Ta’Leah Van Sistine, this year’s editor of The Spectator at UW-Eau Claire, has been chosen as the school’s 2021-22 Ann Devroy Fellow.
The selection was made by the UW-EC journalism faculty and will be formally announced at Thursday night’s online Devroy Memorial Forum. The 7 p.m. event will feature a talk by Philip Rucker, former White House bureau chief for The Washington Post and now a senior correspondent for the paper.
The program is free and open to the public, with a limit of 500 electronic connections. Access to the event will be available by clicking here.
Van Sistine, a graduate of Bay Port High School, is a junior journalism and creative writing student. She is in her sixth semester on the staff of UW-EC’s student paper. She also has been a community reporter for the Chippewa Valley Post, as was last year’s Devroy Fellow, Madeline Fuerstenberg.
Rucker background
Rucker’s topic on Thursday will be “Lessons from Reporting in the Age of Trump.” He will meet electronically with regional media representatives before his presentation, and earlier in the day will spend time talking with UW-EC journalism students.
Rucker is the co-author (with Carol Leonnig) of “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which reached the top spot on the best-seller list of The New York Times as well as those of USA Today and Publishers Weekly. The book reports on the first 30 months or so of Trump’s presidency, including such controversial moments as the president’s frequent clashes with cabinet members and other senior advisers.
In 2018, Rucker and a team of Post reporters shared (with a New York Times team) two awards for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election: the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and a special George Polk award. The Pulitzers are regarded as the year’s top journalism honor and the Polk awards are given annually to recognize special achievements in journalism on any news platform, particularly original investigative work that requires digging and resourcefulness.
Rucker, a Yale University graduate, joined The Post in 2005 as a local reporter. He has also covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the presidential campaigns of Trump in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
Honoring Devroy
The forum, established in 1998, honors Devroy, a Green Bay native and a 1970 UW-EC journalism graduate who went on to cover the White House for the Gannett media chain and The Post. She was often described by both former colleagues and the people she covered as one of the best journalists ever to occupy the White House beat. (Read more about Devroy here in an account written by the 2004 Ann Devroy fellow.)
After her death from cancer in 1997, her family and her Washington Post colleagues established the forum and the Ann Devroy Fellowship at UW-EC, to honor her memory and help preserve her journalistic legacy.
The fellowship includes a scholarship and a paid internship with a Wisconsin news outlet. Depending on public health and related concerns, Van Sistine will also receive a three-week unpaid residency at The Post next January.
Last year’s Devroy Forum was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
NOTE: the home page photo shows Ann Devroy interviewing then-President Bill Clinton in 1996. (Photo by Robert Reeder, The Washington Post)
Dean Kallenbach says
In addition to Ta’Leah’s accomplishments at The Spectator, she has also been news director for the student radio program Blugold Radio Sunday, having been recognized by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association as the Best Newscast in 2021, and also with an Eric Severeid Award of Merit from the six-state Midwest Broadcast Journalism Association.