Eiman Mir, a senior at Brookfield East High School, has been working in journalism since middle school.
Her years of hard work recently paid off when she was named Journalist of the Year by the Wisconsin Journalism Education Association.
The award recognizes high school students for outstanding work in journalism and comes with a $1,000 scholarship through the MPC Endowment Ltd., a philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club. It also enters the winning student into the National High School Journalist of the Year competition where they compete for an additional $3,000 scholarship.
Mir says joining her middle school’s broadcast journalism program is what built her confidence as a writer and made her want to join the Spartan Banner, her high school’s newspaper. It’s where she says she discovered her interest in telling stories about her community and highlighting underrepresented voices.
“I found the process of interviewing people and doing research for each article very interesting,” Mir says. “Just bringing together different perspectives and being able to share that with others was really fulfilling to me.”
Mir says writing a remembrance piece about Pakistani pop artist Nazia Hassan for the LA Times’ High School Insider is among her favorite stories she’s written.
Mir says she plans on continuing her work in journalism when she starts college in the fall, and her advice for aspiring young journalists is to appreciate and seek out the stories happening around them.
“Focus on writing stories that bigger news networks can't cover and don't have access to in your community,” she says. “Don’t be shy and interview people in person… [and] be confident in how you write, because whatever you're writing, it's probably better than you think it is. So keep going!”
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