Missouri School of Journalism to recognize 84 students at Dec. 16 graduation ceremony

J-School graduates attend commencement with mortorboards decorated with where they will be working.
Missouri School of Journalism Commencement Program December 2023
Download the Missouri School of Journalism Commencement Program December 2023

The Missouri School of Journalism will recognize 84 students at the 11 a.m. commencement ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 16, in Jesse Auditorium. Seating is open and no tickets are required.

A link to a live stream of the ceremony will be available on the MU Graduation and Commencement Live Streaming page.

Graduate degrees will be awarded to one doctoral candidates and 11 master’s students.

Of the 72 undergraduates, 36 focused on some aspect of journalism; 36 on strategic communication. A total of 32 graduates earned Latin honors by achieving at least a 3.5 grade point average for the last 50 credits.

The top 10 percent of the School’s graduates will be inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, a journalism honor society founded at the Missouri School of Journalism in 1910. The KTA reception will be held from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m., Friday, Dec. 15, in the Fred W. Smith Forum, Room 200, in the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. The 10 new members of Kappa Tau Alpha are:

  • Master of Arts: Vivien Abraham, Michael Klevorn, Valerie Nava, Abbey Tauchen
  • Bachelor of Journalism:  Jaclyn Harris, Thomas Jamison, Joshua Shuman, Bradford Siwak, Samantha Walker, Paige Weckherlin

The alumni speaker is Karen Pensiero, BJ ’85, a veteran news leader who has spent much of her career focused on upholding journalism standards and ethics. 

Pensiero worked for over 38 years at The Wall Street Journal, which she left in February after more than five years as managing editor. In that role, she was responsible for hiring, training, the budget, culture and support of the Journal’s more than 1,300 journalists in over 60 bureaus around the globe. From 2004 until 2017, she focused on working closely with journalists throughout the reporting process, “final reading” the hardest-hitting Journal articles, and teaching and weighing issues of standards, ethics and fairness globally. 

Prior to that, she held a variety of positions throughout the Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, including managing editor/international, overseeing the editing of the Journal’s Asian and European editions; Money & Markets editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe; director of corporate communications for Dow Jones; and director of Dow Jones Interactive Publishing International. 

Currently, she is advising and working with New York University’s new Ethics & Journalism Initiative and is on a launch committee working group for the Maine Trust for Local News. 

Pensiero serves on the boards of the Missourian Publishing Association, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism CUNY Foundation in New York City and the Dow Jones News Fund. She has served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize and the Ancil Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism. Pensiero was also a member of the Dow Jones Foundation Board and of the advisory board of The Press Forward, an organization formed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that was dedicated to safe, fair and sustainable media work environments.  

She grew up in Warrensburg, Mo., and Columbia, Mo., and attended Hickman High School. She currently lives in Verona, N.J., and Mount Desert, Maine, with her husband, journalist Jim Pensiero. They have three children and two grandchildren. 

The master of ceremonies will be Jaclyn Harris, a Walter Williams Scholar and a Cherng Scholar graduating with a degree in Journalism with an emphasis in strategic communication. Harris is currently serving as the lead researcher and copywriter on her AdZou capstone team, which has spent the semester crafting a fully integrated campaign for a real-world client. Throughout her time at Mizzou, Harris has been grateful for the opportunity to participate in several involvement opportunities as a member of Delta Gamma, co-president of the Women in Media Club, working at KOMU-TV 8, and more. Last spring, she participated in the School’s Washington Program, where she worked as a communications intern for the United States Department of Commerce.

Bradford Siwak will present the “Thoughts of the Class.” Siwak is a Walter Williams Scholar and a Senator Wayne Goode Scholar graduating with degrees Journalism and Sociology, minors in French and Film Studies, and Honors and Multicultural certificates. His capstone documentary for the School’s Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism, West, won the 2023 Stacey Woelfel Award for Innovative Journalism at the School’s Stronger than Fiction Film Festival and will screen at the 2024 First Look Film Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image. This 37-minute, single-take film examines American cultural forces and narratives through St. Louis’ role in westward settler colonialism and its brand of westward white flight. Additionally, Siwak has worked as an editorial assistant for Vox Magazine and a staff photographer/videographer for the Columbia Missourian.


Bradford Siwak, BJ ’23, “Thoughts of the Class”

To see the value in history is to recognize that it is not relegated to the past. This is why we carry great pride in being the first journalism school. The University of Missouri is also the first public university west of the Mississippi River. This “first” more directly relates to the fact that we congregate on the ancestral homelands of people of the 𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒰𐓓𐒷 Wahzhazhe (Osage), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Kaskaskia and Peoria nations.  

We have gathered today from many different places, and I encourage this acknowledgment to spur us all to action to learn more about the lands we reside on and embrace Indigenous experiences and knowledge systems. As we celebrate achievements in journalism and strategic communication, we should recognize the importance of learning and communicating about the historical and continuous wrongs of settler colonial dispossession and cultural erasure. In doing so, we can strive for more just futures for us all. 

Writing a December graduation speech is a puzzling task because December graduates tend not to have a shared narrative of their time spent at a school. Some of us may be graduating “early,” and some of us may be graduating “late,” but we all made it here at the pace suited to each of us and our life circumstances. Not only did we make it to this day, but we made great achievements along the way. This semester alone, as the journalism school turned 115, we put on the 75th edition of the Missouri Photo Workshop (the country’s oldest continuously-running documentary photography workshop), KBIA won a National Edward R. Murrow Award, our chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists won the organization’s Student Chapter of the Year Award and the Columbia Missourian won 81 Missouri Press Association Awards, the most it ever has.  

But this particular graduation has an added difficulty in summarizing our experiences in one speech: our distinct positions at the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. December graduates normally do things at their own pace, but this year’s group has overcome vastly different challenges in their education. Approximately half of us were completing our first year at Mizzou when the global spread of the virus brought our routines to a grinding halt — just as we were becoming comfortable in them — and approximately half of us hadn’t yet decided where to go to school when it hit. Some of us enjoyed life at Mizzou for almost a year before circumstances pulled the rug from beneath us, and we struggled to regain our footing. More of us than usual didn’t even get to step foot on campus before deciding it would be our home for the next three and a half years. For some of us, the pandemic meant losing jobs we relied on to get through school. For others, starting studies here represented recentering our purpose amidst other parts of our lives falling to pieces. Some of us made important bonds just in time for physical space to pull them apart. Some of us came here alone and struggled to find meaningful human connection. 

And it would be remiss to discuss our academic struggles without underscoring our personal ones, which were often much more immense. Losing loved ones, struggling to pay for necessities, and grappling with mental health challenges are unique experiences I dare not generalize. But one thing we all share is that we made it here today, and that is no small feat — not for a single one of us. 


Karen Pensiero, BJ ’85, alumni speaker

President Choi, Dean Kurpius, esteemed faculty members, family, guests and graduates, 

I am delighted to be here with you to mark this occasion today and to celebrate with you all. Graduates, congratulations on your academic and professional achievement!  

This campus, this university and this town were a key part of the foundation of my life and they hold a special place in my heart.  

My family moved here from Warrensburg, Missouri, just in time for me to start my sophomore year at Hickman High School, which had a tremendous journalism program under a wonderful, inspirational  woman named Minerva Howard. 

So many of my fondest memories are from my time here, on campus. Like you, I had wonderful professors who shared their passion for journalism and were so generous with their teaching and guidance. People like Daryl Moen, Jane Clark, Jeanne Abbott, Bryan Brooks, Don Ranley, Kevin Catalano and Karen List, to name a few. Individually and collectively, they supported me and prepared me for what I needed to do next. 

My time at the J-School and my bachelor’s degree in journalism from this school signaled to newsrooms and editors across the U.S.  – around the globe, actually – that I was trained in the Missouri Method, that I had experience in a real newsroom, reporting and editing real copy for a community of readers that went far beyond the traditional audience of a student newspaper, like at most other journalism schools. That was priceless.  

The same is true for you. Your degree itself will open doors for you. While the degree alone will not get you the job or keep you in the job,… the skills, experience and knowledge acquired here make you very well equipped to be enormously successful in those things, as well. 

Most of my most vivid memories and learning moments came from my time at the Missourian. I was a teaching assistant in the newsroom my senior year when the newsroom and presses were at the other end of the Quad in what was then called the Neff Hall Annex, or just “the Missourian.” Dean Kurpius, I know it was a dump and turning it into a parking lot was probably a higher and better use for the real estate, and building an integrated newsroom for all platforms was right journalistically and for the students’ future, but for me, the Old Missourian it was magical – absolutely magical. 

Back in those days, as the last page of the next day’s Missourian finally made it out of the composing room, was burned onto a metal plate, carefully but quickly loaded onto the printing press – just like in the movies –  the teaching assistant ran downstairs to pull one of the first copies off the press, along with the pressmen, like the wonderful Bruce Moore, who retired earlier this year as the Missourian’s circulation manager after a 40-year career. And we grabbed those papers and flew through the pages to check to make sure there were no glaring problems that would require a press stop and replate – like an upside down photo, or crooked copy or a bad headline. I can’t tell you how much – one day my senior year –  the faculty editors of the Missourian and I – and likely the dean at the time –  wished that I had caught the typo in the glaringly large type in a skybox on the top of page one that teased an inside story about red-shirt athletes. You see, we were late locking up the paper and I “helped” the sports desk by writing their skybox. When the papers hit the driveways of subscribers the next morning around Boone County, imagine their surprise to learn that MU didn’t have red-shirt athletes but  – sorry Mom – they had red-shit athletes. In my haste, I had dropped the letter R from the word “shirt.” 

OK, so what’s the lesson?  Well, there are many. But what’s the most important lesson: It’s better to be late or miss a deadline or get beaten on a story than to be wrong or to introduce a stupid error. Now, a typo in a skybox isn’t the end of the world. In those pre-digital days, the paper would be used to line a cat-litter box or bottom of the bird cage later in the week, so the mistake wasn’t long remembered, except by me. But the underlying principle of the lesson applies in far more serious, far more important matters in our profession. Don’t rush to publish if you’re not certain your story is right and fair to all affected by it. If you remember nothing else about what I say today, remember that. 

But, while I have the floor, I’d like to briefly share a few other lessons I’ve learned during this wonderful career so far. Many were learned here, most probably during my time at the Journal, and some of them were learned the hard way. The Hard Way is an excellent teacher, it seems. 

  1. Ask for help when you don’t know how to do something. There are many, many people in your life and at your next job who are very invested in your success. Sometimes you can get away with faking it, but often you can’t and the consequences can be serious. An example: We once had an intern at the Journal who was sent out on the first hot day of the summer to get anecdotes for a story to be published in our Greater New York section about how people were coping with the heat. She was sent to Coney Island, Rockefeller Center and Central Park. Her editor was surprised when she came back much sooner than expected with her reporter’s notebook full of really excellent quotes and stories. But they seemed really too excellent and complete, and she did it just too quickly. The editor began googling the source names in the notebook and could not find a single one. I was the Journal’s Standards Editor at the time, and the editor called me to share her concerns and seek my guidance. To make a long story short, the intern – who had EVERYTHING going for her – finally told us that she didn’t know how to get people to speak on the record with her, so she made up their names. So, she lied – to her editor and it would have been a lie to readers, without the very sharp instincts of the editor who stopped the quotes from making it into the story. Turns out, though, that she had done the same thing in an earlier story that was published. It was a career-ending mistake just three weeks into her career. The lessons: Don’t ever lie – to your sources, your readers, your boss, your colleagues. AND ask questions if you don’t know how to do something. Again, people are invested in you and your success. They won’t and don’t expect you to know how to do everything. Ask and they will help you and they will teach you. 
  1. Remember that wise people with important things to teach you are everywhere. Valuable lessons don’t just come from bosses or senior editors or advertising executives or corporate communications vice presidents. At the Missourian, I learned a great deal about newsrooms and deadlines and human nature and teamwork, especially from a composing room employee named Jim Brown, a man about my parents’ age who was crusty on the outside but warm and caring and a total softie on the inside. One evening, as I failed to close out the final page on time, blowing right through the deadline, Jim yelled – and I mean yelled – out the composing room door into the newsroom: “Hey, Karen, this ain’t no weekly, and I don’t mean W-E-E-K-L-Y!” One of his favorite lines that I heard from time to time. And then he’d add:  “Move the damn page!” But, don’t be fooled by the yelling and harsh tone, nobody at this school loved the Missourian more and took more pride in it, or in me, I think, than Jim Brown – just one of the school’s unsung heroes, a rock to me during school, who became a friend for life until his death in 2018. So, I urge you to be curious and pay attention to the people who cross your path, and consider yourself lucky for anything and everything that they share with you. And remember as you head out into the “working world”: You can’t win that Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting if the FOIA documents you requested aren’t delivered to your desk. Journalism is a team sport. Be humble and be gracious to everyone, the mailroom guy who brings your the documents and to the woman who gets the publishing system back up and running on the holiday weekend and to the cleaning staff in the office. It takes the entire team to support you and to serve readers, listeners, viewers and clients and, yes, to help you win that award.  
  1. This is a competitive business, always has been and is maybe even more so now. But cream does rise to the top. Work hard, and at the risk of seeming insensitive, out of touch or old, I’ll say this: Be prepared to show up early and stay late. 
  1. Seek out and listen to people who hold different opinions than you. Your theories and ideas and, yes, your biases, need to be tested and challenged – your whole life long. It’s an important way that we learn and grow. And if you’re going to be a reporter, and you’re not doing advocacy journalism, then I encourage you to seek to achieve objectivity, to set aside your preconceptions about a topic because actually what you think is irrelevant. You can’t assume that you have all the answers at the beginning. Actually, you may not even know all of the questions to ask. Do your reporting, find the facts and do so in a fair, thorough, open-minded and rigorous way. Get as close to the truth as you can. Strive for objectivity, not balance. 
  1. Always practice this trade with the clearest and highest ethical code. Doing the right thing is never wrong, and doing the wrong thing is never right. Ethics matter. Trust takes forever to earn yet can be lost in an instant. 

Today is the end of one chapter of your unique life book and the beginning of another chapter. You’ve likely written a draft in your imagination of how you think or hope that this and future chapters will go – my guess is that you’ve likely written several drafts.  

Here’s my final advice to you. Be open and prepared to rip up every one of those drafts to shreds as real life offers up new characters, settings and story lines. In my role at the Journal of hiring journalists and offering career counseling, young journalists frequently wanted me to map out their careers in great detail:  In six months, I’ll be a reporter covering economics and then in 18 months I’ll edit from DC, and then in 18 months, I’ll move to Tokyo, etc, etc. 

Instead, I suggest that you have a general idea of where you believe you want to go, but be open to interesting detours or opportunities. Here’s an analogy I often use. I love to vacation in Austria. When I plan a vacation there, I know that I’ll fly into Zurich and I’ll depart, say, 10 days later from Vienna. I may book a hotel for the first and last nights, but rarely for the nights in between. Why? Because if my husband, Jim, and I are driving along a road, and we look off to the south and we see a beautiful village that’s calling us with unknown adventures, we can’t turn down that road to see what awaits if we’ve already booked our next hotel straight down the road we’re currently on. 

You’re starting a grand adventure! This is your trip to Austria! Be open to turning off the road to an unexpected destination. I can guarantee you that is where you will find some of your most rewarding times and experiences. That is where you will find tremendous growth. That may be where do you some of your best work. 

The University of Missouri School of Journalism has given you the tools you need to be a success in this ever-changing, exciting, nerve-wracking, wonderful, essential, essential profession. Regardless of which track you took here or what platform you work on, make the world a better place through your work. That’s why you’re doing this, right?  

You’re part of a very proud tradition, and how you practice your trade matters. Always remember, you’re a Missouri J-School grad, and the world will expect much from you because of that. 

I wish you all the best of luck. You have wonderful opportunities ahead of you. Congratulations on earning your degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. 

Updated: December 16, 2024

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