News Fellows Program
Each spring, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation sends one college journalist to represent the state in the National Newspaper Association’s News Fellows program in Washington, D.C.
The News Fellows program brings students together in Washington, D.C., with professional mentors who accompany them through Capitol news briefings, meetings with their Congressional representatives and interviews with current affairs experts. The program is supported by state newspaper association foundations, like the WNA Foundation, which underwrite students’ program tuition and cover travel costs. This 2017 theme was “The Independent Courts: Too Much, Too Little or Just Right.”
The WNA’s 2017 News Fellow was Melissa Behling, a senior journalism student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wrote about the Wisconsin redistricting case Whitford v. Gill. The case – the first of its kind – could be a landmark decision.
Behling is actively involved with Madison Commons, an online news source and research lab founded by UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication that focuses on community issues in Madison’s neighborhoods. During the last three years, Behling has served as a general assignment and police beat reporter, education editor and is currently the special projects editor, where she is leading the production of a video series about Madison’s north side residents.
Recent NNAF News Fellows sponsored by the WNA Foundation include Natalie Howell, the 2016 representative from UW-River Falls; Courtney Kueppers, an online news producer for Wisconsin Public Radio who attended as a UW-Eau Claire student in 2015; and Polo Rocha, a Wispolitics.com reporter who attended as a UW-Madison student in 2014.
