Making Headlines: UCSC Humanities Students Work with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Team at Lookout Santa Cruz
UCSC humanities students had a rare and unforgettable experience alongside their mentors as they learned about a historic moment for local news – Lookout Santa Cruz won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize in the “Breaking News Reporting” category, an announcement that made headlines nationwide. They sat at the conference room table with the Lookout team as the prizes were announced live and shared the staff’s jubilation and thrill of accomplishment – just one of many highlights of a fellowship, which gave them hands-on experience in journalism and showcased how they can apply their humanities skills outside the classroom. In 2023-2024, Eetai Shwartz and Ruby Jung were inaugural humanities fellows at Lookout. Their positions were developed by The Humanities Institute and supported by the Humanities Division’s Employing Humanities initiative. Shwartz, a double major in History and Philosophy at UCSC, worked as an Educational Program Assistant, and Jung, a Literature and Linguistics major, was the Editorial Fellow for Audience Engagement at Lookout. Both fellows worked directly with the Pulitzer Prize-winning staff and gained skills and experiences that enhanced their academic journeys and opened doors for their futures.
As the Educational Program Assistant, Shwartz’s work aligned with one of Lookout’s central commitments: Serving trustworthy local news and information to today’s students and tomorrow’s voting citizens. Lookout provides free access to its stories to high school and college students in Santa Cruz County through the support of donors. With mentorship from Jamie Garfield, the Director of Student and Community Engagement at Lookout, Shwartz worked on curriculum for teachers, classroom workshops, and promotion for Lookout’s community engagement. For Shwartz, this opportunity at Lookout fulfilled his future aspirations toward a career in education. He shares, “I have a passion for education, and eventually, I want to teach high school history…now that I have been experiencing and doing this fellowship, I know much more confidently that educational jobs exist outside of the classroom.” Creating resources for educators across the county provided him with critical perspective and training on what teachers require for effective learning and what engages students in the classroom.
“Now that I have been experiencing and doing this fellowship, I know much more confidently that educational jobs exist outside of the classroom.”
At the same time, Lookout also benefited tremendously from adding Shwartz to its team. Garfield highlighted the advantages of Lookout’s partnership with Humanities at UCSC and the value for all involved. She explains, “programs like the THI Public Fellowships are important because they provide local businesses with the opportunity to execute some ideas and projects that they would be unable to otherwise. It is nice to get a student’s creativity and ideas for your business while also providing them with a unique career-training experience that I truly believe will help them in their future endeavors.” Garfield described how Shwartz brought tremendous enthusiasm, passion, excitement, and confidence to his role and how he grew as a leader during the fellowship. Alongside his direct work with educators and students at various in-person class visits, workshops, tabling, and career panels, he was involved in redesigning and updating Lookout’s Educator Resources Page, creating and iterating a new weekly Educator Alert Newsletter, and helping to read, evaluate, publish and award student stories for Lookout’s annual Journalism Scholarship program. Garfield remembers that Shwartz was eager to be involved no matter the task, from reading books to third graders to volunteering for a beach clean-up with the National Marine Sanctuary.
UCSC student Ruby Jung, who also goes by Tae Yun Kang, was the Editorial Fellow for Audience Engagement and got to work directly with Tamsin McMahon, the Managing Editor at Lookout. McMahon oversees the 10-person newsroom, assigning stories, editing articles, and staying on top of the news. As an Editorial Fellow, Jung gained experience working on social media promotion for Lookout’s latest stories, participating in election coverage, and writing her own pieces. McMahon recalls that Jung excelled at writing powerful pieces, from an emotional first-person article about the loss of a classmate to a story informing the community about the recurrence of King Tides. McMahon appreciated Jung’s hard work and noted the significance of the fellowship. As she explains, “[students] benefit by gaining valuable work experience in a local newsroom. They can learn about the Santa Cruz County community. They can explore careers in journalism and see whether they are well-suited to this career path while they are still in school. They can work on a wide variety of tasks that have real impact on our journalism (and on the local community). They can experiment with their writing and reporting, build a portfolio of published work to use for future job applications, and receive detailed feedback from professional editors to help them improve.” McMahon also emphasized how the partnership with UCSC students provides Lookout’s relatively small team with much-needed assistance in covering as many important stories as possible: “We’re a lean start-up, which means that we’re often stretched thin and have lots of things we would love to do but don’t have the resources to accomplish.” McMahon described how her team is flexible and open to different ideas and contributions, and working with UCSC students has helped their newsroom thrive by allowing the team to tackle more stories and projects.
“It is nice to get a student’s creativity and ideas for your business while also providing them with a unique career training experience that I truly believe will help them in their future endeavors.”
A key aspect of the fellowships is the one-on-one mentorship students receive from professionals in their fields of interest. Shwartz noted how caring and smart Garfield is and how valuable it was to follow how she approaches her work. “As a mentee I feel like I try to learn as much as I can from everything, not just what a mentor says but also does” says Shwartz. “Also a lot of learning as a [fellow] doesn’t come from direct teaching like a sit-down lesson. A lot of things come on the fly and happen everyday so being aware and being able to learn from everything helps as well as being open minded.” Garfield set Shwartz up for success providing him with information, support, and resources as he gradually took on more responsibilities and decision-making.
The collaboration was meaningful not only for the students and their mentors but also strengthened relationships between Lookout and UCSC. “The UCSC community is important to us,” McMahon explains. “Having a direct connection through this program helps us stay attuned to the needs of students and others at the university and keep abreast of important issues that are happening on campus.” This builds on other connections between the campus and the local newsroom, including the work of Jody K. Biehl, a journalism professor in the UCSC Humanities Division and Lookout’s Community Voices Editor.
“The support is better than any other job or internship you will have (speaking from experience).”
The Humanities Institute and the Humanities Division are proud to foster experiential learning for UCSC students and partner with community-serving organizations like Lookout Santa Cruz. There are new calls for applications open for UCSC humanities students to work at Lookout as a Community Engagement Fellow and Editorial Fellow this upcoming academic year. In 2024-2025, the Undergraduate Public Fellows program will evolve into the Humanities EXCEL Program (which stands for “Experiential Career Exploration and Learning”) as it grows and expands through the Employing Humanities initiative. As Shwartz shares, “I would definitely encourage other students to pursue a fellowship through THI [and the Humanities Division]. The support is better than any other job or internship you will have (speaking from experience).” UCSC Humanities is thrilled to support the next generation of talented fellows with these exciting opportunities at prizewinning organizations and other inspiring partners.
The Mellon Foundation, The Helen and Will Webster Foundation, The Humanities Institute, and the UCSC Humanities Division generously support the Humanities EXCEL Program.
Banner photo: Lookout Santa Cruz staff and fellows celebrate the May 6 Pulitzer Prize announcement. Credit: Natasha Loudermilk / Lookout Santa Cruz