Editor’s note: This article is a special feature for the Tufts Daily Alumni Newsletter that does not represent the Daily’s standard journalistic practices.
Miranda Willson (A’17) is an environment reporter at E&E News, where she focuses on water issues. She has covered everything from a controversial wetland restoration project in the Louisiana Bayou to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Before that, she was a local reporter based in Las Vegas. During her tenure at the Daily, Miranda served as executive features editor and managing editor.
How did you first get involved in the Daily?
I wrote a column for about a year in the features department, and I also wrote articles for the news and features sections. I joined the Daily in my sophomore year. I was always interested in journalism, and I was in journalism in my high school newspaper, but didn’t join the Daily for some reason my first year. My column was about ecofeminism — I wrote about environmental issues and feminist issues. It was a mix of pop culture, student activism commentary and stuff about classes I was taking.
Do you have a favorite memory from your time at the Daily?
I have a lot of fond memories of nights in the office when I was on the managing board, being surrounded by the other people who were involved, or new faces. I enjoyed the grind of getting the newspaper out. I think the best memories were of people, and being in the newsroom working on the edition that we put out around Commencement. There was extra work involved in that edition, and it was fun. The people made the experience.
What was your first job out of college?
My first job was at The Medford Transcript newspaper in Medford, and I was the only reporter there. It was a chain of local weekly newspapers that wrote about local issues — I wrote about Medford politics, schools, police, housing and environmental issues. I had a lot of liberties with what I could pursue, beyond just what the city council was doing. There was also a mayor’s election going on at the time, which was exciting. There were some characters who were fun to write about and cover.
Do you feel like your Daily career prepared you well for post-college journalism?
I think so. It certainly prepared me for public response to things you write, because that would happen sometimes when I was on the Daily. People were not happy with either a news story or an editorial or something and would have some constructive feedback. So I had that experience of knowing how to respond to that to an extent. Also there were basic journalism skills that I learned from the Daily, like asking people for comment if you’re mentioning them in a story, or asking people if you can record in an interview — things that I might not have known were super important if it hadn’t been for the Daily.
Do you take a different approach in terms of writing the stories that you do now as opposed to what you did as a local journalist?
I take a different approach in certain ways. It’s still similar in that what I write about responds to what my audience is interested in and what stories are going untold within the space of things I’m writing about. But now I’ve had to learn to write for a national audience or a broader audience in some ways. And in my current job, I’ve gotten a lot better at writing a solid lede and nut graph. Those are things you learn about early on when you’re a journalist, or even when you’re a student journalist. But I feel like I’m constantly perfecting them, and it’s a constant art that you work on. That’s a way that I’ve tried to evolve as a reporter.
We’re always trying to write everything so that anyone can understand it or find it interesting, especially with bigger stories that I work on for a longer period of time. It’s a niche audience in some respects, but the goal is to always have as broad appeal as possible. In terms of the number of people who care about climate change or environmental issues, that applies to a lot of members of the public at large.
Is there a specific story that you’ve written that sticks with you from your more recent past?
Right now I’m working on a story that’s based on some public records I got back. It was actually from my previous beat at E&E News, but it touches on a lot of things. It’s about how state attorney generals in in Republican states have been really closely coordinating to oppose all kinds of climate and environmental regulations from the Biden administration, and the growing breadth of regulations that they’re challenging, and the the ways that they are trying to make those challenges more favorable by filing them in certain courts that they see as more friendly to their conservative arguments. The story is about these email exchanges and what they show about how these state AGs have been increasingly pursuing really partisan issues and using the resources of their offices to do that.
If you could tell your college self one thing, what would it be?
Ask dumb questions. In an interview, if there is something you think is going unsaid, or you don’t understand something fully, ask the extra question. And similarly, ask your colleagues questions about how they do things in their job because you don’t know everything, and you will always be learning. It’s better to ask than to assume you know.
