DePauw Stories

Brock Turner ’17 had been on campus for only a week or two, with nary an inkling of what he’d ultimately do professionally, when an editor from The DePauw pulled him aside at an activities fair.

Turner soon showed up at the student newspaper’s newsroom, and he was hooked. “It wasn’t until I stepped in and really started getting involved with The DePauw that I knew that this was something that I would start doing,” he said. “… Breaking those stories and making those connections and learning what it took to break a big story really paved the way for me to do that kind of work now.”

He said he developed and honed his news judgment while working at The DePauw for four years. “It really pushed me out of my shell,” he said, “and it gave me the confidence to go out and do things and presented the experiences that I never thought that I would get elsewhere.”

He interned at the Banner Graphic, the Greencastle newspaper, for a winter term and tinkered with nonprofit marketing and public affairs in other internships, ultimately deciding that news reporting “is the one place where I feel like I can genuinely make a difference and do something that serves the public interest. And that’s something that I’m really passionate about, proud to do.”

Today Turner is the rural affairs reporter for Indiana Public Media in Bloomington, Indiana, covering issues such as broadband and health care access in rural communities. His stories run on WFIU local radio, WTIU local television, the web and sometimes National Public Radio and PBS.

“It’s an informed, intelligent audience that really has high expectations,” he said. “… Diving into important policy issues and connecting them with people is exactly the type of work that I want to be doing.”