This reporter-turned-editor joined our team to coach and lead the next generation of journalists.

By Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel

We’re excited to celebrate the work of Dawn, City Bureau’s Civic Editor! In her short time with us, she’s helped revitalize our Civic Reporting Fellowship and strengthen our editorial pipeline!

With a background that dabbled in teaching and travel, Dawn has always been drawn to storytelling, both as a way to express herself and as a path to learn from others.

We asked Dawn to share more about her journey into journalism and her approach to mentoring the next generation of writers. Here are a few highlights from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

TELL US ABOUT THE PLACES YOU CALL HOME AND YOUR JOURNEY TO CHICAGO.

I'm originally from Denver, Colorado, born and raised there. I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for my undergrad. Most of my mom's family is from Detroit, so I was pretty close to family while I was in school.

Since then, I’ve been a bit of a nomad. After college, I moved back home for a while. Then I lived in Japan for a year teaching English, and came back home. And in the midst of all this, I had been kicking around the idea of being a journalist for quite some time. I finally decided to make the leap of applying to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. For some reason, even though I did not study journalism at any point in college or high school, had no experience, no internships, no formal background in journalism, they somehow accepted me.

I moved to Chicago in late 2008 and have always lived on the North Side. I live in Albany Park now — which I think has the best food in Chicago.

WHAT DREW YOU TO JOURNALISM?

The call to journalism was based on the fact that I have always been a writer. I've always loved writing and storytelling in some form. If you gave me the choice between writing an essay or taking a test, I would choose an essay every time. It was the way that I wanted to express myself. I was always very good at making an argument and trying to persuade someone about my point of view through writing.

After college, I had about a four-year gap before graduate school, when I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I wanted to do. My love of writing was the one thing that consistently grounded me.

When I was in Japan, I kept a blog, and I remember my grandmother giving me really good feedback on it. She just loved having that window into my life. That experience helped me realize that I wanted to write professionally, and journalism felt like the most natural path to do that.

When I first got into journalism, my ambition was to be a magazine journalist. I loved reading those big glossy profiles in Vanity Fair and Esquire. So that was what I studied, but I ended up working for newspapers, which is a very different place.

Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate the opportunity to work with different kinds of writers and to learn from them, to work with other editors who could help me be a better writer. I was a reporter for about 10 years before I transitioned to editing [full-time]. Now I coach other people how to write, and I still learn how to improve my own writing in that process, too.

WHAT DREW YOU TO CITY BUREAU?

Before joining City Bureau, I'd spent my entire 15-year career in daily deadline journalism, both as a reporter and an editor. For a long time, I really thrived at that fast pace and organized (and sometimes very disorganized) chaos.

But after years of being constantly plugged in and alert, I was just getting tired. I needed something different in my career that gave me the breathing space to think about why I do this work. Ariel Cheung, our Editorial Director and a long-time colleague, told me about City Bureau’s ethos. Even something as simple as [routine] one-on-one check-ins with your supervisor just blew my mind. I never had that in my previous jobs. Here, we have regular moments to stop and breathe and to assess what we're doing, to continue reflecting on our goals and give each other feedback. Previously, things like that were just so foreign to me, but so needed.

With time (and the benefit of therapy), I’ve learned that I need space to process. Sometimes, I need more time to sit with my emotions and to think about how I feel about something, and I felt like I wanted to be in a work space that gives me a little bit more room to process and then make a decision based on that. I really appreciate that City Bureau centers not only the work that we do here, but why we do it.

HOW DO YOU CHARACTERIZE YOUR APPROACH AS AN EDITOR?

My approach is that every writer needs something different, so I try to be very adaptable. I first assess where a person is in their career, what their goals are, and how they want to grow. Then I think about how I can best support them. For the most part, I’ll try to back off in other spaces. I'm very sensitive to being micromanaged as a person. That was something that I've experienced in my career, and it doesn't feel good. I don't want other people to feel that way. I want them to feel free and confident in what they already know how to do. I’ll then give them coaching and guidance on the things that they need the most help with.

Some of the reporters at City Bureau are fellows and some are staff reporters. They may need more help with developing a beat or conceptualizing stories. Others just need support with story structuring and writing — which is absolutely my bag and the thing that I love nerding out on the most. Some of them need more help with project planning or time management. One of my reporters and I recently talked about executive functioning and how to better manage your calendar, giving yourself space to do the things you need to do.

Overall, the way I manage one reporter over here is very different from the way I manage this person over there.

HOW DO YOU STAY GROUNDED IN YOUR WORK?

One of the big reasons I came to City Bureau was the Civic Reporting Fellowship. I got into editing because I love being a mentor and teacher, and I knew about the fellowship in passing, but I didn't quite understand how it worked until I applied for the job. When I talked to the team about it while I was interviewing, I just got so excited when I learned more about the purpose of the program, how we recruit people, what we're training them to do — that's my bag. I love working with emerging journalists. I love working with people who maybe aren't sure journalism is really the right thing for them.

Our fellowship gives them a chance to test it out, to see if it’s something that they want to do, or if it can lead into something else that interests them. That kind of exploratory space is rare in journalism. Usually, you just need to jump into it or not.

I'm so grateful to be able to work with journalists and creators and organizers from all kinds of backgrounds who come together around this shared mission to learn from each other. Even though I've only been doing this for less than a year, it's really gratifying to see where our fellows start and where they end up. I'm so proud when I get to witness that transformation.

To connect with Dawn, feel free to reach out at dawn@citybureau.org.

Meet Dawn, City Bureau’s Civic Editor