Lindsay Freiberger, College of Communication
Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Journalism
Hometown: Los Angeles
How do you connect with the DePaul community outside of the classroom?
I’m the Assistant Arts & Life editor at The DePaulia. The team there is very supportive, and it's a great learning experience to understand what students are interested in. As an editor, I read such a wide range of articles that affect either specific people or everyone. It's nice to be in touch with the contributing writers and help foster an environment for staff that can impact DePaul and people beyond our school.
I also recently joined the DePaul chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. All my peers are so impressive, and the meetings are always so fascinating. They have guest speakers, and every week we talk about how journalism is evolving. The topics are always relevant. We’ve talked recently about ethics, filing FOIA requests, interviewing people — everything we need to know to develop as journalists.
What’s your favorite story you’ve worked on at the DePaulia?
One of my favorites was covering a Tall Tour event. It was an article about an influencer who came to town, who specifically hosts events for tall people. It was really fun to cover the spectacle of it, but I also wanted the story to touch on how the event created a sense of camaraderie around an experience that can often feel lonely for some people. It was wild interviewing all these people who literally towered above me, hearing about something no one really thinks about. But it was also interesting to see how this influencer is so successful based on this idea.
What was your favorite class at DePaul?
So many come to mind. The first would be Advanced Reporting, which is a collaboration with NBC 5 Chicago, taught by Lisa Parker and supported by Tom Jones. It’s a two-quarter series, and everyone pitches an idea they want to explore over the three months of the class, then we vote on it. A graduate student pitched an idea about a data center being built in South Loop, but there wasn’t any reporting on it. So, over the next three months, we built the story. We found that what was supposed to be an eSports arena is now being built as a data center. There were a lot of questions: What do the neighbors know? Why did it change? What’s the environmental impact of this project? The investigative process was so interesting, and the story ended up doing well on NBC and airing in other places around Chicago.
What inspired you to pursue journalism?
I always had a passion for storytelling and a drive to help people, and conversations with my mom helped me realize that those things can coexist. People are always in pursuit of the truth — if there's a way that I can bring clarity to people via storytelling, that’s what I want to do. I’ve already found ways to do that at DePaul. The data center story I worked on for the investigative reporting class was so fascinating because no one knew a data center was coming to the South Loop. And now people are more aware of that, which is awesome to see.
Do you have any advice for incoming students?
There's an emphasis when going to college that it's a chance to start fresh and start over. There's this pressure to find out who you want to be, and I feel like it kind of gets lost in the translation of who you already are. I think that there's such importance to always being true to yourself and not losing sight of what you know about yourself in pursuit of who you're trying to become.
Who do you look up to?
The College of Communication has done such a great job of fostering an environment that connects students with mentors. All the professors that I've had are so much more than professors — Martha Irvine, Amy Merrick, Lisa Parker and Chris Bury, for example, have taught me how to be open-minded and keep up with an evolving industry. I feel so lucky to have so many people in my college who believe in me.
What are you doing next?
This fall, I will be a full-time grad student here at DePaul. I’ll be a graduate assistant to Don Moseley, Carol Marin and Lisa Parker, and I’m hoping to work with more news organizations around Chicago. At first, I was really scared because it was all up in the air, but I'm almost at the finish line, and I’m reminded that things will fall into place at different times. It’s a really exciting time.