Experiencing Journalism with MJ Slaby

Journalism is a challenging career. Everything is changing, the media is evolving, and dream jobs are hard to find. That didn’t stop MJ Slaby. Growing up, Slaby set her mind on becoming a journalist, and that’s exactly what she did.

Slaby attended Indiana University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. From there she worked at the Lafayette Journal & Courier, the Bloomington Harrold Times, and the Knoxville News Sentinel. She covered education at each of those news outlets. After leaving Knoxville, Slaby moved to Pittsburgh to become a founding member of The Incline, which was a local news startup. After about two years with The Incline Slaby was looking to move back to Indiana. Conveniently, a position at The Indianapolis Star opened. Slaby got the job and has since been covering education for the Star. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Would you say you are currently working at your dream job?

MJ. I’ve always been careful not to pigeonhole myself into oh this is my one dream job. I’m going to work for this one place and cover this one thing. That way I’ve never really had a dream job in that sense, but I am very lucky and grateful to be working at the Star and covering education. So in that way, yes absolutely.

Q. With the field of journalism and media constantly changing and growing, what would you say has been the biggest challenge for you?

MJ. Well I think it’s just that. There are a lot of big industry wide challenges. We know that journalism is important. We know that people value what we do. At the same time the business models are all up in the air and everyone is trying to think different. When it comes to the challenge there is a lot that is just out of your hands, even though you’re doing really good work. If the money’s not there, the money’s just not there.

Q. How did you originally become interested in journalism?

MJ. This is a traditional story, but I joined my high school newspaper. The teacher would send kids to the high school journalism institute at IU, which was like a summer camp for journalism. I did that two summers. I wasn’t thinking about colleges at that point, but then I thought I could have an opportunity to go to IU. Everything kind of snowballed from then. Every step I took, I loved it more and more. From there, it’s history.

Q. If you could choose one journalist who has influenced you and inspired you, who would it be? Why?

MJ. Nicole Hannah Jones from the NYT Magazine. She’s the one that led the 1619 project they did over the summer about the 400th anniversary of the first slaves in the U.S.. She’s done a lot of education reporting before that. I always appreciate the way she ties things together. Everything she writes is brilliant.

Q. Is there a story that you’ve covered that has greatly impacted you? How?

MJ. It was a story that became a series of stories. When I was in Knoxville The Tennessean wrote about a sexual assault case at the University of Tennessee. So, me and my boyfriend, my now husband started digging more into cases at UT. There ended up being a big lawsuit against the university. We did a big story that ended up being about an entire section in print. We were trying to explain to people the differences between bringing sexual assault cases to the university and how that processes different than the court of law. The story was important and le to a lot of change at the university.

Q. If you could give any piece of advice, what would it be?

MJ. Don’t get set on a dream job. Develop your skills. Learn as much as you can and be open. Don’t focus so much on a dream job that you miss other opportunities. For a job to be great it doesn’t have to be big. You can do great work wherever you are.