Featured Speakers:

Isaac Ritchey, Central Michigan Life
Isaac Ritchey is a photojournalist and summer editor-in-chief of Central Michigan Life, the award-winning newspaper at Central Michigan University. He is working toward his degree in journalism with a minor in multimedia design, and is working toward a creative writing certificate. At CM Live, he’s served as photo editor and worked several beats as a senior reporter. Ritchey has professional bylines for Central Michigan Life, Western Herald, Daily Chronicle, Altoona Mirror, Michigan Out of Doors Magazine, The Detroit News, Times Union, The Spectrum, Epicenter, SFGate and the Detroit Free Press. In 2020, Ritchey won an honorable mention in the Sports Action portion at the Michigan Press Photographers Association annual conference. Ritchey was born in Pennsylvania, lived in Wisconsin for nine years and moved to Michigan in 2015.

Lizzy Lawrence, The Michigan Daily
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Lawrence is a senior at the University of Michigan and the editor-in-chief of The Michigan Daily. She joined the News section of The Daily as a freshman and has been journalism-obsessed ever since. She majors in Sociology and International Studies, and hopes to work in health or education journalism after college.

Evan Jones, The State News
Evan Jones is editor-in-chief of Michigan State University’s award-winning independent student newspaper, The State News. He’s a rising senior finishing a degree in journalism and history. In February, Jones accepted a position with The MediaWise Voter Project out of The Poynter Institute as a campus correspondent, leading a digital literacy campaign with fact-checking tools for social media. His reporting work also includes stories about Michigan’s politics, environment and economy with Capital News Service and coverage of the city of East Lansing at The State News. ​Before entering journalism he was on the MSU Debate Team.

Moderated by Jeremy Steele, Michigan Interscholastic Press Association
Jeremy Steele is executive director of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association and a specialist in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, where he teaches various reporting courses. Steele is an award-winning journalist who has also worked for one of Michigan’s largest independent public relations firms.

In 1983, the principal of Hazelwood East High School outside St. Louis, Missouri, censored the student newspaper. The paper included a special teen issue section with articles on teen pregnancy and the impact of divorce on students.

Members of the student staff sued.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which held in 1988 that a high school-sponsored newspaper produced as part of a class and without a “policy or practice” establishing it as a public forum for student expression could be censored.if school officials demonstrate a reasonable educational justification and where their censorship was viewpoint neutral.

Hazelwood remains one of the most influential student speech cases, expanding school control over student speech from previous precedent. Join our Q&A about the Hazelwood case with Cathy Kuhlmeier Frey, about her experience as a student journalist and student expression advocate.

Featured Speaker:

Cathy Kuhlmeier Frey
Cathy Kuhlmeier Frey was one of three students involved in the 1988 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.

The case involved censorship of articles in The Spectrum, the student newspaper of Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis, Missouri. The school principal removed articles concerning teen pregnancy and divorce because he felt individuals could be identified in the articles. The Supreme Court ruled against the students, allowing school administrators more authority to censored school-sponsored newspapers.

Kuhlmeier, 54, lives in Rogersville, Missouri, a small community in southwest Missouri. She works for a large insurance company handling workers’ compensation. She has been married to Mike Frey for 16 years and is the mother to two biological adult children, Haley and Eric, and five stepchildren.

Kuhlmeier actively travels and speaks regarding her experiences with censorship. She has been an advocate speaking to state legislators across the country about the New Voices movement in hopes to pass laws to restore rights to student journalists lost in the Hazelwood case.

Moderated by Jeremy Steele, Michigan Interscholastic Press Association & Elizabeth Cyr, yearbook and newspaper adviser, Stockbridge High School

Jeremy Steele is executive director of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association and a specialist in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, where he teaches various reporting courses. Steele is an award-winning journalist who has also worked for one of Michigan’s largest independent public relations firms.

Elizabeth Cyr has found the secret to a happy life: helping young people unlock their potential. She’s been doing so at Stockbridge High School for two decades. Nothing makes her happier than helping students unleash their ideas through contemporary graphic design tools and strong journalism conventions. She coaches staffs on Uncaged News & Online and Panther yearbook. Her staffs have won numerous awards at the state and national levels including the MIPA Spartan, NSPA Pacemaker and CSPA Silver Crown. She was named the 2017 Golden Pen Adviser and earned the 2019 JEA Diversity Award. She also advises MIPA’s All-State Student Journalist Advisory Cohort, a statewide group of student journalists from member schools.

Featured Speakers:

Steve Eder, The New York Times
Steve Eder is an investigative reporter for The Times, where he writes about the federal government under President Trump, as well as his personal businesses.

He previously covered the 2016 presidential campaign, writing in-depth articles about the candidates, from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to Jeb Bush and Donald Trump. He joined The Times in 2012 in the Sports department, where he examined doping in baseball, domestic violence in the N.F.L., and Qatar’s ambitions to become an international soccer power.

In 2018, Mr. Eder was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Eder covered hedge funds at The Wall Street Journal, where he later became a national legal correspondent. Earlier, he reported on Wall Street banks for Reuters in the aftermath of the financial crisis. He began his career at The Toledo Blade, where he was part of a reporting team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for uncovering an investment scandal in Ohio state government. He is a Michigan native and graduate of Michigan State University.

Eric Morath, The Wall Street Journal
Eric Morath reports on labor economics and policy from The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Bureau. Previously, Mr. Morath covered the Treasury and Commerce departments, the Postal Service and bankruptcy news. Prior to joining Dow Jones in 2008, he covered the U.S. auto industry in Detroit.

Morath graduated from Michigan State University, where he studied economics and journalism.

Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica Illinois
Melissa Sanchez is a reporter at ProPublica Illinois who is focused on immigrants and low-wage workers. Her work examining Chicago’s punitive ticketing and debt collection system helped prompt major city reforms, including the end of driver’s license suspensions for unpaid parking tickets and debt relief.

She previously reported on topics ranging from education to absentee ballot fraud for The Chicago Reporter, Catalyst Chicago, el Nuevo Herald in Miami and the Yakima (Washington) Herald-Republic. She lives in a 1926 brick bungalow on Chicago’s Northwest Side with her husband, their toddler son, and two cats.

Moderated by Jeremy Steele, Michigan Interscholastic Press Association
Jeremy Steele is executive director of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association and a specialist in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, where he teaches various reporting courses. Steele is an award-winning journalist who has also worked for one of Michigan’s largest independent public relations firms.