When Alexis Letang’s phone buzzed early on a January Saturday, the text was blunt: Federal agents just shot someone in south Minneapolis. That someone was Alex Pretti, a nurse protesting ICE actions in the city.
Letang, editor-in-chief of The Minnesota Daily, gave herself five minutes to think before working the phones. There were two priorities: get an accurate first report out and keep field teams safe. Staff monitored the mayor’s press conference and a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) briefing while reporters heading out were given a deployment plan, safety gear, a field buddy and instructions to check in every 15 minutes.
By the end of a 12-to-14-hour day, The Daily had deployed at least six staffers across the city — covering press conferences, documenting events on the ground and following vigils for Pretti. It was a full-scale news operation, coordinated and executed by college students.
Letang credits the preparation behind that response to the training and faculty support at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Regina McCombs, a senior lecturer and Daily board member, was on call throughout the unfolding events for Letang and any students who needed guidance. She had also helped several students attend hostile environment safety training ahead of a massive downtown Minneapolis rally the day before. “They just did 36 hours of just really great journalism work,” McCombs said.
Moments like that, McCombs said, reflect Hubbard’s approach, giving students practical experience early to prepare them for real news situations. The journalism program offers an undergraduate degree and is one of three tracks in UMN’s College of Liberal Arts, alongside strategic communication and media studies. With about 150 students and 15 faculty, Hubbard emphasizes getting students into the field quickly, offering digital, multimedia, investigative and magazine reporting classes.
Letang said she was drawn to Hubbard for both its practical offerings and the breadth of classes. “They have a large variety of classes. If I wanted to learn video, I could. If I wanted to learn writing, I could,” she said.
“From the minute that they apply, everything is about getting them to do the work of journalism,” said Gayle (G.G.) Golden, senior lecturer and associate director of the Minnesota Journalism Center (MJC) at Hubbard.
Golden has been at Hubbard since 2004, arriving after a career as a science writer at The Dallas Morning News and as a magazine freelancer writing for The New York Times and others. She said she set her sights early on building the school’s practicum model, giving students multiple ways to practice the craft and embedding them in professional newsrooms for academic credit and with stipend support.
“Learning has to be accompanied by practical work,” Golden said. “That's absolutely 100% our philosophy.”
This year, the University recognized Golden with the John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, citing her mentorship and work connecting students to professional experiences.
McCombs, a former photojournalist and field producer at KARE 11 in Minneapolis and the first multimedia producer hired by The Star Tribune, is a Hubbard alum and joined the faculty after a stint at The Poynter Institute. She said one of the bonuses of Hubbard is its location in a city with a rich news environment. “There are a lot of Hubbard alumni in this market,” she explained. “Our students can intern with them, but we also bring them in to lecture and advise our students.”
The practicum model functions as what Golden calls a “pipeline,” a sequence of escalating real-world experiences starting early in a student’s time in the major. Students start with a core news writing and reporting course, then often join the Hubbard Journalism Experience, a summer intensive that runs like a real newsroom across digital and broadcast tracks, with stipends for all participants.
Golden said students can also pursue field-based practicums, three-credit courses in which they work 14 hours a week inside professional newsrooms. Hubbard has placed students at The Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, NPR, the Minneapolis Business Journal, Sahan Journal, MinnPost and others. Letang completed her practicum at The Star Tribune.
Beyond the practicum, Hubbard houses the Minnesota Journalism Center (MJC), which runs student programs including Report for Minnesota and the Legislative Reporting Project, and separately supports working journalists and newsrooms across the state through statewide reporting initiatives and a monthly newsletter reaching more than 600 professionals. Report for Minnesota places students in donor-funded internships across smaller communities in the state, covering cops, courts, government and sports. Golden said they return with overflowing portfolios.
“They come back with 70 clips and so much experience,” Golden said. “It’s really kind of changed their lives.”
The Legislative Reporting Project places five students at the Minnesota State Capitol each spring, working alongside a veteran political editor and photojournalist to produce stories for news outlets in smaller communities that no longer maintain capitol bureaus. In 2026, their reporting has been picked up by more than 20 Minnesota news organizations, from the Albert Lea Tribune to The Stillwater Gazette. The program’s editor this year is Mike Mulcahy, a retired politics editor from National Public Radio (NPR).
McCombs noted the value for communities underserved by state capital coverage, saying students are “specifically focused on covering those topics” that larger outlets often don’t prioritize in rural areas and smaller cities.
Responding to a crisis
Much of the regional unrest occurred during winter break, and Casey Marble, a senior and video journalist for The Daily, was out covering events before the semester resumed.
“A bulk of what happened was even before we were back in school,” he said. “So, it was kind of hard for them to do a lot of stuff for us at that point.”
Faculty quickly recognized that students needed guidance. Before students returned to classes, a group of Hubbard faculty members convened to draft a safety document, which was distributed to students. It made clear that no student would be required to cover protests or ICE-related activity for class. Those who chose to go out voluntarily were given a framework of best practices: work with a partner, write emergency contact numbers on your arm, keep a safe distance, conduct a risk assessment before arriving on scene, among other tactics.
Shortly after the semester began in January, The Star Tribune organized a free four‑hour safety training through Crisis Ready Media, aimed at freelancers and small newsrooms. McCombs got four Hubbard students, including Casey Marble, into the session — and the timing proved helpful.
The day after the training, those students were in the streets covering the massive downtown protest. The following day, Alex Pretti was killed, and the students were back out reporting on the aftermath and vigils.
In late February and March, MJC organized two-day Hostile Environment and First Aid Training (HEFAT) certification sessions with Crisis Ready Media for both students and working journalists. The decision to hold a session for professionals in the region followed faculty learning from several freelance photojournalists that some news organizations would not hire them without safety credentials.
Hubbard’s director, Elisia Cohen, also organized a series of public webinars through MJC focused on pressing journalism questions, including the role of photojournalism in an era when everyone has a camera and First Amendment issues.
That outreach reflects the Center’s broader role supporting the region’s journalism ecosystem. The MJC has also worked with the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Women’s Media Foundation, which set up an emergency fund to help Minnesota freelancers and small newsroom journalists access safety equipment and resources.
For students covering the unrest, the experience reinforced their commitment to the profession. Marble described what the reporting had put him up against in an interview with local station WCCO. “Never had there been an encounter where I was face-to-face with me and my camera and dozens of federal agents running at me with batons,” he said. The experience clarified rather than diminished his commitment. “It’s reaffirmed why I decided to major in journalism.”
A newsroom serving students and beyond
The Minnesota Daily is a critical training ground for many Hubbard students and operates as a fully digital newsroom, publishing across its website, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms, while distributing a newsletter.
The outlet employs more than 150 University of Minnesota students across all departments, including a newsroom of about 40 staffers across 10 desks. Founded in 1900 and legally independent from the University, it operates with an executive director and a board of directors, but the newsroom itself is entirely student-run.
In recent months, The Daily has covered the story unfolding outside its doors as aggressively as any outlet in the Twin Cities. Student reporters have documented a spectrum of big issues facing the region, including the economic toll of federal immigration enforcement operations, scrutiny of data center development across the state, and campus issues such as restricted research at the University of Minnesota and student government elections.
Marble said the work coming out of The Daily matches that of veteran journalists in the market.
“There’s work from friends and classmates of mine that I think is arguably better than people in the news industry in the Twin Cities who have been there for decades,” he said. “I think there are students here who are already on par with some professionals.”
Letang took over as editor-in-chief and co-publisher in May 2025, rising from campus reporting intern to arts and entertainment desk editor before landing the top job. The past several months have put her in situations she did not anticipate. As the newsroom leader, Letang sends out reporters she knows personally while she stays back to edit and manage the operation.
The school offered support to address the stress of covering such an intense story. Marble noted that the Crisis Ready Media training included a discussion of mental health first aid, and he also noted that the school has held at least one presentation on journalists' mental health since the unrest began — in addition to what is shared in a trauma-informed reporting class.
The Daily already had protective gear and safety protocols in place from its coverage of the killing of George Floyd and a recent deadly school shooting in Minneapolis. But the current moment required more. Letang credited Charlie Weaver, The Daily’s executive director and co-publisher, with helping her manage the flood of incoming support, ordering additional equipment, coordinating with the board and the MJC, and establishing field protocols.
Looking forward
Golden, who has spent more than two decades building the practicum structure at Hubbard, said that in her own classroom, she emphasizes the fundamentals of magazine-style reporting — helping students build the confidence and skills to go into communities and talk directly with people. She encourages relationship-building and pushes students to move beyond emails and one-off interviews to deepen their reporting.
AI has been a topic on campuses nationwide, and UMN is no different. Golden said the school has been deliberate about addressing it with students entering the current job market. Hubbard has held faculty seminars on AI, and Golden completed a Gen-AI fellowship at the University. Faculty have mapped how AI training is embedded across skills courses.
“All of us think it is very important to understand the landscape of how AI is affecting journalism,” Golden said in an email to E&P, adding that the goal is to prepare students to approach the technology “responsibly and intelligently.” She noted many students express concerns about losing human agency to automated decision-making, the environmental impact of large data centers, and the possibility that reliance on AI could erode critical thinking.
At Hubbard, she said the goal is not to avoid the technology but to help students develop a mindset of “thoughtful openness.” They learn how AI tools can assist with research and organization, and they may use them in advanced reporting classes or practicum experiences when supporting larger projects.
Golden noted the school recently launched a sports media minor, responding to student demand and industry movement. Faculty and students said that responsiveness to student demand, combined with Hubbard’s close ties to Twin Cities newsrooms, is part of what makes the program distinctive, giving students the chance to report on major stories alongside professionals.
Both Marble and Letang are set to graduate in May and are considering their next steps. Marble, who is also an investigative intern at the FOX affiliate KMSP, has come to terms with the uncertainty of the media landscape. He said he knows staff jobs are harder to come by, but that hasn’t shaken his sense of purpose. “I don't necessarily need an official position with a news organization to make a living doing this,” he said. Focused on video journalism, he already self-publishes on a YouTube channel alongside his work for The Daily. “I really just want to portray the place that I’ve known all my life, in the way that I know it — the reality of what it’s like in the Twin Cities.”
Letang is sending out applications and is open to staying in the region or relocating for the right opportunity. Reflecting on her experience, she said she values the support she received at Hubbard. “The professors really care,” she said. “They care about students doing well. They want to see us do well.”
Diane Sylvester is an award-winning 30-year multimedia news veteran. She works as a reporter, editor and newsroom strategist. She can be reached at diane.povcreative@gmail.com.
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