{"id":4432,"date":"2024-07-16T21:06:57","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T21:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/?p=4432"},"modified":"2024-07-25T21:46:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T21:46:50","slug":"cherubs-through-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/07\/cherubs-through-the-ages\/","title":{"rendered":"Cherubs through the ages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest instructor Bret Begun held up a piece of paper covered front and back in green ink. He told the class it was his roommate assignment from when he was a cherub in John Kupetz\u2019s instructor group.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hands immediately started going up in the audience as cherubs in Kupetz\u2019s current group displayed their own roommate stories edited in the same green ink.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little shocking,\u201d said Faith Jung of La Mirada, California. \u201cI didn’t expect that much from him on the very first day for the first assignment, and I couldn’t read any of it because his handwriting is pretty messy. John gave me like a quarter of what he wrote on Bret’s paper.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite all the ways the program has evolved over its 90-year history, this year\u2019s cherubs shared many of the same core experiences with instructors and program staff who were once cherubs themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve always used pen and paper, and I grade in the color green because it’s the color of hope,\u201d Kupetz said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When he started teaching at Medill cherub program, students wrote their trend story assignments on manual typewriters and called their sources on dial phones.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trend story was still a key part of the curriculum in 2024, giving cherubs a chance to put together everything they learned about feature reporting and writing over the course of the first three weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe program has kept up with all the changes in the industry and the technology without losing the core values of journalism,\u201d Kupetz said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Instructor Mary Lou Song named some of those essential elements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are timeless things that we will always need to learn \u2014 how to write things, how to make news judgments, how to interview people,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Community and academic associate Juliet Allan, who was a cherub in 2021, said that despite the program being online in her year, she grew \u201creally, really close\u201d with the people in her instructor group.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s kind of an old legend that John Kupetz’s group tends to be one of the most bonded pretty much every year,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said part of the reason she became a CAA was to experience the program in person.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Kupetz taught me journalism, and now he’s teaching me how to teach journalism,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several of the program\u2019s instructors and guest speakers are cherub alums \u2014 Song, Begun, Cynthia Wang, and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jonathan Eig all chose to come back to cherubs to teach.<\/span><\/p>\n

Song said she became an instructor to give back to the cherub community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything good in my life, I can tie back to cherubs,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Allan agreed that the program can change lives. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could come back every year, I would,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Generations of cherubs came together to make the program possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":5838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[301],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":301,"user_id":127,"is_guest":0,"slug":"radianhong","display_name":"Radian Hong","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cad2a23d082ffe53336c662d33b703fe1238f499e4197159d9aec89a91c2e9e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Hong","first_name":"Radian","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4432"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6651,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions\/6651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4432"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}