The University of Louisville Alumni Magazine: for alumni, faculty, staff, students and anyone that is a UofL Cardinal fan.
Issue link: https://louisville.epubxp.com/i/705015
2 6 | L O U I S V I L L E . E D U For Ann Merkle, the Fulbright expanded her comfort zone and sparked an academic fi re that's still burning bright. What was life like for you before winning a Fulbright? I came to UofL in 2009. I moved to Louisville from North Carolina, where I was in the Marine Corps. I was a logistics off cer for four-and-a-half years, and I had just gotten back from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2008. I'd been there for quite some time, so when I got back I decided it was time to go back to school. I knew I wanted to study art history, so I applied to the University of Louisville, and, thankfully, I got in. I started my bachelor's program and went hard and heavy into art history right away. How did you fi nd out about the Fulbright? I did an overseas study program over the summer with Dr. Greg Hutcheson in Morocco. It was a f rst year study in Arabic. I worked with him a lot in a seminar on Arab Spain and medieval times. At the end of that program, he asked if I'd heard of the Fulbright, and I hadn't. So when I got back, I went to see Dr. Condon and she nabbed me right away. We worked very closely together on the application process. Why do you think Dr. Condon "nabbed" you? What did she see in you? I think she saw my military background, which indicated some level of dedication and focus, I think. Plus she saw that I was studying art history. Those traits together made me a well-rounded, interesting candidate. What did the application process involve? What was it like for you? It's extremely intensive. I think one of the reasons UofL is so successful is because of how organized Dr. Condon and her assistant are. I'm a pretty organized person, and if I had to go through that graduation, and Pat [Condon] was crucial in helping me examine my f rst application. We found the weak spots and polished that rock. What will your Fulbright research focus on? Basically, I'm going to Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. The program prepares early-career journalists to lead data-driven newsrooms, and it combines project management with big data analysis…If we can't get into big data and understand it as journalists, we're in big trouble. It's an element that has to be introduced into newsrooms if we want to survive. I'll also be working for the Center for Community Journal- ism. They've been researching how community journalism works in a digital era. Tiny little newspapers are collapsing here. But there, they have a network of small newspapers that are like hyper-local news hubs. I'm excited about it. And I'm excited to bring what I learn back to Kentucky. In the short time since you've graduated, you've been hard at work as a political journalist in Louisville. How does that work inform your upcoming Fulbright research? I used to cover the State House, but it's really diff cult for newspapers to pay for a State House Bureau. There used to be a lot of reporters up there — so many you could hardly f t them in a room. Tiny little newspapers all over the state would have a reporter there. Now, there are maybe 12 or 13. Their decreasing numbers means no one is reporting on senators and representatives who are supposed to be representing the interests of people who live a hundred plus miles away from them. No one is reporting on them! How are you supposed to know what your senator is doing if there's no one holding them accountable? How often are they meeting with lobbyists? What are they voting on? What kind of bills are they sponsoring? When you don't have someone watching out for local interests, there's no one there to record the ins and outs of a community. There are serious consequences for that. Plus, I don't want our history to be lost as we transition over to digital. I don't want our towns, our countrysides, our people, our identities to be swallowed up. Believe it or not, there are so many similarities between Wales and Kentucky in terms of heritage and history. They have a thriving media ecosystem in an environment that has the same geographic and social problems Kentucky does. They struggle with addiction issues and poverty in certain areas. They have an agricultural economy with an increasing tourism industry, too. So I want to f nd out what they're doing to keep their newsrooms alive. What are they doing that we aren't? FOLLOW RAE! Keep track of Rae's work over the next year by subscribing to her blog and following her on Twitter. TWITTER @RaeHodge | BLOG KY120.org English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Oman, 2012–2013 Ann Merkle meet