just about national parks or endangered species.
It's about these everyday issues, and it makes it very clear how all these issues are connected back to issues with the climate or issues with the environment.
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