In a series of “all-American” experiences in our fellowship, this week we visited Muscatine, a town of over 20,000 people in Iowa. One of the activities included meeting Muscatine High School students and talking to them about media and politics. To get to the auditorium full of students, many of whom we learned are taking journalism classes, we walked past the school’s purple-themed classroom, hallways and cafeteria.
The students had prepared a couple of questions for the fellows to start the conversation and shared them with us in advance. We kindly advised them that sharing the questions in advance is not the best of practices in journalism.
But they were very bright minds with a lot of knowledge and interest in the world of media. As usual, I had to do most of the explaining about where my country, Kosovo, is. “A tiny landlocked country of 1.6 million people in Southeast Europe. According to a Gallup International survey, the most pro-American country in the world, and a sister state of the great state of Iowa.”
After our initial presentations and unique perspectives from different parts of the world, we got to talk with some students up close in 10-minute sessions. They were interested to know the pros and cons of freelancing versus being a staff journalist. I explained that in small countries like Kosovo, the challenge of freelancing is the market is so small, but that freelancing gives you more freedom to write about the topics that interest you.
I asked them about the school magazine, and one of them told me how fun it was to go around school and talk to other students about the topics they covered. Just like with my case, they talked about the passion driving them toward working with media in the future, as a way to try and work for the public good.
Just weeks before a crucial election, I was keen to hear how much the presidential campaign is discussed in their families. Most of them said they are not concerned about politics, but will watch clips of the Harris-Trump debate, usually on TikTok.
Sports are big here, as elsewhere in the United States. But Iowa is not represented at the NFL with a team. As one of the students who loves to write about sports in the school magazine explained, people from Muscatine and elsewhere tend to support either the Minnesota Vikings or the Chicago Bears.
This was a very unique chance for the fellows to get a better sense of the waysome of the young U.S. generation thinks.
We appreciated how the students were very keen to get to know and understand other respective cultures and backgrounds of media work. We ended the discussion with a group photo, and gifts from the school, including a yearbook and Muskies flag.
