Journalist of the Year

Welcome!

My name is Natalie Dunlap, I am a West High School senior and the online editor-in-chief of West Side Story.

Here I am with former online editor-in-chief, Fenna Semken, on Wedding Day my sophomore year. Wedding Day is a *West Side Story* tradition where staffers commit themselves to the publication at the beginning of the year. Yes we do take an oath. No we are not a cult.

My journalism career began when I joined Foundations of Journalism as a freshman. I’d loved writing since first grade and I became enthralled with the journalism program. It let me tell real stories and gave me a space to be inquisitive and have conversations about things that interested me. I spent my sophomore year as an online reporter publishing as much as I could about my community. My passion for coverage led me to the online feature editor position my junior year.

I pose with Kara Wagenknecht, who was online editor-in-chief last year, on my second Wedding Day with the publication, this time as a junior and feature editor.

Junior year was an exciting time in the newsroom for me. I had a voice on the editorial board, I had influence in the stories we covered and I had a group of writers to guide as they took on their first stories. However, I define that period of time with the profiles I wrote on strong women in my school. That year I told the story of Samina Naz, a paraeducator from Pakistan that wrote poetry about her late parents and worked a second job at Walmart, Veronica Kharunda, a refugee from Uganda who struggled to get a quality education for years and was then surprised with the news of her admission into college by Iowa State representatives in the middle of her math class and of Prisca Namutchibwe, a young woman who brought awareness to the struggles facing Congolese citizens through spoken word poetry. These stories made me aware the resilience of people around me and the power journalism has to move others.

I pose with Natalie Katz, the print editor-in-chief, on our final Wedding Day with the staff. Katz was also a feature editor her junior year. We are sometimes addressed by our last name because of our shared title and first name. This has created a gym class environment and given me some street credit among our sports reporters, or so I like to think.

I have spent my senior year presiding over the publication as the online editor-in-chief. Depending on the circumstances I bounce from being camp counselor (energizing the class and bringing the staff together) to being a boss (delegating coverage and enforcing deadlines) to being a classmate (maintaining my relationships with the staff members as peers). Everything published on wsspaper.com goes through me. I also began a Little Village internship in June of 2019. My prerogative this year is to encourage my staff, cover stories that spark my interest and balance between fun coverage, serious reporting and getting experience outside of the writing medium.