For the third year running, the Center for Prevention has collaborated with ThreeSixty Journalism to support young journalists participating in their annual News Academy.

Through this program, students are given the opportunity to experiment with mass communication channels, including radio and TV broadcasting and news writing, while also learning mass production skills to produce their own stories.

As a ThreeSixty alumnus myself, I can say that the experience and insight I gained from joining the organization has been a big influence on my aspirations of becoming a journalist. Often in adolescence, there’s pressure to know who you want to be and how you’re going to get there.

As a high school student, I knew only one of the two. Writing was one of my greatest strengths. Growing up, I journaled a lot, writing short stories and blog posts.

During my sophomore year of high school, I took a creative writing class and realized how much I enjoyed telling stories and writing. I knew then I wanted to be a writer— I just didn’t know how I was going get there. My mom saw my interest in writing and helped me apply for Threesixty Journalism summer camp that same year.

My first year at ThreeSixty camp was my official introduction into a world of writing that was beyond my knowledge. I had always considered journalism as a career and it seemed like a realistic path. I found out in my first week of camp that there was more to journalism than writing stories!

Journalism also meant learning about “nut grafs” [a descriptive paragraph used by journalists], how to write a story lead and create a live broadcast, along with the importance of understanding journalistic integrity and fact checking.

We also learned about public relations and the different careers that mass communications has to offer.

I also had the opportunity to connect and work with professional journalists who gave me great insight on how important the role of a journalist is— especially in our ever-changing digital landscape. Journalism originally was essential to communicate knowledge to the public.

However, a lot of what people refer to as “news” today  has become biased and under researched, which is a reoccurring conflict of interest for all journalists trying to provide accurate narratives to the general public. The notion of telling unbiased and accurate narratives has not only became an incentive for me, but has also given me a challenge, which sparked my decision to focus on a career in mass communications.

As I returned to ThreeSixty throughout the years, I gradually built my portfolio of storytelling skills. In the summer of 2017, I had the opportunity to attend ThreeSixty’s first TV and Radio Broadcasting camp. It was there that I was introduced to our partners, Padilla, a public relations agency, and the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota who were changing the narrative on health equity one story at a time.

During that week of camp, I learned a lot about storytelling through video and how to interview people on camera. Reporting on TV was a humbling experience— and a successful one. I worked with the Blue Cross team, who assigned me a report on a story with Brightside Produce, a program at the University of St. Thomas that provides fresh produce to lower income communities.

After my first live interview, I gained a strong understanding of how important the work being done by Blue Cross and journalists really was— and what it meant for the future generation of writers and reporters.

While I still feel pressure to know who I want to be and how I’m going to get there (I still only know the answer to one of those questions), I am getting there.

Fast forward to the present— I’ve finished my first year of the mass communications program at St. Cloud State University. I’m doing a communications internship at Blue Cross in the Center for Prevention, in part because of the experience, insight well-rounded skills and professional connections I gained through ThreeSixty Journalism.

I am continuing to grow my experience as a journalist. Seeing myself in this position brings me great hope and empowerment for representation in the profession and makes me excited to be part of the next generation of storytellers.

Editor's note: Photos in this post are from the 2019 ThreeSixty Journalism camps. To learn more about the program, visit threesixty.stthomas.edu.