By David Gordon, associate editor
Madeline Fuerstenberg, community journalist for the Chippewa Valley Post and a rising senior at UW-Eau Claire, has been chosen as the winner of the 2020 Ann Devroy Fellowship awarded by the UW-EC Department of Communication & Journalism.
The announcement came from Prof. Jan Larson, the department chair, who relayed the decision of the departmental scholarship committee. The award is presented annually to an outstanding UW-EC journalism major.
It was established in 1998 to honor Devroy, a 1970 UW-EC journalism graduate who went on to be regarded as one of the best journalists ever to cover the White House. She worked the White House beat from 1979 to 1985 for Gannett Newspapers and USA Today and for The Washington Post from 1989 until her death from cancer in 1997.
The Devroy Fellowship includes a scholarship, an unpaid three-week residency at The Post during the university’s January Winterim period, and a paid summer internship at a Wisconsin news outlet. That internship was at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism last summer and Clara Neupert, the 2019 Devroy fellow, will also intern there this year.
Fuerstenberg, who just completed her junior year, served both semesters this year as editor-in-chief of The Spectator, UW-EC’s student-run newspaper. She is a graduate of Deerfield (WI) High School, where she spent her senior year interning with her hometown weekly, the Cambridge News/Deerfield Independent. The following summer she was a freelance reporter for the paper until leaving to enroll at UW-EC.
Fuerstenberg was a staff writer for The Spectator during her first year at UW-EC and served as the paper’s news editor the following year. As editor-in-chief, she oversaw the paper’s coverage of last fall’s racially-charged Snapchat incident involving five members of the Blugold football team and the spring semester events that led to the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Albert Colom.
She joined the CVPost in May, 2019 as its first paid reporter. She has covered stories ranging from visits of the mobile Mexican consulate to the national kubb championship to her recent profile of a Memorial High School graduate who is breaking new ground in mathematics research as a faculty member at the University of California-San Diego.
Fuerstenberg said she was honored “to be selected as this year’s Devroy recipient.
“This is an opportunity that initially drew me to UW-Eau Claire and it’s something I have been working toward since the beginning of my college career,” she said. “I’m nervous about going to DC for the first time and learning from some of the top journalists in the country, but I also know that this is an opportunity very few people ever get to experience.”
Fuerstenberg will begin a summer internship next week at WQOW-TV and will also continue to report for the CVPost.
Larson praised Fuerstenberg’s leadership in The Spectator’s breaking news coverage of the Snapchat incident and its developing news stories that eventually led to Colom’s resignation.
”Her work has exemplified truth-telling and holding power accountable, both hallmarks of former Washington Post political reporter Ann Devroy,” Larson said.
“I’m thrilled that Maddie will be our next fellow and know that she will represent her predecessors, the department and university in ways that will make us all proud,” Larson added. “Whether in the classroom or at the campus newspaper, Maddie has shown she has a commitment to telling stories that matter and to making sure everyone has a voice.”
In addition to the fellowship, the Devroy program also sponsors the Ann Devroy Memorial Forum which annually brings a distinguished journalist – usually, a Washington Post staff member – to speak at UW-EC. This year’s event, scheduled for late April, was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic but Larson has said she hopes to reschedule it for sometime in the fall semester.
Devroy, a Green Bay native, had worked for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and completed a Milwaukee Journal internship by the time she graduated from UW-EC. She then went to work for the Gannett-owned Courier-News in Bridgewater, NJ, where she rose from a reporter position to become night editor and then city editor.
In 1977, Gannett promoted her to Washington, DC, where she covered Congress for two years before beginning her White House coverage in 1979. She covered the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
David Broder, a WashingtonPost political reporter and columnist for over 40 years until his death in 2011, described Devroy as “the most dogged, determined, complete reporter any of us ever saw” when he spoke at her memorial service in October, 1997. Broder was the speaker at the first Devroy Memorial Forum in 1998.
George Stephanopoulos, a top White House advisor under President Bill Clinton and more recently an ABC political commentator and program host, said Devroy “was the toughest and fairest White House reporter I knew.
“She knew when she had a story, and she knew when to kill one. She revered the office of the presidency and the role that reporters play in keeping it honest,” he said.
The fund supporting the Devroy program was established by her family and her Washington Post colleagues following her death to honor her memory and help preserve her journalistic legacy.
Note: the home page photo, from the UW-Eau Claire website, shows Ann Devroy interviewing President Bill Clinton.