Alex Walters, a junior at MSU, recently received the 2025 David W. Miller Award for Young Journalists for his exceptional work during his internship with the Chronicle of Higher Education. Known for his deft handling of complex subjects, Walters’ intensively researched pieces have resonated with a national audience.
“There's no organization or group of people I would rather have the admiration of than the Chronicle. It was just a perfect place to work and learn,” Walters said.
Walters is majoring in journalism as well as social relations and policy, the latter of which he says has significantly influenced his journalistic approach.
“It’s a lot of distillation of very complicated ideas, and I think that's been helpful for me,” said Walters. He likened writing a news story to his coursework at James Madison College, detailing the process of analyzing a given text, synthesizing information, and debating its significance with his peers. "I feel like it's directly analogous to what I do [in journalism],” said Walters.
Throughout Walters’ undergraduate career, he has contended with a variety of challenging topics, ranging from presidential politics to sexual misconduct. He shared his thoughts about how best to engage with these types of pieces.
“If you're talking to someone about something sensitive, there's an idea that, you know, you want to retain control over your stories . . . but you also want to give people some sense of agency,” said Walters. He stressed the importance of not only disclosing relevant information about his process, but also providing an appropriate format and setting for a participant to discuss sensitive information.
Maintaining this level of transparency and open communication, in Walters’ perspective, helps to prevent exploitation and uphold a high ethical standard. Similarly, he noted, “If you're going to write something about somebody that's critical of them, you want to reach out to them and give them a full chance to respond.”
In addition to serving as Senior Reporter for The State News, Walters also hosts its associated weekly news podcast, The 1909. While past episodes generally just recap news pieces from the website, his vision for the show is taking it in a more interactive direction.
By preparing Q&A sessions with the articles’ authors, Walters allows them a space to break down information from an engaging, first-person perspective.
While Walters is most passionate about producing long-form print media, he acknowledges the growing prevalence of podcasts as a means of consuming news, and he has therefore used his role as podcast host to experiment with and get a sense for the potential reach and uses of this popular format.
Walters is appreciative of the guidance he has received from past editors of The State News, as well as the opportunities made available to him there, reflecting that, “I got a lot of buy-in here at The State News and a lot of trust, especially when I was a freshman and didn't really know what I was doing, and I really appreciate that. I think it's paid off in that they let me do stories that were maybe more ambitious than I should have been doing, but somehow, they came together.”
Post-graduation, Walters intends to continue his contributions to the field of journalism through diverse modes of storytelling.
“I like writing stories about complicated, sensitive issues, because I think that's the kind of thing I want to read, but I want to do that in all sorts of formats. . . and so even within print, I'm very open to writing in different voices and different styles at different publications. I just want to keep doing stories that I feel are important,” Walters explained.
In addition to emphasizing the importance of adaptability, he highlighted his inquisitive nature. “I'm just very curious about things. And I like the idea of like work that rewards that.”
By Natasha De Souza