Lessons from an Early-Career Journalist

Mar 12, 2026

Sofia Barnett, a 23-year-old reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune who covers public safety, immigration, and Indigenous issues. She recounts rapid on-the-ground reporting from internships to being first at a school shooting scene. She talks about joining a dedicated immigration team, navigating trauma and self-care, and how local news accelerated her career.

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INSIGHT

Build Career Blocks Deliberately Early

Career trajectories require stacking early blocks: press releases, court coverage, and small assignments build toward bigger opportunities.
Sofia learned prestige pipelines often expect three years of experience before fellowships and national moves.

ANECDOTE

Choosing Local Beat Over New York Prestige

At the Dallas Morning News Sofia chose to report on women's health and Texas abortion policy using hometown knowledge, rather than chase New York prestige.
She used local access to pursue a long investigation into illegal abortion experiences across DFW.

ADVICE

Pitch Big Intern Stories And Do The Work

Do pitch ambitious stories as an intern and be persistent; Sofia pitched and spent 150+ hours reporting an illegal abortion story that editors approved.
She reached out to ~300 people and self-advocated to get the reporting she wanted.

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When I took over the Kicker host chair, one of the things I was most excited to do was to interview early-career journalists, who see the changes to our industry from an entirely different perspective from those of us who’ve been around since the days when Twitter was king, or before social media existed. I’ve always loved working with young people—among my many freelance gigs, I help run a program for high school journalists—because I feel like I get smarter (and hopefully even marginally more relevant?) every time I talk to them.

For going on seven years now, Sofia Barnett has been one of my favorite young journalists to talk to. From the first time I met her, when she was a high school junior outside Dallas, she’s been uncommonly driven: toward a career in journalism, toward telling the stories of Indigenous Americans like herself, toward seeing the world and writing about all of it. Now, at twenty-three, she’s covered more big stories than many people do in a full career. She wound up at the Minnesota Star Tribune fresh out of college, moving to Minneapolis just in time for perhaps the newsiest year in the city’s history. As an intern, she was the first reporter on the scene of the Annunciation Catholic Church school shooting last August. Then, while formally assigned to cover the suburbs, she was named to the five-person team covering the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the city.

In this episode, Barnett and I talk about all of that, plus about how she thinks about a career in this tumultuous time for journalism. Listen below—or wherever you get your podcasts.

Show notes:

He couldn’t run. So they covered him instead. Sofia Barnett, Minnesota Star Tribune
‘Just another Native’: Minneapolis Indigenous women demand emergency response to violence. Sofia Barnett, Minnesota Star Tribune
Texas ranks almost dead last in the nation for women’s health care, research shows. Sofia Barnett, Dallas Morning News
The Princeton Summer Journalism Program

Megan Greenwell, host

Amanda Darrach, producer