Award-winning journalist Judith Warner has joined the WVU Reed School of Media and Communications as the Shott Chair of Journalism.
“Judith Warner’s notable, high-level experience in journalism and her desire to teach and mentor up-and-coming student journalists is a wonderful combination for our school. We are delighted that she has joined the Reed School, and our faculty and students are excited to work with her. In particular, her expertise in mental health reporting and writing is already the focus of our news feature writing course this semester,” said Emily Corio, Director of the WVU Reed School.
Before coming to WVU, Warner was an adjunct lecturer in the Capitol Applied Learning Labs (CALL) program at Georgetown University and later served as the Ferris Professor of Journalism and Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities Council at Princeton University.
In addition to her teaching, Warner was the New York Times op-ed section’s first online columnist, a contributing writer for the Times Magazine, an online columnist for Time and a special correspondent for Newsweek in Paris, though her journalism experience goes all the way back to her days writing for the Brown Daily Herald at Brown University.
Her mental health journalism has won multiple awards from organizations that include the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and her book, “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety,” spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Her latest book, “And Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School,” was published in May 2020.
When the position for the Shott Chair of Journalism opened at WVU, Warner jumped at the chance to teach full time.
“I was so excited, because full-time teaching is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I was eager to leave Washington, D.C., for someplace completely new,” she said.
Warner teaches 200-level Media Writing and a 400-level Feature Writing class that focuses on mental health journalism.
When someone has worked in journalism for 30 years, as Warner has, teaching the essentials of media writing to undergraduate students can be an adventure.
“You do something for a long time, and you don’t necessarily think anymore about how you’re doing it,” she said. “The challenge is putting those instincts into words.”
Mental health in media, however, has been Warner’s primary focus over the last 15-plus years. Her 400-level class will cover the basics of feature writing through reading and writing about mental health coverage.
“I’ve always had one foot in and one foot out of academia, and when I was a student, I had one foot each in different departments. My interests spanned literature and psychology. When I started my PhD, it was in comparative literature, but at the same time, I had already started working as a journalist,” she said.
“I didn’t like my PhD program, so I went back into journalism,” Warner continued, “but all those different threads have always run through my work.”
Warner’s foray into mental health journalism started when she and her family, including her two young daughters, moved to Washington, D.C., from Paris.
“I had a big culture shock. It was my first time being an American mother, and there was a lot about the experience that was shocking to me, coming from France, because it was so hard. It was so expensive and competitive and sort of crazy in a lot of ways,” she said.
The “perfectionist, controlling” moms that surrounded her in D.C. inspired her 2005 book “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.” As she was writing that book, Warner noticed that many children were being diagnosed with mental illnesses and even receiving medication treatment.
The storyline in the media at the time was that kids were being over-diagnosed and over-medicated, because their parents were trying to get them on the Harvard track at an early age.
“I bought into that, and I actually had a book contract that was all about telling that story. But in the course of reporting, I realized I was completely wrong. I had no idea what I was talking about. It was a false narrative. It was prejudicial, and it was building stigma. And the book became about stigma, and why we talk about these parents and these kids this way. Why is there so much doubt? Why don't we give more support? And that really started my concentration on mental health journalism,” said Warner.
One of things she discovered, as she began to dig past the old, stigmatized narratives, was a “copycat effect,” where if someone was quoted in one publication, they were quoted over and over again in others. In some cases, the source being quoted wasn’t qualified to be speaking on the subject.
Warner had to go against the grain to find the real story, speaking to parents about their lived experiences.
“I was scared of being told I didn’t know what I was talking about, because I was saying the opposite of everyone else. But you have to think independently and strive for what is true, not just popular or what your editor wants, especially in feature writing,” she said.
“How do you write something that’s entertaining and tells people something new or gives them a different perspective, and at the same time, is as faithful to the truth of the person or the phenomenon you're writing about as humanly possible?” Warner continued.
Warner has her students analyze sample articles to consider what is being accomplished and if it is “good journalism,” rather than journalism designed to create a buzz.
“Is it effective? And is it correct? Because those aren’t always the same thing. You can have a well-crafted piece that’s very effective and appealing and filled with examples, but it’s still wrong—and that can be harmful as a result,” said Warner.
“I try to get them to think about what we do in a world where we don’t have agreement on basic truth. How can journalism play a more positive role in bringing people together around some idea of consensual truth? The conventions of the medium are what have always served as a way of pointing us to truth and establishing truth,” she added.
The media landscape is changing, so students need to get as much experience now as possible.
“The Reed School has a lot of resources in terms of connecting students with jobs and letting them know what opportunities exist out there,” she said.
The Shott Chair of Journalism was established in 1984 by the Hugh I. Shott Jr. Foundation in honor of the Shott family’s more than 100-year history of leadership in West Virginia’s news media. The chair is a faculty position in journalism designed to enhance the quality of journalism education in the state.
Learn more about the WVU Reed School of Media and Communications at go.wvu.edu/reed and follow @wvureedschool on social media.