DePauw Stories

Ellen Kobe ’13 loved writing, and so she gravitated toward print journalism when she looked for internships and early jobs.

But she came to realize that what she loved most about working for The DePauw was “the team-building aspect of creating a newspaper twice a week,” she said. “I loved collaborating with people. That was really what made me obsessed with The DePauw for four years.”

And thus she began seeking out professional positions in audience engagement and strategy, in which “you’re working with people on a daily basis to think about, how are we framing stories? How are we providing for our audience what they need to know?

“The public service side of journalism has always been what’s most important to me. How are we providing them a public service, in this unique environment we’re in in our industry, where people have access to all sorts of information and all sorts of ways at any time of the day? It’s a really fascinating challenge.”

She spent two years as a reporter for the Associated Press in Chicago, then moved to CNN, where she rose to be a producer. Last September, she was recruited to join the new CNN+ streaming service as an editor.

Though she has veered away from newspapers, her experience at The DePauw – where she was editor-in-chief in fall her senior year – was valuable, she said. It provided lessons in writing, editing and accountability; supplied clips and connections that helped her land internships; and gave her confidence to be “the person who said ‘yes’ to everything” and “could do the task at hand.”

The DePauw, she said, “made the whole difference.”