Zachary Jarrell came to the University of Cincinnati in 2019 to study statistics. In 2023, he graduated instead with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
For many undergraduates, the journey through college rarely takes the expected track.
Nationwide, three in four students change majors during their college career. When plans switch up, it can be helpful to a student's success to find support.
For Jarrell, it was the people he worked alongside in UC's Department of Journalism who helped him on his journey. They helped guide him to multiple internships as an undergraduate, where he gained real-world experience in prominent news outlets and eventually launched a successful career in the highly competitive field.
Blevins and UC's other faculty were instrumental in helping introduce him to the world of news media, he said.
"Bob Jonason and Jenny Wohlfarth are kind of like my journalism mom and dad. I still keep in touch with them now," Jarrell says. "I've had a couple of lunches with Bob since I graduated. I formed actual, real, deep relationships with both of them and the things that they taught me, Jenny with writing and Bob with journalism in general.
"They will always be my two favorite professors of all time, and I will probably be reaching out and keeping up to date with them for the rest of our lives."
Jonason shared the sentiment.
"He has all the right qualities. He's curious. He's not shy about talking to people, and he wants to get the story he wants; to get it right. He's a rock star. He'll do well in this business, and I hope he stays in this business."
With these professors by his side, Jarrell wanted to do as much as he could as soon as he could. This led to an internship hunt early in his college career. With these experiences, Jarrell got to work in several different roles, ranging from editor to reporter and really got to see what the journalism world had to offer.
"I fell in love with journalism, and I just wanted to do it as much as I could," he said. "I had my first internship in my second year, which started with Gateway Journalism Review.
"My role was assistant editor, and it certainly taught me a lot about search engine optimization and things like that. Then, I got an internship with the Los Angeles Blade and the Washington Blade, which is an LGBTQ paper.
"So I was covering a lot of national LGBTQ issues and not only was I covering breaking news on these courts and political beats, but I also was writing a lot of big, long feature pieces as well. That taught me how to be a good, quick, accurate reporter, but also how to help kick my writing into shape."
At the end of his time at UC, Jarrell served as an editorial intern with the Cincinnati Business Courier, which was his final internship.
"I got recommended and ended up getting an internship with Cincinnati Business Courier, which is a part of American City Business Journals, the company I'm with now in Columbus. All those other jobs, it was remote newsrooms, so that was my first time being in a real local newsroom, and it was incredible. I just really liked the company, and the culture, and the reporting that we did."
This opened the door to his getting a job out of college with American City Business Journals, first in Dayton and now in Columbus. However, Jarrell's job title as a data reporter is a reminder of where he started his college career.
Jarrell spends a lot of time surveying companies and taking that data to write his stories. While the data seems more statistic-driven, Jarrell still gets to use his journalistic ability to tell the story behind the numbers.
"Sometimes, they're following trends and doing deep dives into industries. Other times, it's more feature-related stuff that has to do with a company on the list, So it's been it's been good. I was worried I wouldn't get to write as much with this role, but I've been balancing the numbers and the writing. But it's definitely weird how life works."
Featured image at top: Stack of newspapers. Credit/Pixabay
