Next Saturday is our annual SPJ Student Journalist Boot Camp, where journalism students get to spend a day in workshop with working professionals in the St. Louis area! In addition to the workshop sessions, students will participate in a mock press conference with a police officer and the stories they write from it will be judged in a contest (with Amazon gift card prizes! plus bragging rights). We will also have a keynote speaker from FIRE – Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, to talk to our students about their rights as journalists and how to protect them under the First Amendment.
Speakers
Kavahn Mansouri covers economic development, housing and business at St. Louis Public Radio. He joined the station after working as an investigative reporter for NPR’s Midwest Newsroom for 3.5 years. There, he investigated housing, policing, immigration and more as a founding member of the NPR regional hub. Before that, he was a Government Accountability Reporter at the Belleville News-Democrat and a general assignment reporter at the Washington Missourian. A native of St. Louis, Mansouri graduated from Webster University in 2016. He started reporting at 15 years old, working on the high school newspaper at Rockwood Summit.
Danny Wicentowski joined St. Louis Public Radio in 2022 as a producer for St. Louis on the Air. Before making the jump to public radio, Danny worked for more than eight years as a staff writer for St. Louis’ alt-weekly the Riverfront Times, where his investigative and feature stories won multiple local and national awards. In 2020, he co-produced and hosted the podcast American Skyjacker, chronicling the life and crimes of plane hijacker Martin McNally. A native of Milwaukee, Danny graduated in 2013 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in journalism. He lives in South St. Louis City with a black cat and many notebooks.
Jennifer Brown is an award-winning journalist, educator, and communications professional with more than two decades of experience in television news and media. Throughout her career, she has worked as an anchor, reporter, producer, and writer for local, national and international news organizations, including CNN, HLN, CNNI, The Weather Channel, KTVI/KPLR, KSDK, and WTVQ-TV. In addition to her work in journalism, Jennifer has taught journalism and communications at the university level, mentoring the next generation of storytellers and media professionals. She earned her master’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and her bachelor’s degree in Strategic Communications from the University of Kansas. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Communication at Liberty University, where her research focuses on social media use and communication.
Elizabeth Donald has been a journalist for nearly 30 years, much of it in daily newspaper reporting. She has received a number of regional awards for investigative, education, labor and civic journalism, covering the St. Louis region since 2000. She has worked freelance through Donald Media since 2018, with clients including the St. Louis Labor Tribune, McClatchy and Hearst newspapers, Feast Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, Current Magazine and others. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee Martin, masters degree in media studies and MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She currently teaches journalism, English composition and creative writing at St. Louis-area colleges. She is a recipient of the Terry Harper SPJ Fellowship and SPJ Freelance Fellowship, and serves as president of the St. Louis Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as serving on the ethics committee for 15 years. Find out more at donaldmedia.com. Bluesky: @edonald.
Scott Cousins is currently a reporter/photographer with the Alton Telegraph, a Hearst newspaper. A graduate of the SIUE Journalism Department with a specialization in photojournalism, he has spent more than 40 years in the business, most of it in the Metro East in positions ranging from photographer and reporter to city editor, news editor and editor.
Keynote Speaker: Marie McMullan of FIRE
Marie McMullan leads FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative in her role as SPFI’s Program Manager and Counsel. She defends student journalists, develops educational programming, and works to cultivate a free press on campuses nationwide. Marie combines her substantive media law knowledge with creative strategy to empower student journalists and protect their First Amendment rights. Through SPFI’s programming and FIRE’s Speakers Bureau, she speaks to student newsrooms across the country about combating censorship.
Marie believes that no culture of free expression on campus is complete without an independent and free student press. She saw firsthand the struggles fellow student journalists faced at the University of Missouri-Columbia (‘22), and she went on to earn her J.D. at the University of Mississippi School of Law (‘25). Marie is admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
Beyond talking about media law, Marie enjoys reading a book checked out from the Philadelphia Free Library, listening to a musical theatre cast album, playing volleyball, and entertaining her very needy pets.
It’s not too late to sign up for the Student Journalist Boot Camp! Reserve your spot on EventBrite now! There is a $10 registration fee, half of which may be refunded at check-in.
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