Local journalists from various publications discuss news coverage and financial futures at UMW panel

by KY HUYNH

Associate Editor

Representatives from three local publications—The Fredericksburg Free Press, The Free Lance-Star and the FXBG Advance—offered advice to young journalists at a panel discussion highlighting the importance of local news.

“Embrace different mediums, embrace your youth, write what you know,” said Joey LaMonaco, managing editor of the Fredericksburg Free Press. “Be willing to be humbled and embarrassed.”

The discussion was hosted by the UMW communication and digital studies department on Oct. 2. Former journalist and Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMW Center for Leadership and Media Studies Stephen Farnsworth moderated the event. Alongside LaMonaco, Jake Womer, the managing editor of the Free Lance-Star, and Leigh Anne Van Doren, the publisher and president of the FXBG Advance board, emphasized adaptability. 

“I’ve literally been on a different platform about every two years since 2000,” said Van Doren. “I’ve had to reinvent about every two to three years and that’s been amazing. It really is the content that you produce that is important, not where it is or how you’re serving it.”

In an era when short form content—like that found on TikTok—has shifted public interest away from traditional longform news, LaMonaco says that adjusting coverage to best serve your audience is imperative to promoting readership and content engagement. 

“You are going to be producing news for the people who like to watch influencers,” he said. “For people who like to filter things through short form video.”

Womer similarly encourages young journalists to obtain practical skills best gained from hard news coverage. While learning to adapt as mediums change is important, building foundational knowledge is just as critical to success, he says. 

“Get into telling hard news stories as quickly as possible,” he said. “You need to get into the harder news of covering governments, of covering stories about people and the challenges they’re facing and things that really show the breadth of what you can do.”

Womer recommends that young journalists learn to find value in writing for their university publications or for internships with local news outlets. 

“Write for your school paper, try to seek out internships and try to do them in hard news because that is where you will get the opportunities with news organizations,” he said. 

When looking for professional opportunities, the panelists say connections are crucial. 

“Keep your eyes open and try to make connections,” said LaMonaco. “There are plenty of seasoned journalists who will be good to you and serve as de facto mentors for literally nothing in return and those are people who you will have throughout your career.”

According to LaMonaco, journalism is a relationship business—whether it be a professional connection made while job searching, or an assurance of trust between a reporter and source.

“It is a relationship business, whether it’s a relationship between you and your subject or you and your source,” he said. “There are different dynamics depending on what kind of work you’re doing, obviously, but it is a relationship business.”

Understanding objectivity is a similar skill young journalists must learn at the beginning of their careers. There is often a distinction between “truth” and “fact” and discerning the two using contextualization is important. 

“If someone is saying something but last month they said something completely different, that’s worth mentioning in your story. It’s not opinion, it’s context, it’s perspective,” said LaMonaco. 

According to Van Doren, complete objectivity rarely exists by virtue of how reporters choose to cover certain topics. 

“Just the very fact that you’re picking and choosing which stories to cover, in some ways, betrays your internal biases,” she said. “It’s more important I think to be transparent and aware of your experiences and how they shape your reporting.”

All three panelists hail from different newsrooms across Fredericksburg but echoed one another in advising the prospective young journalists in attendance. 

Van Doren’s publication, the FXBG Advance is a nonprofit news organization that focuses on topics such as education, local politics, housing and transportation.

“We’re focusing on those areas because we feel like those are areas that are important to the Fredericksburg Area,” she said. “I personally wanted a nonprofit newsroom because as the publisher of Fredericksburg Parent, I felt like I was covering—or attempting to cover—issues that were dismissed by society at large.”

As a nonprofit newsroom, the FXBG Advance is funded mostly by individual subscribers and small donors. 

“We don’t really believe in large donations, where we’re mindful [of the] obligation to whoever’s getting these large amounts of money,” said Van Doren. 

Like the FXBG Advance, LoMonaco’s publication, the Fredericksburg Free Press also operates as a nonprofit newsroom. In its coverage, the Free Press focuses on in-depth reporting. 

“In depth feature reporting, profiles, explanatory reporting—where you delve into ‘why’ as opposed to ‘what’ is happening at the moment of the news cycle,” he said. “Those are some of the first things to go, so kind of the key for us in prioritization.”

The Free Lance-Star operates using a different business model compared to the two aforementioned organizations. 

“At the Free Lance-Star, we have a different structure,” said Womer, “We are a for-profit newsroom, as part of Lee Enterprises, which is a very large nationwide company, with several newspapers in the state of Virginia.” 

Womer then spoke about the local reporting priorities for the Free Lance-Star which includes reporting on county and city governments, school boards and the greater community. 

“We’re interested in covering government in a way that shines up light on the things that might otherwise be missed,” he said.

Several audience members in attendance are aspiring young professionals enrolled in a journalism course at UMW. Junior business administration major Jackson Beale attended the panel as a required class assignment, but says he left having learned something new. 

“I thought it was good. I learned a lot about things I didn’t think I’d learn about, like how and why they write each story, and they choose which ones to tell,” he said.

Alden Friend contributed to reporting for this article.