The College Fix Provides Training (and Some Money) for Young Conservative Journalists
By Michael Lovito, May 7, 2023
Once merely the venue for student protests and political mobilization, in recent years America’s college campuses have become political flashpoints themselves. Debates over affirmative action, sexual assault policies, trigger warnings, free speech, and tenure have seized national attention and taken up valuable real estate in the pages of major newspapers and magazines. What were once esoteric academic and administrative concerns have become hot-take fodder for opinion columnists and cable news talking heads.
But how do these campus issues find their way off the quad and into the national spotlight? The College Fix may have something to do with it. A training ground and talent pipeline for aspiring conservative journalists, The College Fix provides them both a daily news outlet to publicize the latest campus outrages and a source of funding for their pursuit of a career at likeminded media outlets. One can quibble with the framing of their stories, but there’s no question that the student-journalists at The College Fix have a nose for attention-grabbing headlines, and a vast alumni network that is making its mark on modern conservative media.
Learning By Doing
Founded in 2011 by National Review contributor and Hillsdale College journalism director John J. Miller, The College Fix is operated by the Student Free Press Association, a non-profit that places college-aged “journalism fellows” in paid internships at conservative outlets like Fox News, The Blaze, and The Daily Caller. While the site employs six fulltime staff members, nearly all of The College Fix’s articles are reported and written by student journalists at schools ranging small liberal arts colleges to big state universities.
“We have some students at Ivies, some students at state schools, we even have some community college students,” said Jennifer Kabbany, one of The College Fix’s fulltime editors. “We’re a virtual office, which allows us a lot of flexibility to work with students across the nation.”
Each College Fix student-journalist is paired up with an editor who coaches them through the finer points of hard news reporting – the inverted pyramid, the importance of quoting both sides, objective third-person perspective – and edits their work. According to Kabbany, each of the site’s three editors works with “30 plus” students per year, giving the site an average annual writing staff of approximately 100. Although many successful reporters still get their start in journalism schools and writing for campus newspapers, Kabbany argues that the semi-professional environment of The College Fix provides its writers with a more enriching experience than your typical undergraduate journalism program – and not just because, unlike most student-journalists, The College Fix’s contributors are actually paid for their work.
All of them, Kabbany argues, receive a more enriching experience than your typical undergraduate journalism student – and not just because, unlike most student-journalists, The College Fix’s contributors are actually paid for their work.
“In journalism, you learn by doing. [College Fix contributors] get to work closely with the editor who serves as their mentor and role model. We’re vetting these articles line by line, teaching them how to improve their craft,” Kabbany said. “In a class in college, they might only have you write two articles. Well, I’ve got some students churning out five, six articles a month.”
Covering Campus Culture Wars
While the stories published on The College Fix, which often provide sympathetic coverage to college conservative groups and like-minded figures such as Christopher Rufo and Heather Mac Donald (the latter of whom serves on The College Fix’s advisory board), have a clear ideological bent, Kabbany insists that every one of their stories is backed up by “facts and data.” What sets The College Fix apart, she says, is its focus.
“The subjectivity is not in how we report, the subjectivity is in what we see as news,” she said. “So maybe something I’m assigning a student is not something covered by the campus newspaper, or the local or legacy media. A lot of times, we’re telling stories that might not otherwise be told.”
Thus far, The College Fix’s strategy of covering, in Kabbany’s words, “the campus culture wars, the politically incorrect issues, and hot button topics,” seems to be paying off. In addition to the 500,000 to 750,000 pageviews and millions of social media impressions Kabbany says the site receives every month, College Fix stories have been cited by publications such as the New York Post and the Washington Free Beacon, evidence of both the site’s influence and the national audience’s newfound interest in campus issues.
“We’re sort of like the pebble that you throw in the pond,” Kabbany said. “And then all those ripples are the stories going viral thanks to us, because we have parents reading us, students reading us, but also lawmakers, watchdogs, think tank scholars, and professors reading us, and other journalists who might be covering the higher ed beat look to us for ideas on what to write about.”
The College Fix’s commitment to covering such stories seems to have benefitted its alumni, as well. Kabbany estimates that 60 percent of the site’s former writers and journalism fellows are still working in journalism, and that another 14 percent are working in a related field like communications, speech writing, or publishing. A quick scan of the site’s alumni page reveals a laundry list of talent not only at conservative sites like The Federalist and The Dispatch, but also at mainstream outlets like The New York Times and CNN. The list includes conservative social media mainstays like Ron DeSantis speechwriter Nate Hochman and Andy Ngo, editor of the Canadian conservative site The Post Millennial.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Towards the end of our conversation, Kabbany forwarded me the job board that The College Fix makes available to its alumni, which included dozens of positions at organizations like The Daily Wire, Newsmax, and The Epoch Times. I asked Kabbany if the job board’s heft, which stood out to me given the recent layoffs at outlets like Buzzfeed News, Vice, and NPR, was a sign that conservative media was in an overall healthier place than its legacy and left-leaning counterparts. “You know what,” she said. “I’ll just let that job board speak for itself.”
Michael Lovito is a Brooklyn-based reporter and critic whose work has appeared in Salon, Brooklyn Magazine, Pavement Pieces, and The District. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the politics and pop culture website The Postrider. @MLovito
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There’s no question that the student-journalists at The College Fix have a nose for attention-grabbing headlines, and a vast alumni network that is making its mark on modern conservative media. (Image: Wallpaper Flare)
